Great Australian Ghost Stories (5 page)

‘I copped nothing but
shit
from the old girl when she was alive, but I copped even more after she died,' the husband remembers. Rhubarb and flowers now grow where the haunted dunny once stood — and very well they grow too.

In 1980 American husband and wife psychic investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were invited to Melbourne to appear on a popular late-night television variety show. The Warrens had become world famous for their involvement with the Amityville Horror house (long before the book and film) and in the case that inspired the film
The Exorcist
.

On the night they appeared the program's host invited viewers to phone in if they had a supernatural problem the Warrens might be able to solve. A young couple called long distance from Sydney with a harrowing story. They told how they and their children moved into their Gladesville house three years before and had been tormented by strange and terrifying events ever since. They described how they all felt deeply oppressed by some strong, invisible force whenever they were inside the house. For the wife and children this produced mind-numbing lethargy and for the husband homicidal tendencies. ‘I love my wife,' the distressed man explained, ‘but I find myself reaching for a knife and barely able to control the urge to stab her … it's as if some evil takes control of me and the only way I can escape is to leave the house.'

They told of loud, eerie laughter echoing through the house and robbing them of sleep night after night and strange symbols that looked as if they had been drawn in thick dust
appearing on the interior walls. They also described how cadaverous faces suddenly appeared, reflected in windows and mirrors. The man described the faces of several ugly, evil-looking old men, two haggard crones and an attractive younger woman, all leering and scowling at them from within the glass. One particularly terrifying face that appeared on a mirror had an expression of such hatred and malevolence that it had turned their stomachs, they said. After three years of psychic persecution the family were at their wits' end and begged for assistance. The Warrens agreed to fly to Sydney the next day, visit the house and do what they could to help.

When they arrived (with a television crew in tow) they found a well-kept, split-level brick and tile house about forty years old and showing no outward signs of the tumult within. As soon as Lorraine Warren entered the house she said she could feel a great pressure bearing down on her, so strong that she could barely raise her arms. ‘There is something very evil here,' she announced. When she lay on a bed in the room where she felt the force was centred, the television crew watched in amazement as her features changed and she seemed to visibly age before their eyes. Her back arched, her hands clenched and unclenched convulsively, her eyes blazed and they knew that she had entered into some kind of mental combat with whatever it was that held sway over the house.

In the meantime they were having problems of their own. A fully charged battery pack went dead after just a few minutes and their cameras failed, then worked, then failed again. When they tried to phone for back-up equipment they found the line was dead. Twenty minutes later it was working perfectly.

After five hours in the house the Warrens gathered the family and television crew together to deliver their verdict. The house, they were reported as saying, was cursed. An old
woman had placed a hex on it and its occupants and it was now in an advanced state of demonic possession. If the family remained there any longer a psychic explosion would occur and their lives were at risk. ‘Leave now,' was their advice.

The family fled, leaving most of their possessions behind. The press picked up the story and the headline ‘FAMILY FLEE GHOST HOUSE' was splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the country. The orgy of publicity lasted (as such stories do) for about two days and has been followed by thirty years of silence. The Warrens went back to America and the family moved to another suburb. Someone else now lives in that house in Gladesville which, had the Warrens not intervened, might have become as famous as the one in Amityville.

 

Strange events that had a few years earlier overtaken a West Australian family, first in a small flat in Shoalwater then at Medina, also attracted national press and television coverage, keeping readers spellbound for several weeks.

The parents, Peter and Faye, and their three small children (the youngest a baby), were a very ordinary family in most ways: battlers trying hard to make ends meet. Peter had been out of work for some time then found a job in January 1973. Faye missed having him around all day and began to feel lonely and trapped in the little flat. Nerves were on edge and tempers probably flared, but the events that followed soon reunited the family, in fear for their sanity and their lives.

Some unseen force began throwing objects around inside the flat. The youngest member of the family seemed to be the main target. A large saucepan filled with boiling water and potatoes was hurled at the baby's cot moments after Faye had lifted her out. A loud bang in the bedroom brought both
parents running just in time to see a heavy hairbrush rise from the dressing table and strike the baby's pillow just millimetres from her head. A mosquito net covering the cot was ripped down and tossed to the floor. When Peter was stepping out of the shower one day he watched, horrified, as a heavy pan came hurtling down the hallway, made a right-angle turn and crashed into the frame of the bathroom door, leaving a deep gouge.

When a reporter from the
Sunday Independent
visited the flat a heavy china mug crashed to the ground beside his feet and skidded across the floor. A kindly Methodist minister who called to offer comfort found himself the target of a flying drinking glass that shattered in mid-air just centimetres from his nose. Newspapers across the country picked up the story and the flat was besieged by well-meaning people offering help, the morbidly curious and many cranks including a couple who turned up in a black limousine saying they collected ghosts and were going to take the family's away in the boot of the limo!

After forty separate incidents in ten days both parents were at their wits' end. Two Catholic priests tried to exorcise the ‘demon' without success. Faye collapsed and had to be hospitalised. The state Minister for Housing agreed to provide alternative accommodation for the family and they moved to another flat at Medina several kilometres away, but the mayhem started up there. Whatever it was that caused it had travelled with the family to their new home.

TVW7, who had covered the events at Shoalwater, sent a senior reporter, John Hudson, and a cameraman, Brian Dunne, to Medina to do a follow-up story. When they arrived they found the flat full of neighbours all testifying to having seen the latest freak events (cutlery, crockery and clothing flying about) but if the pair were at all sceptical about these accounts, what
happened when they ushered the strangers out and set up their equipment removed any doubt from their minds.

They decided Faye was not in a fit state to stand up to a long interview so Hudson agreed to tell the story in front of the camera and lead the audience on a tour of the flat. At the moment the camera started to roll a tremendous crash was heard. Hudson and Dunne rushed to where the sound had come from and found a tangle of mops, brooms, buckets, tins of polish and bottles of cleaner strewn in a sticky mess on the laundry floor. There was no one in the laundry (which was freezing cold, although the rest of the flat was warm) and if anyone had left they would have had to pass the two men and would have been caught on camera.

Faye remained seated in the lounge during this commotion but was visibly upset by it. Before resuming filming the two men made a careful search of every room in the flat, ending in the kitchen which was separated from the lounge by a bench divider. The kitchen was scrupulously clean: everything in its place, cupboards and drawers firmly closed.

No sooner had they returned to the lounge than the whole kitchen seemed to explode. As Faye and the men watched in disbelief, the curtains billowed and all the cupboard doors flew open with a mighty
whoosh
and a deafening clatter. Drawers crashed to the floor spilling their contents, crockery and cooking utensils rattled, banged and broke and a steel colander fell from the wall hitting the floor with a crash like a cymbal. Next a container flew out of a cupboard and rose high in the air. It turned upside down and salt began to pour from it in a fine stream. The container moved slowly around the kitchen in loops, the trail of salt inscribing figure eights on the sink and floor until it was empty. Then it floated gently down and came to rest upright in an open drawer.

Hudson later described the destruction he had witnessed as the strangest and most frightening experience of his long career as a journalist.

He was reported as saying: ‘Whatever it was that was causing all the banging, scattering and smashing must have had tremendous power. Things were happening all at once. It was like a storm roaring through the room — completely unstoppable. There was nothing we could do but watch in awe.'

Much has been written about this family's experiences and, as with the house at Gladesville, comparisons made with the events at Amityville in the United States. The mass of detailed corroborative evidence has been tested against theories about poltergeists (the term spiritualists use to describe mischievous disembodied spirits) and most investigators have concluded that some supernatural force, either external (a ghost) or internal (generated by one of the family)
was
involved. Some have suggested the mother, Faye, may, unknowingly, have been the source; that her mind, burdened by anxiety, could have developed the power to move objects or created a force that took on an existence of its own, which is, some theorists say, how all poltergeists come into being.

The family disappeared a few months later. I don't know whether the events stopped or the family decided to suffer them in silence. I hope it was the former. Thirty years have passed and Peter and Faye are probably grandparents now. Like the family in Gladesville, they may not wish to be remembered as the victims of one of Australia's most public ghost stories, but the supernatural is arbitrary in whom it chooses to involve and no blame should be laid on the victims. Wherever both families are I hope they have found peace and happiness.

It is a mystery why some ghost stories catch the public's imagination and survive while others, often more shocking and more credible, are forgotten. A perfect example is the story of Frederick Fisher, Australia's best-known ghost story, which has been the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles in many languages, books, poems, a film, a stage play, an opera and an annual folk festival held to this day in the town where his ghost appeared — to just one man on one occasion — 185 years ago.

Frederick Fisher was a ticket-of-leave man: that is, a well-behaved convict who had been released into the community to fend for himself. Fisher acquired thirty acres (twelve hectares) of land on the western side of Queen Street in Campbelltown and built himself a shack where the Campbelltown Post office now stands. Farmer Fisher prospered but preferred the company of his own kind — other ticket-of-leave men and itinerants who roamed the countryside. It was his custom to invite a few of these ‘mates' over to celebrate his good fortune and most nights his table provided a bed for as many rum-soaked carousers as could fit on it or under it.

Fisher's best mate was his neighbour, another ticket-of-leave man named George Worrell, with whom it was said Fisher shared all his secrets. When Fisher got into debt and his arrest seemed imminent he signed over his property to George Worrell either to avoid having it seized or to give a false impression of his assets. Fisher did go to gaol and Worrell boasted how his own property increased by thirty acres: ‘It's all mine now … all that was Fred's … he give it me afore he went t' prison,' he told everyone in Campbelltown but, when Fisher was released six months later and returned to reclaim his property, Worrell was, as we might say today, thoroughly pissed off; and the scene was set for a heinous crime.

On the night of 9 June 1826, Frederick Fisher disappeared. George Worrell resumed control of Fisher's farm and told anyone who asked that Fisher had decided on the spur of the moment to go home to search for his former family and had sailed from Sydney on the
Lady Saint Vincent
bound for London. Fisher had often spoken of his wish to return to England around the Campbelltown taverns so everyone accepted Worrell's story — for a time at least.

Suspicions began to arise, however, when Worrell tried to sell one of Fisher's horses and the prospective buyer demanded proof of ownership. Worrell produced an obviously forged receipt that he said he had been given when he bought the horse from Fisher. Worrell (not a very bright spark) also began to appear around town in Fisher's clothes and inquiries in Sydney revealed that the
Lady Saint Vincent
had not been in port on the day Worrell said his mate departed.

Foul play was suspected and the authorities began to take an interest in the case.
The Australian
of 23 September carried the following notice from the Colonial Secretary's Office:

Circumstantial evidence weighed heavily against George Worrell. The police questioned him; he panicked and changed his story. He had, he now said, seen Fisher murdered but had taken no part in the crime. He named three of Fisher's other cronies as the murderers and they were arrested but soon released for lack of evidence. The absence of a body was hindering the police and Worrell might still have got away with the crime of murder had a local farmer named James Farley (or Hurley in some accounts) not gone for a stroll down Queen Street late one night.

About 400 metres from Fisher's shack Farley spotted a figure sitting on the top rail of a fence. As he drew closer he realised, to his horror, that it was Frederick Fisher — not the living, breathing man that he had seen and spoken to many times, but Fisher's ghost. The pale, ‘fuzzy' form was bathed in an eerie white light and there was blood dripping from an open wound to its head. The ghost looked straight at James Farley, its dead eyes holding the living man's in a hypnotic stare. Next it let out a long and terrifying moan which Farley described as like the howl of a wounded beast. Then it raised its right arm, extended a quivering finger and pointed in the direction of the creek that flowed behind Fisher's farm.

Farley, by his own account, fainted at that point and when he came to the ghost was gone. Greatly distressed, Farley staggered home and collapsed again at his own front door. He was put to bed and there he lay in a state of shock for ten days. When his senses finally returned Farley sent for William Howe, the local police magistrate, and told him the story.

Knowing Farley to be a reliable man, Howe immediately ordered a search of the creek. Bloodstains were found on the fence where Farley said the ghost had appeared and a ‘black tracker' led the police to a spot beside the creek where he said (after scraping the surface of the water with a gum leaf and tasting the scum for ‘white man's fat') the body was buried. The police dug and, less than one metre down, came upon the body. It was identified by its height and build and by its clothing as the remains of Frederick Fisher. There was not enough of the face left to identify. The lower part was battered to a pulp, while the forehead and the back of the skull had been holed with some heavy, sharp implement like an axe or a pick. What the murderer had not finished decay had. The local doctor, Thomas Robinson, described how, when he lifted one of the corpse's hands, the flesh came away and stuck to his skin.

George Worrell was arrested for Fisher's murder and sent for trial by jury at the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 2 February 1827. The trial lasted just one day. Worrell was found guilty on a Friday and executed at the Dawes Point Battery the following Monday. On the morning of his execution Worrell confessed to a clergyman that he alone had killed, mutilated and buried Frederick Fisher.

There was no mention of a ghost at Worrell's trial or in the newspaper reports of the proceedings but, by then, the story of Fisher's ghost had entered the folklore of Campbelltown and would soon spread far and wide, across the colony and the world.

It was recorded in Martin's
History of the British Colonies
, published in London in 1835, and in Tegg's
Weekly
, a Sydney journal published in 1836. Tegg's version was attributed to a Mr Kerr, a tutor employed by Police Magistrate Howe. Charles Dickens included it in the journal he edited,
Household Words
, in 1853 and versions appeared in French and Italian.

From the beginning, distortions occurred — almost every aspect of the story was changed and romanticised so that truth became indistinguishable from fiction.

So, was there ever a ghost? Well, James Farley was a respected man, sober in his habits and God-fearing, according to his contemporaries. Sceptics suggest the ghost story was an invention by him to ensure Worrell got his just deserts but that would mean that Farley knew the whereabouts of the body, which implicates him.

A Campbelltown barber claimed responsibility for the ghost some years after these events, saying he had been tipped off about the location of the body and had felt an obligation to point the authorities in the right direction. The barber claimed he had donned a white cloak to create the appearance of a ghost and a black cloak to make it disappear, but others dismissed his claims as an insult to Farley's intelligence.

James Farley lived to a ripe old age and a little known sequel to the story tells of a friend named Chisholm asking Farley on his deathbed whether he really saw Fisher's ghost. Farley is reported to have raised himself up on one elbow, looked his friend straight in the eye and said: ‘I'm a dying man, Mr Chisholm. I'll speak only the truth. I saw that ghost as plainly as I see you now.'