Great Australian Ghost Stories (23 page)

When rich pastoralist and land speculator Christopher Crawley built a stately mansion near the town of Junee NSW in 1884 he called it Monte Cristo — Mount of Christ — but if he hoped the name would protect his home he was mistaken. Dark forces have been at work at Monte Cristo for over a century. The building's history is marred by strange events that have left a legacy of supernatural activity probably unparalleled in any house standing in Australia today.

Christopher Crawley died at Monte Cristo in 1910 after a carbuncle on his neck caused by the high, starched collars he wore became infected. His widow, Elizabeth, lived on in the great house for another twenty-three years, leaving it on only two occasions. After her death, family and servants remained for a few years then the house was left unoccupied for a long period. Thieves, vandals and the elements almost destroyed it and then in 1963 it was bought by Reg and Olive Ryan, who took on the enormous task of first making the house habitable for themselves and their young family, then restoring it to its former glory. Reg Ryan says: ‘The day I first saw Monte Cristo I knew without a doubt I would one day live there. I truly believed something supernatural led me to the homestead
and that I was somehow meant to be the guardian, keeper and protector of this piece of Australian history that was so nearly lost.'

If Reg Ryan was led by a supernatural force to Monte Cristo he and his family were unprepared for the barrage of other supernatural events that occurred (and still occur almost daily) in and around this deceptively peaceful-looking old building. Just three days after they moved in the Ryans had their first strange experience. Electricity had not been connected, there was one kerosene lamp, unlit, in the house and not a single pane of glass in any window yet, as they drove back from a brief shopping trip to Junee that evening, they found bright light streaming from every window in the building. Just as mysteriously, the lights disappeared as they drove through the gateway. Many times since, after the Ryans have spent an evening in only one or two lighted rooms at the back of the house, residents of the town have asked them the next morning why their house was ablaze with light the previous night.

As the years passed and the Ryan's hard work slowly brought the old house back to life, they endured experiences that would have frightened off less dedicated people. Their attempts to keep pets at Monte Cristo always ended in tragedy. Most animals would not enter the house and those that did went crazy with fear. Others died mysteriously, including a kitten found in the kitchen disembowelled and with its eyes gouged out. Chickens were found with their necks wrung and a pair of caged finches, healthy and chirpy one minute, were dead the next.

The Ryans soon realised that they shared their home with a whole company of spirits, not all of whom were benign. Perhaps the love and care they lavish on the old house
protects them. ‘I have never felt threatened or frightened,' says Reg, but relatives, boarders, tradespeople and visitors have, many vowing never to return. Mediums who visit the house pick up echoes of tragedy and sorrow and sense the evil that pervades its beautifully furnished rooms and carefully restored outbuildings.

When you step through the front doorway at Monte Cristo you enter a hallway that runs the length of the house with a staircase leading to the upper floor. Small children often feel distressed for no apparent reason when they approach the stairs and one of the three mediums employed by the ABC during the making of a documentary about Monte Cristo announced that she had a strong feeling that some tragedy had occurred there. Records show that a little girl was dropped by her nanny and fell to her death in the stairwell. The nanny claimed some unseen force had pushed the child from her arms.

The first door on the left of the hallway is the sitting room, charmingly furnished with period furniture and a piano. The Crawley family also kept a piano in this room. The sound of a piano being played has been heard coming from the sitting room at night when the room is in darkness and apparently empty. Then there's the drawing room, where a Catholic priest once entered, stopped in his tracks, crossed himself vigorously and backed hastily out. Other people get visibly distressed when they enter the drawing room, one elderly lady crying uncontrollably until she was led from the room — a teacher who visited the house on a school excursion in 2010 reacted the same way. Objects move about mysteriously here; tapestries carefully hung one day are found rolled up against the wall the next and expensive ornaments from the mantelpiece have been found on the floor beside the door.

In one small bedroom the figure of an old lady dressed in black has been seen by one of the Ryans' daughters and by another of the three mediums, who described the old lady as standing beside a large silver cross. The reminiscences of a former servant who came forwards after the television documentary was aired revealed that the room had originally been a box room but, after the master's death, Mrs Crawley had had it converted into a private chapel. The medium was convinced it was the ghost of Elizabeth Crawley he had seen and said that she had ordered him to get out of her house.

The boys' bedroom nearby also has an alarming effect on people who enter it. Children put to bed there have difficulty settling and a boarder who slept in the room was found by Reg in the middle of the night standing on his bed shaking with terror and crying out that there was someone or something in his room with him. What frightened the boarder may have been the ghost of a young man in working clothes whose face appears at windows from time to time and whom one of the Ryans' daughters found standing over the bed in the boys' room one night, staring down at her small brother, who was sleeping peacefully.

The figure of a woman dressed in white has appeared to at least two people in another bedroom, floating across the room and disappearing through a closed window. On another occasion in the same room the detached head of a woman appeared above the foot of the bed to the amazement and horror of a guest. The same woman in white (or another with a similar taste in gowns) appeared at the top of the stairs one night, calling out very clearly, twice, ‘Don't worry, it will be all right!' to two startled house guests. Yet another ghost was seen by a small boy who visited the house with his mother and asked after being taken on a tour of the house: ‘Who was that
old man with the beard in the brown clothes who followed us around?' No one else had seen him.

The first-floor balcony also has its share of strange happenings. One of the mediums claimed that a girl had died by falling from the balcony and, although efforts to find records of this have so far been unsuccessful, older residents of the district recall the story of a girl being thrown from the spot. The Ryans have heard footsteps on the balcony and connecting doors opening and closing when there has been no one upstairs. Lights have been seen moving mysteriously along the balcony at night and, in September 1995, a local woman driving away from the house reported seeing a transparent figure in an old-fashioned dark-coloured dress walking there.

Despite all the supernatural activity inside the house, mediums and sensitive visitors all agree that the feeling of evil that hangs over the whole property is strongest in two of the outbuildings: the stables and the dairy and, given the gruesome history of these innocent-looking structures, that is hardly surprising. Many years ago (and long before the Ryans came along) a young man named Morris worked at Monte Cristo and slept in the stables. One day he complained of being too ill to work, but his boss thought he was shirking and rashly put a match to the straw mattress the boy lay on. Morris was genuinely ill and unable to get up. He burned to death. One of the three mediums, without any knowledge of this event, came rushing out of the stables, badly shaken and claiming he could smell the stench of a fiery death inside.

Beside the door of the dairy is a small hole in the brick wall. That hole was made by a chain that held a mentally disabled man named Harold Steel prisoner for forty years. Steel's mother was housekeeper in Mrs Crawley's time and rather than put her son into an institution she kept him chained up
in the dairy. After Mrs Crawley's death the housekeeper was allowed to stay on alone in the house but she died of a heart attack and her absence was not noticed for several days. When the police investigated they found Mrs Steel's body and Harold, in a wretched state, distressed, hungry and thirsty curled up on the ground at the end of his chain. He could not speak; his hair was long and matted and his overgrown fingernails had curled back into the palms of his hands. He was taken to an asylum in Goulburn but died soon after.

A few years later a local youth who had been to see the Hitchcock thriller
Psycho
three times came up to the house one night, found the caretaker, Jack Simpson, in the dairy and shot him dead. To this day the macabre message the murderer or someone else scratched on the dairy wall,
Die Jack Ha Ha
, can be clearly read.

When the ABC crew were filming the dairy at night they set up floodlights around the building. Because it was such a cold night the Ryans lit a fire in the dining-room fireplace, but within minutes they and the ABC crew were gathered outside, oblivious to the cold, witnessing an amazing sight. In the bright glare of the floodlights, smoke was rising from the second-floor chimney of the house, curling neatly in the air and then being sucked directly down the chimney of the dairy.

And the strange events keep happening. A Sydney man drove into the car park one day with his family. Even before he got out of his car the man complained that something invisible had attached itself to his chest and was clutching him painfully. After viewing the house the man said he was feeling very ill. For several weeks he could not rid himself of the strange sensation. Back home he went to a doctor, who could find nothing physically wrong with him and, surprisingly, suggested an exorcist. Suddenly one night, while he lay in bed,
whatever it was that had attached itself to him let go and the pain ceased. The man was enormously relieved but horrified to see whatever it was had not gone very far. Both he and his wife could see a faint and indistinct form clinging to their bedroom wall beside the light switch.

Even as recently as 2010, a group of professional ghost-busters visited Monte Cristo and got more than they bargained for. When they mentioned that they hoped to be able to communicate with a spirit and record its voice a clear response — ‘Pick me!' — came out of nowhere and when the ghost of Mrs Crawley repeated her oft-heard order to leave her house, her voice was captured on tape for the first time. Mrs C was also held responsible for violently rattling a firmly closed window when the group entered her former chapel and for the series of loud bangs that echoed through the house each time one of the group asked if there were spirits present.

There are many more stories about Monte Cristo — too many to retell here and more than enough to earn Monte Cristo a sinister reputation. Since the demolition of Bungaribee at Eastern Creek in 1958, the title Australia's Most Haunted House deservedly belongs to the Junee attraction. The mysterious old house is a popular tourist destination and deserves to be visited by everyone who travels to the town, not least for the proof it provides of what can be achieved by private individuals dedicated to preserving our national heritage. The extensive collection of beautifully restored horse-drawn vehicles displayed in the coach house should also not be missed, but if you experience any strange feelings or witness anything that defies explanation while visiting don't be surprised — it's all part of the mystery and fascination of old ‘Monte Cristo'.

I acknowledge that stories of ghosts and spirits (equal in richness and diversity to any in this collection) abound in the traditional culture of Aboriginal Australians, but to do justice to them in printed words requires specialised knowledge and understanding greater than I possess.

I also offer an apology to any reader who might have been offended by the occasional use of discriminatory terms like ‘blackfellow', ‘Chinaman' or ‘spinster' on the preceding pages. Such terms reflect the customs and attitudes of the times in which many of these stories are set, and in the interests of verisimilitude I have retained them in the retelling, when under normal circumstances I would not use them.

All stories in this collection are presented in good faith. I make no claim as to the authenticity or accuracy of any of these stories and would like to make it clear that although positive statements may be made — ‘the house is haunted', ‘he or she said', as examples — they should be taken to mean that the location is reputed, supposed or believed to be haunted and the individual was reported as saying.

Readers should also be aware that the sites of many of these stories are on private property. The inclusion of a story in this collection does not mean that the protagonists in the story, or owners or occupiers of the premises, believe in ghosts, or are willing to answer casual inquiries, discuss the story or countenance trespass on their property.

I willingly acknowledge the generous assistance provided to me by so many people from all over Australia in the
preparation of my first book about ghosts,
The Ghost Guide to Australia
, published in 1998 and which I have drawn on extensively for this volume. Thanks are also due to Brigitta Doyle of ABC Books for her support of this project and to Rochelle Fernandez at HarperCollins and Kate O'Donnell who brought her exceptional skills to editing the manuscript.

Trying to describe supernatural phenomena and convey witnesses emotions in words requires a wide vocabulary, so let's allow Dr Samuel Johnson — that roly-poly, bewigged father of the modern English dictionary, to whom all writers are indebted — to have the last word on the subject of ghosts: