HAUNTED: The GHOSTS that share our world Read online

  Lois Jackman’s informant produced a scrapbook confirming everything. It contained police records, the autopsy report and contemporary newspaper articles. According to police at the time, Maggie Hume had suicided after learning that she was pregnant. Two male staff members confessed that they had had what they called ‘connection’ with her. The scrapbook even contained a photographer’s portrait of a handsome, sad-eyed Maggie Hume (see picture supplement).

  After almost two decades spent fruitlessly studying the period 1894-1910, Lois felt that an immense weight had been lifted from her. But why, I asked, had she pushed herself to such limits, for so many years, to discover the identity of a stranger? ‘I couldn’t really tell you,’ she said. ‘I was impelled to trace her - that’s all I know. Much the same as when I felt I had to buy Ascot in the first place.’

  There was one task still to be performed. ‘A few of us - all friends - will be buying a brass plaque inscribed with Maggie’s name and her dates of birth and death,’ Lois said.

  ‘Because she was a single woman who killed herself she was buried in an unmarked grave. A caretaker at Drayton Cemetery has shown us where her plot is, so we’ll know exactly where to put the plaque. It will be our way of showing her the sympathy she never received in life.’

  IN TERMS OF EVIDENCE, the Ascot haunting is impressive. There are multiple witnesses, not only in the present day, but stretching back through decades to the 1890s. The identity of the person strongly presumed to ‘be’ the ghost has been established and her gravesite identified. There is even an autopsy report and a photograph of Maggie Hume.

  More difficult is the question of what precisely happened at Ascot between 1984 and 2004. Had the young housemaid’s misery and pain somehow ‘recorded’ themselves in the fabric of the old building (as parapsychologists believe occurs in many hauntings)? Had the events of 1891 simply played themselves back, aurally and visually, to sensitive witnesses?

  Or does Maggie Hume still live in the house, possibly unaware that she is dead? Alone and bewildered, did she manage, subtly, to elicit help from a kindly visitor?

  To recapitulate:

  ‘All I know,’ Lois Jackman originally 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.’

  Drowned ‘Phantom’ in a Photograph

  In 1923 a killer hurled a young nurse down a cliff on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.

  Almost 40 years later - without realising it was a death scene - a holidaying Melbourne couple took snapshots of the spot. When the pictures were developed, one depicted a woman wading through rough sea.

  The image was widely circulated, prompting many locals to ask if this could be the ghost of the murdered nurse. The black-and-white photograph shows a woman, fully dressed and ‘impossibly upright’, walking across wave- battered rocks near Talia Caves.

  Michael Leyson of Port Lincoln, South Australia, passed the picture to me. ‘It was taken by a friend’s parents back in 1962,’ he said. ‘They swore they’d photographed nothing more than sea pounding on the rocks. But when the prints came back, there was this mist enveloping a woman, whom neither of them had seen at the time, walking through the water. My friend’s parents ruled out any theories about a double exposure and the picture has been intriguing people in this area ever since.’

  I subsequently learned that the photo draws its significance from events in that precise spot in 1923. A nurse had become pregnant to a respected married man. He was so terrified of the scandal that might engulf him that he tried to solve the problem by hurling her from the high cliffs.

  A memorial to the murdered woman stands near the cave where the purported ghost photo was taken.

  The British paranormal investigator Thurston Hopkins shared the widely held view that violent death can create a type of ‘film’ or ‘recording’, which may linger for decades or even centuries. Sometimes the phenomenon can become visible - and not just to the naked eye. He wrote, ‘Most of the phantom photographs I’ve studied have been associated in some way with profound emotion or pain. It seems that a dying person’s intensity of feeling can imprint itself on the atmosphere in the form of an image, which sometimes is detected by the camera.’

  * * *

  The Policeman and the Pleading Spectre

  A particularly poignant case of a murder that reverberated down the decades was described to me in 1991 by a senior police officer who had retired to Nowra, New South Wales.

  ‘If I’d reported this phenomenon officially my colleagues would have had me committed to a rubber room,’ the former detective said. ‘But as a trained observer, with 25 years’ service, I know I didn’t imagine what I saw.’

  Shortly after Charles left the NSW force he set to work building a beach shack. ‘I was on my knees retrieving the drill when I heard light feminine footsteps behind me,’ he recalled. ‘I turned, thinking it was my wife with a flask of tea. But instead it was a young blonde woman in a short dress. She looked incredibly unhappy and had an intensely pleading expression on her face. She seemed so upset I opened my mouth to invite her inside. But before I could speak, she vanished like a light winking out.’

  The apparition, which appeared solid and human, next manifested itself in the shack’s kitchen. ‘We both noticed a distinct coldness in the air. Again, there was that deeply anxious, begging expression on the girl’s face - and again she vanished before I could speak. Late that afternoon, while we were walking on the beach, she approached us a third time. Before I could ask her what the problem was, and whether we could help, she melted away.

  ‘During the 20 years we owned that shack we didn’t see her again. But I never forgot what I came to regard as the weirdest experience of my life… especially as I had absolutely no understanding of what it meant. Then, one day, after we’d travelled across the lake to Conjola, the pieces seemed to fall into place. Human skeletons had just been found in the Nowra district - and that reminded the Conjola shopkeeper of a similar incident during World War II.

  ‘He said the bones of a young woman, who disappeared in 1943, had been dug up on the beach. The place where the remains were found was so close to our shack that I became convinced the image we saw was that poor girl’s ghost. I wondered whether she had been unaware that her remains had been discovered long ago, and was trying desperately to direct us to where she was buried.’

  * * *

  Crisis Apparitions

  The Couple Who Kept Their Promise - to a Phantom

  Neither Ted Leopold nor his wife Elsie had ever seen a ghost. But on the memorable night that they woke to find a white entity floating in their bedroom they knew immediately who it was. Like tens of thousands of other Australian witnesses the couple had been confronted by a ‘crisis apparition’: the psychic essence of a dead person, conveying a crucial message to the living…

  TED LEOPOLD HAS been my friend for more than 20 years. During that time Ted, an engineer, has reminisced on several occasions about the emotionally charged night on which he and his wife saw a ghost. He has kindly agreed to write about his experience:

  It happened in 1968, when my wife Elsie and I owned an old house in Canterbury, Victoria. During the period we were there, our brother-in-law Victor died of a massive heart attack: an aortal embolism. His life ended just short of his 40th birthday.

  Victor had lived next door with his wife Olwen and their three young children. Everyone was stunned by his death. He’d been such an enthusiastic and likeable person - and I still remember his pleasure six months earlier when he learned he’d won a new job at Parliament House, joining the staff of the then-premier Henry Bolte.

  Elsie and I attended the funeral in the morning. That night we lay in bed upstairs talking till after 12. She dropped off to sleep first. I rested there listening to the wind and the creaking of the timbers in our Victorian house.

  I finally d
ozed off, but then wakened with a jolt. I had the overwhelming sensation that someone was in the room. My eyes were drawn to the doorway and then to the foot of the bed. Floating there was what I can only describe as a diaphanous white mist. It was about a metre long and oval in shape. It hovered, motionless. I started to shiver.

  Elsie nudged me. I whispered, ‘I see it.’ Then we stayed silent, just watching for about 30 seconds. But in the end I knew I had to speak. I said to the apparition, ‘Don’t worry Vic - we’ll look after her.’ I was referring to his wife Olwen. I knew it was Vic floating there…knew it absolutely, in the deepest part of myself. Shortly after I spoke, the vision began to dim and then vanished.

  It wasn’t long before Elsie and I - back in the familiar, commonplace world again - began trying to rationalise what had happened. For the next hour we rather desperately looked for a possible explanation - proof that we’d imagined it all, or had been fooled by a streetlight or some other external source of illumination, or even by the light of the moon. But the drapes were drawn completely across the bedroom windows - and the moon by that time had moved to the other side of the house, so it couldn’t possibly have shone into our room. I even checked the drapes for a possible chink or tear - but found nothing. By this time, though, I was absolutely determined to deny my initial gut feelings and at least to reduce our experience to as classifiable a level as I possibly could. ‘Well,’ I asked Elsie, ‘what would you call that thing, then? A spectre? A phantom?’

  Elsie replied, ‘I prefer to think of it as Vic’s spirit.’ She seemed comforted by the thought.

  Everything worked out as well as it possibly could, in such tragic circumstances. Henry Bolte was incredibly kind and helpful to Olwen and the children - and Elsie and I were able to keep the promise I’d made to Vic that night.

  All of this happened long ago. But I still see it as clearly as yesterday.

  CRISIS APPARITIONS of the kind Ted Leopold describes are among the most commonly reported of paranormal events. Over the years I have received numerous testimonies from people who were similarly contacted by the spirits of recently deceased friends or relatives. Distance is no barrier to such visions. In the records of international psychical research organisations a common thread can often be found. Individuals on the other side of the earth may reportedly appear to family members at what is later discovered to have been the instant of death. Many parapsychologists believe that the human mind, in such cases, has somehow ‘boosted its signal’ - producing sounds and images which travel, ‘bearing the news’, across vast distances.

  The sheer volume of letters I receive from people who say they were visited by loved ones at the moment of their deaths or shortly afterward leaves me in little doubt that human life persists beyond the body. Below are some typical ‘crisis apparition’ encounters:

  Best Friend Bade a Frightening Farewell

  ‘In October 1987 I was living on my own in a Townsville flat,’ Allan Barra of Camp Hill, Queensland, told me. ‘At about 3.30 one morning a noise woke me. I opened my eyes and saw what looked like a man standing at the end of my bed.

  ‘I tried to shout, “Who’s there?” - but my lips and tongue seemed to be frozen. I couldn’t even force out a whisper. It was worse when I tried to jump out of bed and confront the intruder, whom I assumed was a burglar. I found I was totally paralysed and unable to move even a little finger.

  ‘In the end all I could do was lie there, terrified, and stare at the man, wondering what he’d do to me. I could see in the light from the street that he was wearing a dark blue shirt and pants: the kind of gear worn by people doing dirty work on construction sites. Although I strained to look, I couldn’t see any hands emerging from the sleeves - and the head seemed to be swallowed up in shadow. The man just stood there for at least five minutes - with me convinced all the time that my life was in danger. Then, to my astonishment, he simply disappeared - and I found I could move again.

  ‘For the rest of the night I lay wide awake totally mystified, wondering what had happened to me. But next day I understood. My mother came to see me at work - and to tell me that my best friend, Dave, was dead. He and his girlfriend and her two children had been travelling to Sydney. They collided head-on with a truck just outside Tamworth. Dave was burned to death. The others survived, but with multiple injuries.

  ‘The accident happened at 2 am - about 90 minutes before the figure appeared in my bedroom. I went to some lengths to check - and found that Dave, when removed from the wrecked car, had been wearing blue workclothes -just like the intruder which I now belatedly realised had been Dave’s spirit. I’m very pleased my friend came to see me one last time - even though it was a disturbing experience.’

  Witnesses often describe sensations of being unable to move or speak in the presence of a ghost. A theory favoured by some parapsychologists is that, to make itself visible, the entity sucks energy from everything around it.

  Shortly after her 15th birthday Elaine O’Reilly of Chester Hill, New South Wales, experienced a haunting which left her momentarily speechless and paralysed. ‘My maternal grandmother was in hospital with a broken hip,’ she told me. ‘One night, after visiting her in hospital, my mother and I went to bed early. At about 2 am I woke, frozen with fear. I tried to call my mother but I couldn’t make a sound, or even move.

  ‘Then someone familiar-looking glided over to me from a corner of my room. She placed her hand on mine and said, “It’s all right - don’t be frightened.” After that she vanished - and suddenly I had my voice back. I screamed for my mother and when she rushed in, told her what I’d seen. All she could say was “Oh, no” over and over. We both knew that Grandma was dead.

  ‘My mother went straight to the phone and called the hospital. They told her that Grandma had died at 2 am.’

  ‘Ball of Light’ Was Her Dying Brother

  In 1985 a Sydney woman swore before a justice of the peace that she had watched a transparent phantom materialise in her room. She later learned that the entity had appeared at about the same time her brother had lain dying.

  Mrs P. Wilder of Caringbah wrote, ‘According to my clock the incident occurred at 5.40 am. The bedroom door was closed and my blind was drawn in such a way that no outside light could penetrate it. I was awakened by a brightness in the bedroom - a luminosity so intense that I could easily read the clock face.

  ‘As I watched, a floating ball of light grew until it assumed the shape of a floating head and a body beneath. Through that body I could still plainly see the handles on my built-in cupboard. Curious - and surprised at myself that I wasn’t afraid - I left the bed and reached out to touch the transparent form. Immediately, its radiance faded. As soon as I sat back on the mattress the brightness intensified again, before fading a second time.

  ‘At that point I turned the light on. But it proved a poor substitute for the dazzling glare which moments earlier had filled the room. I went into the kitchen where the clock said 6 am. The experience had lasted 20 minutes. I carefully made notes of everything, to swear a statement before a local justice of the peace.

  ‘Later that day I got news that my brother had died in England.’

  Among the letters I receive describing crisis apparitions, visits from relatives overwhelmingly dominate. Josephine Hogg of Moruya, New South Wales, experienced two such contacts. ‘Both were members of my family and both occurred shortly before they died.

  ‘The first haunting happened in 1978 when I was living in Canberra. I’d just climbed into bed and was still wide awake. Suddenly I knew with the deepest conviction that my grandfather was in the house. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear him talking to our sons in their room - and a few seconds later, to our sleeping daughter.

  ‘I hurried into her room and saw my grandfather fading away into the wall. I quite deeply knew he was on his way to visit my younger brother and his family on the other side of Canberra. I returned to the bedroom and told my husband Grandpa was dying and that we’d have to visit him
next day. We took off at sunrise and reached Sydney to find my grandfather in bed, very weak and almost totally unaware of our presence. I held his hand and talked about the happy times we’d had when I was a little girl. He died soon afterward.’

  Josephine received a second visitation from a dying relative in 1982. ‘I was holidaying with my husband in Tasmania,’ she said. ‘At 3 o’clock one afternoon, when I was sitting reading a paper, my uncle Pat appeared at the end of the room. I heard him say that he hoped my husband and I would have a long and happy life together. Later I phoned home to Sydney and learned that he had died after an operation for throat cancer.’

  Contacts of this kind have been chronicled across the centuries, as author Ian Wilson demonstrates in his book Life After Death: The Evidence. In one celebrated case a father, from his bed in Kensington, London, ‘saw’ an image of his son who was living at a bush camp in Australia, 17,000 kilometres distant. At around the same time, the son was confronted by the spectre of the father, floating in his tent. Sisters Alice and Mary Ellis reported these events to the pioneer psychical researcher Frederick Myers.

  Alice wrote, ‘On Wednesday December 29 1869 my father, who was dangerously ill, awoke from a sleep, pointed and looked most intently to one corner of the room. He said to my sister Mary and me, “Look! Don’t you see? It is my poor boy Bob’s head!” Then, turning to me, he said, “Normanton. Don’t forget. Gulf of Carpentaria.” He then sank back exhausted. This happened about 3 pm…he died next day.’

  Alice added, ‘When Robert returned from Australia several years later he told us that one night, while camping out, he had awoken, seeing my father’s head distinctly in one part of his tent. It made such an impression on him that he went to his friend in the adjoining tent and said, “I have just seen my father. You must come and stay with me.” By the next mail he received my letter telling him of our father’s death. I always think they must have seen each other at the same time.’