Great Australian Ghost Stories (22 page)

Near the village of Avoca in the Fingal Valley in Tasmania stand the ruins of a house called Garth. What began as an imposing, two-storey residence 160 years ago is now reduced to a few crumbling fragments of wall, a broken chimney and a scatter of rubble. On bright summer days when the sun warms the smooth blocks of sandstone there is little evidence to support the building's grim reputation, but when winter shrouds the valley a gloomier place would be hard to imagine.

If you're hardy (or foolhardy) enough to spend a night there you may see and hear things that make you forget the cold and discomfort. If you hear a moaning sound it will probably be the wind whistling around the ruined walls; a shriek will almost certainly be the call of a startled owl and strange shapes on the frosty ground nothing more that the shadows of clouds scudding across the moon — or it might be the ghosts of Garth, for this stark old ruin is all that remains of what is still called Tasmania's most haunted house.

Truth and fiction are so entwined in the story of Garth that it is hard to separate them. The few historical facts that survive about the property conflict with the popular stories but are just as tragic and disturbing. According to the popular version, the land on which the house stands was granted in the 1830s to a young Englishman who had left his fiancée behind in England. The plan was for him to establish himself, then for her to join him. Using convict labour the young man set about building a house worthy of his future bride but, when the building was only partially completed, he became impatient and took ship for England to fetch her. When he arrived he discovered that during his absence the young lady's feelings towards him had not grown fonder. Quite the opposite: she had married someone else and had not bothered to let him know.

In despair the betrayed lover returned to Van Diemen's Land and to Avoca. The hopes and dreams that had sustained him through the years of hardship were dashed and the house he had built with such loving care now seemed as barren and gloomy as his future. In a fit of anguish the young man hanged himself in the courtyard of the unfinished house. His ghost, it is said, still wanders the property bemoaning his fate.

Sometime later (so the story goes) the building was occupied by a family with a small daughter and a convict nursemaid. The nursemaid was strict and fond of scolding her charge until one day the child threw herself into a well to escape. The nursemaid dived in to rescue the little girl but both drowned. Thereafter the ghost of the little girl joined the betrayed lover in stalking the blighted rooms of Garth.

The house stood unoccupied for decades and stories of the ghosts accumulated. Locals reported seeing the young man (his head twisted and livid rope burns scarring his throat) and the little girl, dressed in a lace-trimmed pinafore and
waving to passers-by from the empty windows of the house. Heartrending screams were heard echoing through the building and the hoof beats of unseen horses rang on the hard ground in front of the house and from within the courtyard. Animals which had apparently wandered up to the house innocently were reported as racing away lathered with fear as if all the hounds in hell were nipping at their heels. When developed, a photograph taken at Garth by curious visitors with their trusty Box Brownie showed the shadowy figure of the little girl smiling shyly beside the person who was being photographed. Whispers spread like wildfire that the property was cursed and it was said that anyone who disturbed the stones at Garth would meet a dreadful end.

The true history of the property is quite different. The earliest maps still in existence show the land belonging to a Charles Peters and his wife Susannah. Devotees of the story of the betrayed lover claim that Peters took over the partially completed house after the young man's suicide, but local historians doubt there was a previous owner. Charles and Susannah Peters named their house Garth after their family home in Scotland, and if they shared it with the ghost of a previous owner they left no record of it.

Tragedy struck the Peters family on Friday, 18 September 1840 while Charles and Susannah were entertaining a friend in the parlour. Their little daughter, Anne, aged two and a half, came to the parlour door screaming hysterically, her clothes and hair on fire. She had apparently been watching the cook making jam in the kitchen and had stood too close to the stove. The child was terribly burned and, although her parents anointed her burns with oil and lime water and the local doctor did what he could to relieve her suffering, poor little Anne died two days later. The details of this tragic event
are preserved in the coroner's report and the evidence of the distraught father and guest dutifully recorded and dated. Anne Peters was buried near the house and her grave remains visible to this day.

The Peters retained ownership of Garth but moved to the nearby town of Fingal after their daughter's death. The house remained empty until 1851, when they leased it to James and Charlotte Grant, but five months after the tenants moved in the house was completely gutted by fire. No one lived at Garth after that — except the spirits.

Sceptics in the district will tell you that the stories of ghosts were invented to keep trespassers out of the ruined house. Believers will tell you that the ghosts had exactly that effect and that they would not spend a night at Garth for a million dollars. Perhaps the young man who supposedly hanged himself there never existed, or maybe time simply erased records of him. Perhaps the little girl whose ghost likes to be photographed did not die in the well, although the remains of a well are still there. Could it be the ghost of little Anne Peters? Only the old house knows the truth and it keeps its secrets to itself.

 

The distinction of bearing the title ‘South Australia's most haunted house' goes to a building that is also no longer there. Unlike Garth there are not even a few stones left to help us remember a house known in its day as Graham's Castle.

A wealthy Englishman named John Richmond arrived in Adelaide in 1838 with this wife, four children, fourteen servants and the servants' families. To accommodate such a large retinue, Richmond purchased fifty-two acres (twenty hectares) of land facing Prospect Road in what was then called Prospect Village, four kilometres north of the Adelaide GPO.
In the centre of it he built a large house and surrounded it with gardens and orchards, but the Richmonds remained less than ten years in what they called Prospect House. In 1846 the property was bought by an enterprising bachelor named John Benjamin Graham. From that time the house was known locally as Graham's Castle.

There's some doubt as to whether the house reached its final form during Richmond's or Graham's time, but whichever of these men was responsible for choosing its design had more money than taste. Prospect House or Graham's Castle was an architectural monstrosity — a stark white limestone box topped with a crenellated parapet that made it look like a bad copy of an English castle. A massive front door with two cast-iron lion's head knockers (why two?) and a high stone wall topped with broken glass encircling the property made it about as warm and inviting as a mausoleum.

Graham came to Adelaide as an undistinguished migrant, took a job as a shop assistant in an ironmonger's, soon owned the business then mortgaged it to buy shares in the new Burra copper mine. Within a few years he was a millionaire. During his time at Prospect House Graham was not exactly a recluse, but his stern character and Spartan lifestyle suited the house. He visited Europe in 1848, where he acquired a genuine castle near Heidelberg in Germany and a severe English wife.

Graham sold Prospect House in 1853 to a brewer named Clark, who in turn sold it to Nathaniel Oldham and it was during the latter's time that the house began to gain its reputation for being haunted. The ghost of a woman dressed entirely in black was often seen on the stairs and, seventy years later, Oldham's sons could still vividly recall their separate encounters with her. Some people suggested it was Mrs Graham and that she had been murdered in the house by
Mr Graham, but as both ended their days peacefully in their German
schloss
that theory is easily disproved.

Another ghost, this time a lady fashionably dressed in white satin began to visit the house. Occupants would hear a coach approaching on the gravel driveway and then the white figure would appear at a window tapping on the glass and motioning to be let in. She would then suddenly disappear, leaving her audience aghast. Moments later, delicate footsteps would be heard mounting the empty stairs. A third spectre, reputed to be the ghost of a servant who hanged himself in his bedroom, caused general panic whenever he appeared on the parapet walk; he was immaculately dressed but headless.

As well as these phantom figures the old house was plagued by strange noises: bumps and creaks, mysterious tapping, groans and terrifying shrieks that hauled sleepers from their beds. Neighbours always avoided the house at night, taking long detours rather than pass its gloomy gates.

Not surprisingly, the house changed hands many times during the remaining years of the nineteenth century, a succession of owners driven out by the ghosts or the difficulty of getting servants to stay. For a while it was leased by North Adelaide Grammar and used as a dormitory for an overflow of boarders, but the combination of its ugliness and lurid reputation meant the house finally lay vacant. Decay set in and by 1912 the old house was fit only for demolition.

Neither the residents of Prospect or of Fingal in Tasmania regretted the passing of these notorious old houses, but maybe the spirits that occupied them did.

There's a quality of mystery and romance about lighthouses that no other buildings possess. It may be their graceful shape, their picturesque locations or the comforting beams of light they project over treacherous waters at night. Whatever their charm to observers (and in particular to seafarers), one suspects it is soon lost on those charged with maintaining them and on their families, condemned to lonely lives in remote, windswept and wave-washed locations. At last count there were about a dozen lighthouses around the coast of Australia laying claim to being haunted. The following is a sampling of their spooky stories.

The 138-year-old lighthouse that overlooks Belmore Basin at Wollongong is the haunt of two ghosts. Pilot William Edwards, who guided thousands of vessels in and out of Wollongong Harbour and who drowned when his boat capsized during a storm, is said to walk the observation deck at the top of the lighthouse on stormy nights, watching out for ships in distress.

His companion is George Smith, lighthouse keeper during the 1920s and 30s. Smith was a familiar figure in the streets of Wollongong during his lifetime: tall, straight-backed even
in old age and always willing to tell anyone who asked how he lost one hand and forearm while working as a sugar-cane cutter in Queensland.

Every evening at dusk George would climb the spiral stairs to light the enormous revolving lantern at the top of the lighthouse, content in the knowledge that his work was averting disaster and saving lives. George Smith died sixty-odd years ago, but some say he still climbs the stairs every evening. Hollow footsteps slowly climbing upwards have been heard many times and wet footprints found on the stairs when the lighthouse has been securely locked. That William Edwards is seen and not heard, and George Smith heard but not seen may account for why these two salty spirits seem happy to share their confined haunt.

 

Split Point Lighthouse at Aireys Inlet on the coast of Western Victoria has a much longer reputation for ghostly goings-on and, given its colourful history, that is no surprise. The first lighthouse keeper (another George, but this time with a less common surname — Bardin) came from the Channel Islands and broke both his legs when he fell from the crow's-nest of the ship that brought him to Australia. Just what passenger Bardin was doing ‘aloft' on the long journey is not recorded. Perhaps he was trying to get used to heights in preparation for the job that awaited him on his arrival. While recovering in Williamstown Hospital, rats ate away most of both Bardin's heels, so it was a wonder that he ever managed to report for duty.

A later keeper, Richard Baker (with the odd middle name of ‘Joy') also assured himself a place in local history by devising a way of spending his evenings in the local pub instead of keeping the light. Baker scratched a hole in the black paint
at the back of the lamp glass in line with the Aireys Inlet pub, so that each time the light rotated it ‘winked' in that direction. Baker could thus relax with his mates over a few ales and check the light was still burning and revolving.

The ghost of Split Point Lighthouse is not, however, either of these colourful characters, but the unmarried daughter of one of them, or of another lighthouse keeper. Local legend has it that the young woman went out fishing in a small boat with her dad one day and chose that time to tell him that she was pregnant. The father got agitated, the boat rocked and the daughter fell into the ocean and drowned. Her fetching ghost, it is claimed, rises out of the surf below the lighthouse and calls to young men on the shore to join her in the water, and that until one gullible guy obliges, her restless spirit will find no rest. Well, that's how the story goes and the fact that there are no records of the death by drowning of a lighthouse keeper's daughter, has not stopped it flourishing or several young men swearing that they almost succumbed to the ghost's sexy, watery allure.

 

Of all the haunted lighthouse stories, two from Queensland take the prizes for atmosphere and all-round spookiness. The first concerns the light that once stood on Pine Islet and if you've never heard of this place you can be forgiven. Pine Islet is a single, steep, granite rock, just 800 metres in length, part of the remote Percy Islands group, south-east of Mackay.

In 1927 Pine Islet was the scene of a gruesome ceremony. The authorities decided to build a new lighthouse keeper's cottage on the island that year and the only available flat land was a grave site. An order was obtained to exhume the body and relocate the grave.

The headstone identified the grave as that of Dorothea McKay, wife of a lighthouse keeper, who had died of cancer
in 1895. When the grave was opened the coffin was found to have rotted away. The workmen collected some loose bones, a set of false teeth and a wedding ring and duly reburied them some distance away. Everyone seemed satisfied with the arrangement — except Dorothea.

When the lighthouse keeper moved into the new cottage, built over the old grave, strange things began to happen. Invisible knuckles rapped loudly on the front door, then footsteps and faint muttering sounds (indecipherable but clearly angry) were heard inside the cottage.

In the 1980s the lighthouse was automated and the last lighthouse keeper departed, but right up until then the ghost's visits continued. In July 1985 keeper Darrell Roche was reported as saying: ‘The last time she came was about eighteen months ago. There was a knock on the door, then footsteps through the cottage into the lounge room. There she stopped — above her original grave — and we've never heard anything from her since.'

Perhaps Dorothea McKay was satisfied when she heard that she was going to be left in peace. Maybe she found her way back to her original resting place that night in 1985. Darrell Roche and many others hope so. She is unlikely to be disturbed again, for when the lighthouse became redundant a few years back it was dismantled, shipped to the mainland and reconstructed beside Mackay Harbour as a tourist attraction.

 

400 kilometres south of Pine Islet lies Lady Elliot Island. As well as a lighthouse, there's a popular resort on Lady Elliot; not as glamorous (or as expensive) as most Barrier Reef resorts, but richly endowed with natural attractions — and some unnatural ones.

One of the conducted walks on Lady Elliot Island takes guests up a narrow track to the centre of the island after
dark, to visit a tiny well-kept graveyard. There are only two graves there but each headstone tells a tragic story. One is the last resting place of thirty-year-old Phoebe Jane Phillips, daughter of the lighthouse keeper during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Phoebe lived a sheltered life on the island with only her parents for company before dying of pneumonia in 1896.

The other grave is that of Susannah McKee, wife of a later lighthouse keeper. Susannah McKee came from Ballyganaway in Ireland and bore her husband, Tom, four sons before accompanying him to Lady Elliot Island. Susannah found living conditions on the island harsher than she expected. Supplies had to be brought by ship and were invariably late. Meat and other perishables would not keep. The living quarters were cramped, Spartan and windswept. Medical attention was unavailable. Loneliness, boredom and the sense of isolation weighed heavily on Susannah's mind. After her youngest son went off to boarding school in Rockhampton, she decided she could stand the conditions no longer. On 23 April 1907 she put on her best dress, her good shoes and her favourite hat, walked out onto the guano-loading jetty below the lighthouse and threw herself into the sea.

There were rumours at the time that Tom McKee had pushed his wife off the jetty, but no one could prove murder. Tom recovered his wife's body and buried her beside Phoebe Phillips on the hilltop but, for some reason, Susannah McKee did not rest easy in her grave. The first recorded sighting of a woman fitting Susannah's description dates from the late 1930s. The keeper at that time, Arthur Brumpton, looked down from the lighthouse balcony one evening and saw a female figure dressed in turn-of-the-century clothing walking between the lighthouse and the three cottages behind it.

Brumpton's young daughter Margaret also recalled, years later: ‘I often felt the presence of a stranger who I sensed was a woman, watching me or following me about during all our years on the island and I heard sharp, light, ghostly footsteps echoing in the lighthouse so many times I lost count. I grew up fearing that one day whoever it was that was watching me and making those eerie sounds would chase me up the stairs and push me off the balcony at the top of the lighthouse!'

Fortunately that didn't happen, but the Brumptons' story had a curious sequel. When the family were returning to Brisbane in 1940 the captain of the ship they travelled on showed them some of photos of people who had lived on Lady Elliot Island at different times. When he produced a photograph of Susannah McKee, Arthur Brumpton recognised the woman he had seen.
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Like the one on Pine Islet the Lady Elliot lighthouse was automated in 1985 and staff at the newly established resort took over the few duties that were needed to maintain it. The last lighthouse keeper handed over the three cottages to the resort's operations manager and a multitude of strange things have occurred ever since then.

The operations manager told how, on the night of the handover, he and the lighthouse keeper heard strange footsteps in one of the abandoned cottages. Two of the resort staff moved into the same cottage soon after: a groundsman and a chef. After they finished moving their furniture in the two men decided to take a break and sat on a tractor parked in front of the cottage. It was an unusually still afternoon with hardly enough wind to stir nearby trees. Suddenly an empty plastic ice-cream container came flying out of the front door
of the unoccupied cottage and landed at their feet. At dinner that evening the pair told their workmates about the flying container and were told the story of the mysterious footsteps. The groundsman laughed and said he didn't believe in ghosts. That night he was hurled bodily from his bed in the cottage and landed on the floor with a bone-shaking thud. After that he slept on the verandah.

A few nights later he woke around 1 am and, to his horror, could clearly see the transparent figure of a woman standing in the cottage doorway. ‘She was staring at me with big, unblinking eyes. Instantly I felt cold all over. Goosebumps rose on my skin and the hair on my arms and legs stood up like bristles on a brush. I also had the strange feeling that I was fixed like a specimen on a microscope slide and that this “thing” was studying me like
I
was some kind of freak. I was so scared I couldn't even cry out. I just lay there until the figure faded and disappeared.'

The ghost of Susannah McKee has also been seen peering out of the cottage windows and striding across the island's small airstrip — and not always alone. On some occasions she has been accompanied by a young woman (Phoebe Phillips?) and an old man wearing blue overalls. A boy wearing a Stetson hat has also been seen by staff and guests, leaning against an Indian almond tree between two of the cottages. Mysterious bloodstains have appeared from time to time on the fourth step of the staircase inside the lighthouse; and the plaintive voice of a little girl calling for her mother has been heard. All of which suggests that there are dark secrets, unrecorded, in the island's history.

Crank-started generators that supplied all the power to the resort in pre-solar days were housed in a locked room. Once they stopped suddenly, plunging the whole complex
into darkness, but before anyone reached the locked room they started up again. Some old kerosene tins stored in the generator room were heard rattling and crashing about. A team of painters contracted to repaint the old lighthouse cottages found that every time they climbed their scaffolding it began to shake violently, but when they got down the shaking stopped. A female guest camping alone one night woke to hear the zippers on her tent opening and closing. She got up and looked around, but there was no one outside. As she returned to her bed she realised to her alarm that the zippers were on the inside. In the bar of the resort a glass tumbler spontaneously imploded moments after a guest finished drinking from it. The same guest had laughed as he swallowed the last mouthful of his drink and declared loudly to the assembly in the bar that he didn't believe in ghosts. ‘Ghost stories are a load of bullshit,' he said. He, like many other sceptics who have stayed on the island, is now a convert.

The ghost walks up to the little hilltop cemetery are very popular with guests. Perhaps after a day spent diving or snorkelling in the emerald waters, paddling across the colourful reef flats that fringe the island or simply basking in the sun on the glorious golden beach a ghost story or (for the lucky one) an actual encounter is the ideal way to round off a perfect day.