Great Australian Ghost Stories (21 page)

Rockhampton Girls' Grammar School has a long and distinguished history. Founded in 1892 to provide a superior education for the daughters of wealthy pastoralists and the city's leading citizens, the school prospered from the outset. This was due largely to the first headmistress, an English spinster named Helen E. Downs. Miss Downs was a character; a free thinker with progressive views on female education, women's emancipation and most other subjects. At a speech day in 1898 she reminded parents that the senior classes in her school were for training cultured women who would exert an uplifting influence in social matters — and not waste their time on prettiness.

‘Prettiness' was one of Miss Downs's chief dislikes. She was not pretty herself and was possibly slightly lame. She refused to allow staff or students to restrict their bodies with corsets or ‘paint' their faces. Sensible clothes, sensible diet, fresh air, exercise and lots of soap and water were her recipe for building sturdy bodies and sound minds.

Helen Downs's unconventional ideas probably shocked and upset many people, but the academic achievements of her students reached such heights that she was tolerated by her critics and encouraged by the liberal-minded. The
impression one gets reading about her 100-plus years later is of boundless energy, a brilliant mind and total dedication to her vocation.

It is not surprising that such a strong and controversial character should still exert a powerful influence over the school she founded, but the form that influence takes is quite unexpected. According to school legend Miss Downs's ghost lives in the school bell tower and comes down from her eyrie once a year, at 11 pm on 11 November. The ghost makes its way through the girls' dormitories, selects the girl with the longest blonde hair, produces a pair of spectral scissors and hacks off her victim's tresses.

If you don't believe this story, ask the girls (and former girls). They will tell you that they believe in the ghost of Miss Downs — and watch the mixture of excitement, embarrassment, pride and fear on their faces as they recount their experiences and express their views.

The story of the ghost of Helen Downs was first published in another book of mine in 1998 and soon after that I received a letter from an old lady who had been a pupil at Rockhampton Girls' Grammar in the 1930s. She wrote that she had read with interest my account of the ghost's activities and the impressions of the current batch of students, but felt that it was unlikely any of these younger girls had actually seen the ghost. She, on the other hand, had — or so she assured me.

The lady explained that she remembered taking part in the annual ritual on 11 November every year while she was a boarder at the school, getting (like all her classmates) overexcited with anticipation and fear when the fateful hour approached and then, in her case, deeply disappointed because she did not get to see the spectre charging down the stairs wielding a giant pair of scissors and shearing off golden locks from screaming little girls.

By her second or third year at the school, my correspondent said she was convinced the whole story was a myth — a great way for impressionable girls to ‘let off steam' — but nothing more. Then, she said, in her third year at the school and 200-odd kilometres from Rockhampton something happened which made her change her mind.

A few days after her thirteenth birthday, the lady said, she was summoned to the principal's office and the news broken to her that her father had died as the result of an accident on their family property near Emerald, west of Rockhampton. It was also explained that it had been arranged for her to go home for a few days, to be with her mother and her siblings and to attend her father's funeral. A teacher, the principal told her, had been assigned to take her to the Rockhampton railway station the following day and put her on the Emerald train and that her mother or another relative would be waiting for her at the other end.

The girl was very upset at her father's death and she knew that the next few days would be an ordeal for her and for the rest of her family. She cried much and slept little that night. The following morning a teacher drove her to the station, helped her board the train and stow her bag in the overhead luggage rack then farewelled her.

The train was only sparsely filled and just before it pulled out of the station another woman got into the same carriage. The young girl noticed her, but did not pay her much attention. The woman smiled as she passed and the young girl thought the woman's face seemed vaguely familiar.

The journey took several hours and on arrival at Emerald the girl was met by her two older brothers and driven home. The next few days were taken up with all the activities that surround a death in any family — visits from relatives and friends, funeral arrangements, choosing flowers, choosing mourning clothes, a lot of handshaking and hugging and many tears. The young girl thought no more about the woman on the train or about school or her classmates, who at the time seemed far away and belonging to a different world.

The funeral was held in the Anglican church in a little town outside Emerald. The day was hot and the air filled with smoke from distant bushfires.

The church was packed and for every seated mourner there were a hundred buzzing flies. The flowers on the altar and on the coffin wilted. Men discreetly loosened their collars and ladies fanned themselves with prayer books when they thought no one was looking. The minister sweltered in his robes and had rivulets of sweat running down his forehead, cheeks and jowls.

The young girl from Rockhampton Girls' Grammar had been brave during the preceding days, but with the sudden realisation that her father's dead body lay in a box just metres away from her and that she would never see him again made her eyes fill with unbidden tears. At almost the same moment her brothers and her mother (all sitting on her left) also began to weep, setting up a chorus of quiet sniffling.

Through her tears the young woman noticed a figure moving rapidly down the outside aisle of the church. The figure stopped at the end of the family's pew and slid in beside her. A gentle hand reached out and took the girl's and a quiet voice whispered: ‘Be brave, little one, I'm here for you.'

The girl recognised the lady who had smiled at her on the train and now, at close range, she also recognised the face from an old portrait she had seen at school. She swallowed her tears and whispered: ‘You're Miss Downs, aren't you?' The lady smiled and nodded. Then the young girl's expression changed to alarm.

‘You haven't come to cut off my hair, have you?' she asked.

‘Of course not, my dear,' came the gentle reply.

At that moment the service began and for the next thirty minutes the ghost of Helen Downs sat quietly beside the girl, her presence bestowing courage and a warm sense of solace on
the child. When hymns were announced the kind spirit helped the girl to her feet and joined in the singing with a soft, deep voice.

After six local lads carried the coffin from the church to be loaded onto a hearse and taken to the cemetery, the minister gathered the family together to offer his condolences and accept their thanks for the service. The girl's mother introduced her to the minister, explaining that she was a pupil of Rockhampton Girls' Grammar and had come home to be with the family.

The minister reached out and put his hand on the girl's shoulder and said he felt sure both her father and her school would have been proud of how splendidly she had conducted herself during the service. ‘You were a model of propriety, my dear,' he said.

At the first opportunity the girl turned to where her companion had been sitting, but the pew was empty. As is the custom, no one left the church until the family did. Miss Downs had not ‘left'; she had simply vanished and it seemed from conversations the girl had with others after the funeral that she had not made herself visible to anyone else.

Even now, more than sixty years later
' my correspondent wrote,
I feel a fool for having asked Miss Downs if she had come to cut off my hair, but I'm sure she didn't mind. She was too kind and too understanding to take offence at that. I never saw her again, but I sincerely hope her spirit is still lingering around Rockhampton Girls' Grammar, keeping an eye on the welfare of her girls and probably having a good chuckle on the eleventh of November every year.

For generations of Melburnians, Luna Park at St Kilda has epitomised all that was fun and carefree; it's a place where they can leave inhibitions behind and abandon themselves to pleasure. There were, however, stories of a terrifying, joker-like spectre prowling the park a little over half a century ago, materialising in the path of cars on the roller coaster, sharing cages with patrons on the Ferris wheel and causing general panic. Most people thought the Joker was a publicity stunt, but not those who encountered it.

One such couple had a terrifying story to tell after they encountered the Joker on the Ferris wheel. The year was 1957 and the young man, Roy, and his girlfriend, Heather, were both nineteen. Their families lived a few streets apart in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and Roy had invited Heather to Luna Park to celebrate a pay rise he had received.

It was a Saturday night and cold, with the smell of rain in the air. The young couple caught a tram out to Luna Park and as the tram clattered along St Kilda Road they could see occasional flashes of lightning across Port Philip Bay. They wondered if their journey would be in vain and if they would find the park closed, but when they alighted on the St Kilda esplanade Luna Park was a hive of activity. The sound
of music and laughter wafted over them and thousands of sparkling coloured lights made the place look like fairyland, the brightness intensified by a moonless night and low clouds. Heather giggled with excitement and Roy gave her an encouraging hug as they entered the park through the mouth of the giant, smiling face. Inside the noise was like bedlam and the tempting smells of popcorn, hot dogs and ice cream swirled around them.

Heather was afraid of heights so they began the evening with rides on some of the less taxing attractions, working their way up to the big slide, the roller coaster and the towering Ferris wheel. The rain stayed away and excitement kept the cold at bay.

‘Come on, love, please, I really wanna have a go on the Ferris wheel,' Roy pleaded. Heather hesitated for just a moment then, looking at the excited expression on her boyfriend's face, she gave in. Roy got the tickets just as passengers were boarding the giant, graceful wheel. Within moments they were installed in a cage that slowly rose as the wheel rotated.

Roy put his arm around Heather's shoulders and she soon forgot her nerves as the incredible vista revealed itself. Figures on the ground below shrank until they looked like ants, the lights of the city glittered in the distance and the sparkling waters of the bay seemed to stretch forever. Banks of heavy cloud rolled along the horizon, streaked with lightning, and the distant rumble of thunder echoed around them. The slow, smooth motion of the wheel made the couple feel as if they were magically flying together through the inky sky.

‘Blimey, this is great, eh?' Roy whispered to Heather.

‘It's
beautiful
,' Heather whispered back.

At that moment a particularly bright flash of lightning lit the wheel, making the white-painted spokes and dangling cages
appear like a giant skeleton. A crash of deafening thunder followed. Roy and Heather were temporarily blinded by the lightning, but when their eyes adjusted they both screamed and clung to each other for dear life — and good reason they had to do so, for suddenly, almost a 100 metres in the air and without any warning, they found themselves sharing their cage
with a third person
.

Sitting casually on the restraining bar of the cage, just a few centimetres from them, was a life-size male figure dressed in the costume of a court jester — a three-pointed hat (red, yellow and black, with a golden bell on each point), a tight jacket in the same colours, tight breeches (one leg red, the other black), a yellow codpiece and pointed yellow shoes, also trimmed with golden bells.

If the creature's sudden arrival and its bizarre costume were not enough to terrify Roy and Heather then its face and form were. There was an ageless, sinuous strength to its body and its lean face wore a leering smile; its eyes smouldered, fixed on Roy and Heather, lips drawn back to reveal elongated, pointed teeth.

Another flash of lightning followed the first and lit the points of the creature's teeth and the whites of its eyes, making them shine like incandescent stars. The creature leaned towards the terrified couple and they shrank back as its face loomed nearer and nearer theirs. At close range they could hear the tinkling of the bells on the hat and shoes. One bony, red-gloved hand reached out towards Heather and a long, thin finger caressed her cheek then was quickly withdrawn. The creature then leaned back so that most of its body was outside the cage. The bells on its hat jangled wildly in the wind and from its mouth came a devilish sound, half laugh and half howl, that seemed to make the air around the cage vibrate. Just as the sound
reached a deafening crescendo the monstrous vision vanished. Where a split second before the colours of its gaudy costume had been dancing before their eyes and its eyes and teeth flashing there was nothing but air and velvety blackness.

‘What the
hell
was that?' mumbled Roy.

‘I don't know,' said Heather, ‘and I don't
want
to know!'

Roy's masculine instincts took over from his fear. ‘We'll be down in a sec, love, and boy am I gonna give the people who run this joint a piece of my mind. They shouldn't allow that to happen to anyone!'

Heather's more practical female instincts were also returning to her. She took Roy's hand and looked up into his face. ‘I don't think I'd bother if I was you, Roy.'

Heather and Roy made a pact to tell no one about their strange and horrifying experience and twenty years passed before, as husband and wife and clinging to one another as they had that night to ward off the echoes of their terror, they finally broke their silence.

‘I was so scared I nearly wet meself,' Roy admitted.

Heather added: ‘I
did
actually.'

The figure Roy and Heather referred to as ‘The Joker' was seen by others. A group of ten riders on the Scenic Railway roller coaster, who were already screaming with excitement, screamed in horror when it appeared on the track just in front of their car. In a split second the roller-coaster cars passed over (or through) the figure, without the impact and crash the riders all expected and feared.

When this group complained to the operators of the ride, they were told they must have imagined the figure; or that it had been a large seabird or a trick of the light, but the group remained unconvinced. So did the management of Luna Park, until another patron complained one afternoon about a week
later that the Joker had pushed her child off one of the horses on the carousel.

‘It's just not good enough!' the angry woman shrieked. ‘It might be a bit of fun to have your staff dressed up like that … but that man's behaviour was unacceptable. I paid good money for Betty to ride on the merry-go-round and we waited until the horse she liked best was free. I sat her on the horse, took her fairy floss to mind it and showed her how to hang onto the pole. She was as happy as Larry when the music started.

‘Then that
monster
appeared beside her. I don't know where he came from. I didn't see him arrive. He must have been behind the machinery in the middle. I saw him lurch towards Betty and jam his face right into hers. Betty screamed and I leaped onto the merry-go-round to grab her … then he
shoved
her
right off the horse
. Luckily I caught her as she fell. The
thing
swung his leg over
her
horse as the merry-go-round started to move. He gave us this horrible smile and waved as he rode off … and above the music I swear the bastard was laughing at us!'

The woman described how her daughter was hysterical, the fairy floss lay in the dust and her own anger was making her tremble. She waited until the carousel made its first full rotation, intending to take a swipe at the ‘bastard' with her handbag as he came past, but when the distinctive horse her daughter had chosen came by again, gently rising and falling in time to the music, it was riderless.

Stories about the Joker leaked out and the management of the park responded with ‘no comment', afraid that the publicity would drive business
away
rather than attract it. They hoped the stories would be quickly forgotten and their hopes were fulfilled. The Luna Park ghost (if that it was) had a very short career. The last report came barely a year after the first and all
has been silence since. The giant, grinning face still welcomes visitors, the lights still dazzle, the music and the shrieks of delighted children still ring through the complex, but the Joker seems to have departed. Might he, I wonder, have transported himself to Hollywood, to act as an unpaid consultant to the parade of notable actors who have portrayed his character so memorably in film and on television?