HAUNTED: The GHOSTS that share our world Read online

  HAUNTED

  The GHOSTS that share our world

  John Pinkney

  Cover illustration and design by Anne Spudvilas

  • EYEWITNESS REPORTS

  • EERIE ENCOUNTERS

  • UNCANNY PHOTOGRAPHS

  Countless witnesses have experienced the awe – and shock – of a close encounter with a ghost.

  In this enthralling book, bestselling author and journalist John Pinkney chronicles many of the strangest and most profound of the modern-day hauntings he has personally investigated.

  THE NEWSREADER who died of a heart attack on-air – then returned, to walk his radio station’s corridors. THE APPARITIONS that haunt rural highways. THE PHANTOM-plagued police station.

  THE MANSION-OWNER who, after 20 years’ detective work, discovered her resident spirit’s tragic secret. THE TERRIFYINGLY troubled room which authorities ripped from a church in a failed exorcism attempt. TELEPHONE CALLS from the dead. And considerably more.

  Throughout his career investigator John Pinkney has collected compelling documentary evidence that ghosts exist – and have the power to impinge on many people’s lives.

  for Maggie

  Other eBooks by John Pinkney

  THIRST: An Inheritance of Evil [novel]

  The Girl Who Touched Infinity [young adult novel]

  The Key and the Fountain [children’s novel]

  A Paranormal File

  Australia’s Strangest Mysteries

  ‘Alien Airships’ over Old America

  The Mary Celeste Syndrome

  * * *

  HAUNTED: The Ghosts that share our world

  [first published as HAUNTED: The Book of Australia’s Ghosts]

  Copyright © John Pinkney 2011.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-0-9870935-7-8

  Cover art and design by ANNE SPUDVILAS

  See the HAUNTED interview with John Pinkney on YouTube

  Inkypen Editions

  johnpinkneybooks

  Contents

  Preface

  Echoes of Violent Death

  Riddle of the Restless Ghost

  Crisis Apparitions

  The Couple Who Kept Their Promise - to a Phantom

  Unearthly - and in Uniform

  The Haunting of a Military Airbase

  Televisitants

  The Rapping, Tapping Entity on National TV

  Wraiths that Haunt Radio

  Ambushed - by a Dead Broadcaster

  Phantoms of the Bush

  A Silent Horseman’s Sinister Secret

  Fear in Public Places

  The Spectre That Stopped a City

  The Many Ghosts of Monte Cristo

  The House that Beckoned

  Haunted Cinemas

  Phantoms in the Front Stalls

  Invisible Assailants

  Chilling Case of the Priests and the Poltergeist

  Ghosts in the Lens

  The Drowned Man’s Face that Invaded a Photograph

  Asphalt Apparitions

  Killed on the Road by a Tortured Ghost

  Haunted Houses

  The Phantom Stain Science Couldn't Explain

  Haunted Inns

  The Telephone Installer – and the Terror in Room 12a

  Spectres of the Sea

  Sickness, Death, Stalk a Sinister Shipwreck

  Haunted Lighthouses

  Exhumed and Angry: Pine Islet’s Turbulent Ghost

  Phantoms of the Footlights

  Princess Theatre Entity ‘Predicted’ a Tragic Fire

  Hostile Ghosts

  The Malign Message in the Mirror

  Messages from the Dead

  Saved - By an Unearthly Voice

  Ghosts of Battle

  Strange Saga of the Soldier on the Stairs

  Haunted Hospitals

  Dialogue with a Long-Buried Doctor

  Shadow Children

  The Family that Rescued a Little Girl’s Ghost

  Animal Entities

  The Cats and Dogs that ‘Came Back’

  Troubled Timepieces

  Clock Fell Silent, When its Builder was Buried

  Churchmen’s Ghosts

  Minister Haunted Vicarage for 50 Years

  Preface

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

  than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

  Hamlet, act II, scene V

  William Shakespeare

  SEVERAL YEARS after a heart attack killed him on-air, a Melbourne newsreader returned, to haunt the studios of his radio station.

  Builders who dug up an old grave on a Queensland island, to make way for a lighthouse-keeper’s cottage, quickly regretted their actions. Soon after its first tenants moved in the house became an angry cauldron of poltergeist activity.

  For decades a Sydney police station was troubled by the ghosts of two prisoners who had hanged themselves from trees in the grounds. Dozens of police officers reported that the phantoms’ presence was signalled by sudden, painful drops in temperature.

  These cases share a common characteristic. All point persuasively to the apparent existence of a universe parallel to our own: a world peopled by what successive generations have assumed are the spirits of the dead.

  During my career as a journalist I have interviewed countless Australians who experienced the awe - and shock - of a first-hand encounter with a ghost. The most compelling of these eyewitness reports can be found in the following pages. Witnesses who express their belief in the reality of ghosts include an Air Force Wing Commander, a CSIRO scientist, medical staff at several hospitals, Army personnel and even the beloved Australian actress Jackie Weaver whose brilliant work brought her an Academy Award nomination. But predominant in Haunted are the testimonies of sincere everyday people describing in detail their bizarre encounters with the unknown.

  Documentation, evidence and observers’ statements should play a central role in the investigation and reportage of ghosts - and I have sought to make them the linchpins of this book. An example is the case of the ‘asphalt apparition’ which large numbers of people claimed to have witnessed on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. Scores of motorists rang a radio station to report that they had seen a white floating phantom cause the notorious freeway pileup that involved 19 cars.

  Here also are documented reports of haunted houses (the most notable being Monte Cristo, New South Wales - a magnet for international psychic investigators); the Brisbane City Hall clock that stopped dead for the first time ever, when its builder was buried; the ‘ghost room’ ripped from a rural church, in a desperate attempt at exorcism.

  You may find that the foregoing accounts, and the other eyewitness reports in these pages, will continue to haunt you, long after you have read them.

  John Pinkney

  Echoes of Violent Death

  Riddle of the Restless Ghost

  In 1984, renovator Lois Jackman bought Ascot: a sprawling multi-roomed mansion in Toowoomba, Queensland. Soon after she moved in, something within the old house stirred. Footsteps echoed in empty corridors. A wall became icy to the touch. A witness saw an apparition glowing in a doorway. Locals insisted that the ‘spirit’ was someone who had died hideously on the premises almost a century before. But who (on earth) had the tormented phantom been? For 20 years Lois Jackman tried to find out - sporadically trawling through yellowing newspapers, letters and police records. Not until 2004 did she learn the truth at last - discovering that her haunted house did indeed harbour a terrible secret…

  LOIS JACKMAN was not known for making reckless decisions. At 46 a successful renovator - and owner of the well-patronised Br
isbane restaurant Mother’s - she brought copybook caution to all of her business dealings. But on the dazzling summer’s afternoon that she first entered the grounds of Ascot House, her commonsense (by her own admission) temporarily deserted her.

  ‘All I know,’ she told me, ‘is that from the first time I set eyes on the place it exerted an enormous magnetism. The proof of that, I suppose, is that I bought it three days later! I’ve long believed that I didn’t buy Ascot - it bought me.’

  The house, its 19th century timber and gauge-iron roofing still intact, stands in the Toowoomba suburb of Newtown. Originally named Tor, it was built in 1876 for Frederick Hurrell Holberton, wealthy owner of a local mercantile store. Holberton subsequently became an MLC (Member of the Legislative Council) in Queensland’s parliament. His new home stood at the end of a broad carriageway in 13 hectares of grounds. In 1894, temporarily pressed for cash, he sold Tor at considerable profit to business owner William Beit. The new owner promptly renamed the property Ascot House, to reflect his obsession with racing. As early sketches and paintings show, the mansion, with its gothic tower, sweeping staircase and huge, high-ceilinged rooms, was an extravagant symbol of colonial wealth.

  When Lois Jackman first saw the mansion 90 years later, its magnificence had dramatically faded. She stepped out of her car into a waist-high sea of weeds. A steady sell-off of land through the 20th century had reduced the size of Ascot’s gardens to less than half a hectare. The paint on its original timberwork blistering, its once-proud lines ruined by gimcrack extensions, the edifice seemed almost to be shrouded in despair.

  ‘The house looked diabolical, but for some reason it captivated me anyway,’ Lois recalled. ‘I’d come there with a friend. She wanted to visit her brother, who was living on the property. He was in one of nine scruffy, barely livable flats that had been added during the 1940s. They were a rabbit warren, divided into 43 rooms, mainly occupied by druggies. There was rubbish everywhere - and when my friend, holding a candle, took me up into the gothic tower, we almost lost our footing on the rubble and broken plaster littering the stairs.’

  Ascot was a mess. But that afternoon, seemingly against all reason, Lois made a firm decision. She would become the owner of this house - no matter what obstacles might confront her. ‘If I’d consulted an architect, or a builder or especially a financial adviser they might have talked me out of it,’ she said. ‘But the only people I wanted to discuss Ascot with were real estate agents. I went home and rang about half a dozen. None had it on their books and they all agreed it couldn’t possibly be for sale. If it had been, they’d have heard. But then I got onto someone a bit more cluey. He told me he’d check and call back. Which he promptly did - to tell me Ascot was now on his company’s for-sale listings.

  ‘I had a slight attack of misgivings and said I’d delay my decision till I had had one more look. Next day, I piled my three Samoyeds into the car, along with a waiter from the restaurant. I got him to look over the house, then asked him for an opinion…should I buy? He replied that he knew nothing about real estate - but why not? I signed the papers that afternoon. And I didn’t miss the coincidence, either. My restaurant was in Racecourse Road, Ascot - and here I was, buying another Ascot.’

  Lois had no illusions about the vast physical and financial burden she had shouldered. Almost every physical element of the mansion, from roofs and gutters to floors and plumbing, was on the edge of ruin. The flats, with their population of drifters, had been slums for generations. She decided that every time a tenant quit, or decamped without paying the rent, she would close the flat down, in readiness for reclaiming Ascot as it had originally been designed.

  Within weeks she had moved in - accepting that for the next two years at least, her environment would be dominated by the din of drills, hammers and power saws.

  Soon, deep in the night, she began to hear other noises also. Noises she could not comprehend. Often, wakened by loud footsteps in the corridor, she would swing herself from bed and open the door, bracing herself to confront an intruder. Always the corridor would be empty - with the footfalls continuing to resonate. She would return to her room, sit on the bed and listen. There was something in the hall. But nothing in the hall.

  One afternoon an elderly neighbour looked in to see how the renovations were proceeding. She told Lois she had lived in this street since she was a girl, more than 70 years before - and had often played with the children of Ascot’s owners. The kids told her, often, that there was a ghost in the house. They had seen it. Had Lois seen anything? Lois truthfully replied that she hadn’t. But privately she was increasingly disturbed by the thought that an intangible presence seemed to be sharing her private living quarters.

  She had seldom, in her life, given much thought to ghosts - and had certainly not believed they existed - but now she was being forced to accept that an inexplicable phenomenon of some kind was occurring within metres of where she slept.

  The haunting intensified.

  ‘Shortly after my chat with that neighbour, I had a quite unsettling experience,’ Lois told me. ‘It was about 2 am and I was walking across a large empty room in which the electricians still had to install new wiring and light fittings. The room wasn’t totally dark by any means. Light was spilling in from the hall, so I had no trouble navigating, especially as there were no furnishings to bump into.

  ‘When I was about halfway, I got a shock. Someone dragged their finger across my left shoulder. I swung around to confront whoever it was. No one was there. Immediately I started to rationalise. I was tired. It was nerves. I’d imagined it. Or perhaps I’d brushed against a potplant. But there were no plants in that room. My desperate attempts at denial didn’t work. I had to admit to myself that something - a finger - had definitely touched me.

  ‘A few minutes later I had to go back across that room - the geography of the house dictated it. I was jumpy and quite scared. And reasonably so, as it turned out, because at about the same spot as before, the finger made its dragging movement again…this time across the right shoulder. I didn’t bother turning around - I just got out of there.’

  As builders, painters and carpenters slowly restored Ascot to its former grandeur, the eerie phenomena persisted. Lois began to wonder whether the ghost might have been aroused from slumber by the noise and dust of the renovations. Her friend’s brother, who had been unwittingly responsible for her first visiting the house, now revealed that he had actually seen the spirit.

  ‘He said he’d been walking past a doorway at night when he suddenly started to shiver,’ Lois recalled. ‘He looked down and thought at first that light was shining from the floor. Then he saw the apparition. It was a young woman, slumped there against the wall, looking as though her neck was broken.’

  Visitors and longtime neighbours offered vague, conflicting stories about who that young woman might have been. The most persuasive account, obscured though it was by generational mists of forgetfulness, was that a servant girl (possibly broken-hearted over a failed love affair) had hanged herself in her room in the early years of the 20th century. According to the elderly lady who first briefed Lois Jackman about the haunting, the girl was thought to have suicided during the residency of the second owner, William Beit.

  For Lois that was detail enough. She had more practical matters to contend with and was determined, if possible, not to give too much attention to the haunting.

  But then an event occurred that changed her mind.

  ‘In the early weeks of the cleanup I’d sometimes ask young staff from the restaurant to come out to Ascot and help,’ she told me. ‘We’d collect bags of garbage from the tenants, move mountains of junk and generally exhaust ourselves. Rather than return the same day to Brisbane they’d then sleep overnight in an empty flat.

  ‘On a very hot evening I was standing in one of those flats chatting with a waitress, when I absentmindedly leaned against a wall. I felt as though I’d got an electric shock. The surface was icy cold. I moved my hand over the tongue-an
d-groove area. It was so chilled it was painful to the touch. In a 40-degree temperature, one patch of that otherwise sweltering apartment was like a freezing chamber.’

  Next day Lois asked builder Alan Bond (no relation to the tycoon) to check the flat.

  ‘Alan looked underneath - but there were no coldwater pipes, no concrete, nothing. That cold patch not only defied explanation, but the freezing temperature lasted for months.’

  Never in her life had Lois Jackman felt such intense curiosity - or was it concern? She knew she would not rest until she learned the truth about the servant girl who reportedly had hanged herself in this house almost a century before. Whenever she could spare a few hours she searched bound editions of old newspapers from 1894 onward, hoping to find some reference to a housemaid’s death at Ascot during the time of the second owner, William Beit.

  Years passed, yielding nothing. Possibly, she surmised, the editors of the time had had scruples about publicising a suicide. Antique police records posed an even harder task, because she had been given no name for the young woman who had killed herself.

  To defray the massive costs of restoring Ascot, Lois went back to what she knew best: running a restaurant and tearooms, on the premises. Customers soon learned about her struggle to establish the resident phantom’s identity. The story of her research quickly spread through the district - and the word-of-mouth publicity resulted in a breakthrough.

  Early in 2004 a woman rang and said: ‘You’ve been doing your study in the wrong years. I’m related to your ghost - and I can tell you how she lived and how she died.’

  Lois arranged a meeting. The woman revealed that, while preparing her family tree, she had stumbled upon the history of a tragic 23-year-old who, the records showed, had worked as a housemaid at Ascot House (then known as Tor). She had killed herself on the premises in 1891. The servant - her name was Maggie Hume - had been her grandmother’s stepsister. She had not been an employee of William Beit, but of the mansion’s original owner, Frederick Hurrell Holberton. And she had not hanged herself. She had taken four grains of strychnine and had died in agony.