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Haunts for brave hearts
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 (CDT) by Isis
 The jail cell at Hartley historic village is filled with darkness, so thick it could be treacle. The air is oppressive and cold. Outside, large trucks rumble across the hills leading to the Victoria Pass. But inside it is silent. And black. Very black. There are seven of us in a small cell of hardwood that in its day held up to 30 convicts - many in leg irons - in Hartley's courthouse and police station on the far side of the Blue Mountains.
Suddenly, the lights of the "ghost detecting" electromagnetic meter go berserk. And then I feel it: a thump on the head. No, I'm not imagining it. There it is again. Thump. I flick on my torch and rub my hair. "Something hit me on the head," I say. The silence is broken and hysteria takes hold.
"It's not unusual to feel an actual physical sensation," says Paranormal Pete, our tour guide. "There's a pretty aggressive ghost that is known to be in this cell." I have to admit that, yes, I am scared. As everyone flicks on their torches I am centre stage, bent over and frantically rubbing the top of my head. Then their lights pick out the real culprit: a bogong moth. It's the idea of meeting Paranormal Pete that draws me to the Blue Mountains Ghost Tour. Will he be a weirdo goth? A new-age hippie?
The flyer in
the hotel promises an evening exploring the Blue Mountains' dark and
sometimes bloody history. The experience will include tales of "haunted
buildings, mishaps, abandoned cemeteries and murder". A pretty normal
Friday night, then.
Peter Clifford turns out to
be a thoroughly regular and likeable bloke. He started the tours in
2002 to complement the popular mystery tours he was already running in
the area and to satisfy his own interest in the paranormal. As a
student of the Australian Academy of Applied Parapsychology, he began
to do "house clearings" and engage in other psychic work - and the idea
of a ghost-hunting tour materialised.
Tonight I join five people
from Penrith who are curious about the paranormal. Paranormal Pete
tells us he has taken groups of psychics and sceptics and that every
tour is virtually guaranteed an experience. None of us fits either
category, although a couple of the women claim to have had some
"spooky" brushes with deceased grandmothers.
The first stop is the
Victoria and Albert Guesthouse in the historic village of Mount
Victoria, 15 minutes west of Katoomba. Built in 1914 on the site of an
earlier hotel that gained its licence in 1868, the guesthouse has a
chequered history, acting as a hotel, a convalescent home to soldiers
during World War II and a boys' boarding school. It is believed to be
home to several ghosts.
The first is said to be a
doctor who conducted medical experiments and has been known to "fiddle"
with the insides of those who sleep in Room 7. The guest book also
refers to two boys: "George and Albert". George is playful and good fun
but Albert, apparently, is not.
It's a cold, wet night and
some of the women on the tour claim the rooms are supernaturally cold,
especially Room 9, which is reported to be the most haunted in the
building. I don't sense anything but while everyone enjoys a snack in
the dining room the electromagnetic field meters go off and there is an
odd rattling. Sadly I've ducked to the loo, thus missing my first
encounter.
Then we head down the
Victoria Pass where the ghost of the Lady in Black - Caroline Collett -
is said to haunt the bridges. She was beaten to death by her
ex-boyfriend, John Walsh, in 1842; her new husband, William, abandoned
her to the attack. Her ghost has reportedly been seen by hundreds of
truckies; even Henry Lawson wrote about her. As we cross the bridges
the meters signal wildly. Then again, they also go off each time we
pass a roadside cross marking a more recent passing.
After the Hartley Jail and
the spooky moth incident, the next stop is the Hartley Cemetery. The
heritage cemetery is eerily isolated, surrounded by bush and farmland.
There is no moonlight or ambient light, so we read the tombstones by
torchlight. If we shine the light directly on the stone, Pete says, the
reflection will flash in your eyes, so he advises us to shine the
torches sideways. This casts long shadows on the words, which makes
them even scarier.
We've seen photos of what
to expect in Pete's album. Mysterious mists have been captured coming
out of the graves; orbs of light have been photographed "buzzing"
around particular tombstones.
One grave, that of the
Bartley family, contains the bodies of six children. They all died,
reportedly of scarlet fever, six months apart from each other. Within
three years the family was wiped out, the mother dying shortly
afterwards of a broken heart. This is the grave where the lights appear.
As we trudge to the bottom
of the cemetery to see other sites, blue lights appear around the
grave. The cemetery, Pete tells us, is full of children.
Others in the group snap
photographs and the orbs are clearly seen in the digital viewers.
Several of the cameras then stop working.
Pete now chooses his moment
to tell us a story about Mick the Miner, whose ghost has reportedly
been known to push and get aggressive. He also tells the tale of the
reverend who died in a flooded creek at the base of the cemetery.
There is a difference
between ghosts and spirits, Pete explains. Spirits know they are dead
and they're on the other side. "Ghosts, however, don't know they're
dead," he says. "They're totally confused and they always have the
injury they died with."
Watch out for Mick, then,
he says, who is known to hang off people and cause backache. On cue,
the only man in the tour claims he feels unwell and appears pale and
shivery. His friend takes a photo. It shows a blurred orb around his
back. The sensation leaves him when he returns to the minibus.
Other locations on the tour
include the convict wells and the Blackheath convict graves. The Blue
Mountains were first crossed in 1813 by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth
and, soon afterwards, convict labour was used to build the roads.
They were bleak times. The
wells weren't just used as a place to collect water. In the evenings
the convicts were forced into the deep pits to prevent them running
away. When convicts died - as they did in droves - their bodies were
thrown into unmarked shallow graves in the bush, without official
rites. Such a prospect terrified the Irish Catholics, who feared that
without a proper burial they would remain in limbo.
It is this that Pete
attributes to the high number of hauntings in the mountains. At one
visit to the wells he claims to have had a ghost pass through him while
yelling at him to "get out". He says the experience left him shaky and
momentarily blinded.
The burial arrangements
didn't change until 1846, when Captain Bull took over the convict
stockades and Blue Mountains regiment and sent the floggers back to
Sydney. He recorded the names of the dead convicts and gave them a
religious ceremony. Some of these graves can be seen at Blackheath.
After nearly five hours we
head back to Katoomba. I've seen some distinctly strange things, heard
some wonderful tales about the history of the mountains and learned
much of the hardship of the early days of the colony.
As I get into my car, the digital clock flicks over to 12:00 midnight. Spooky.
Copyright: theage.com.au
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Re: Haunts for brave hearts
by mabung on Sunday, May 11, 2008 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | A quaint little early australian country gaol; though I do question the haunting aspect, having spent many a night camped there when we were allowed to fish for trout.
never saw a ghost, and we used to store our gear in there, before it became a place of public interest; if the departed are there, they were never interested in us, or our gear.
I dare say a place for the more hysterically inclined, when it comes to ghosts. |
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