Ghost Stories.

GHOST STORIES.

Shortly before my mother passed away in Sept 1971, I was sitting in the kitchen with her, she was an avid cook and I was chowing down on some custard kisses (cookies) she had made, we were both drinking tea (I was about 8.5yr), so I’d just been introduced to tea, with milk, sweetened with a teaspoon or two of sugar. We lived in an old colonial Queenslander (set high on stilts). The kitchen was near the back stairs. We both heard distinct footsteps coming up the stairs and my mum called out, “hello” thinking it was one of my grandparents (her mother and father, who lived 5 mins walk from our home). On receiving no answer, and we had not heard footsteps retreat down the stairs, we both got up and went to the back door to see who was there waiting for us at the top of the steps. There was no one there, and to say my mother look very shook, scared me somewhat as well. This is the first memory of anything close to ghostly I can remember. It was to be the first of many strange occurrences.

About 1 year later my mother had passed away from Cancer and my father decided to transfer us from that home in Brisbane, Queensland up to a home on the airforce base (he transferred from Amberley Airforce Base to what was then called R.A.A.F. Toowoomba/7StoresDepot), which then existed in Toowoomba. It no longer exists, either of the two facilities based in Toowoomba. I would have been 9yrs by that time ( my two younger sisters, around 7, 5.5yr – there is 18 months between each of us). Eventually we moved off base, into another home, an old worker’s cottage, which my father purchased. Alderley Street. One night, when my father was on night duty at the Airforce base, the three of us (probably from watching something spooky on television) had the bright idea to sit in our father’s room and have a séance to contact our dead mother. Perhaps the youngest won’t remember this, but certainly, I would think my middle sister will. I cannot remember us getting too far, as something scared us from proceeding any further. I cannot help but to think, it was at that stage we opened some sort of rip in the veil, between the world we exist in and the other, the spirit dimension. As it seemed from that point onwards, many odd and unexplained occurrences transpired..and to this day, still do.

Every now and again, but not too often, some little strange occurrence, would enter our lives, that had no rational explanation. Many years later we moved into a lovely 4 bedroom Queenslander on large alotment of land, owned by the Roman Catholic Church across the road. The church may have owned many properties surrounding their grounds. The house was definitely haunted, with shut doors (not locked by key, but shut on the lock catchment) opening on their own (with no human on the other side, that’s for sure), with strange breezes that would come and go, the waft of lavendar, naphthalene (moth ball repellant) and pipe smoke, the jangling of cutlery in drawers at odd hours of the morning (anywhere between 2am – 4am), my father had an old IBM electric typewriter, which we would hear clacking away at similar hours and he assured us he had not been up into the early of the hours of the morning typing. Of course my father, was an absolute non-believer and thought we were just pulling his leg. His life was based on logic and solid rational facts. There was the time the three of us were sitting in the loungeroom and being Summer in Queensland it was hot as hades, we had the door to the verandah adjoining the loungeroom wide open, with the screen door fixed. My middle sister who was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, next to the Jason recliner I was sitting in, says something like, “did you just feel that cold breeze?” and all of a sudden, the door to the verandah, in the dead of Summer, slams shut, with such pyhsical force, we were of the opinion someone must have been on the veranda on the other side of the door (eg. my father, for what reason he would slam the door like that, strangely odd to us). It was about 9.30/10pm at night, we got up and turned the lights on in the loungeroom and went out to the verandah to investigate. Nothing there. On checking with our father, he had been asleep in his bedroom and none too pleased we had woken him up. My middle sister will remember this and I am certain the youngest will as well. Ascot Street. That place no longer stands there, it was cut in half and moved to the other side of town, where it exists on the north west outskirts of the small city of Toowoomba on the Darling Downs. I remember shortly before my father passing away, that he took me for a drive to view what they had done to the home we once lived in, painting it a trashy blue, when once it had been pristine white with dark colonial green trimmings. I remember saying to him as we sat in the car and looked at the ruins of such a beautiful home, “I wonder Dad, if they expereince the ghosts like we did”. He replied, soulful dark brown eyes saying more than words ever could, “Maybe.” Which leads me to believe that in his older age, he had come to the conclusion, that perhaps such things as ghosts and hauntings, do exist.

In that very same house, when I was about 14years going on 15years, I shared a bedroom with my youngest sister (my father had designated me to share the room with her, as I was the oldest and I guess, he felt that I would be of some comfort or sense of protection to be situated close to her, as she was the youngest). I woke up late one night in that bedroom, (the room where doors closed on the latch, which would open then mysteriously as if by some invisible force, no natural breeze, shut softly and silently on their own) - to see a man standing in the middle of the bedroom with the moonlight shining through the windows onto him. He was dressed in contemporary clothes, dark haired, fair skinned, well built, 70’s denim flared jeans, checked flannel shirt (red from memory), youngish maybe early 30's, semi-transparent, nearly forming solid. I would say very good looking. Do not laugh. Now nothing hormonal or sexual about this, and it was not a dream. The thing stood there, and looked from me to my younger sister, who I shared a room with, it said nothing, but the message I got was that it was watching over us, as in guarding us. Obviously I was paralysed with fear. I remember I was that frightened, I couldn’t speak or scream and I do remember pulling the sheets up over my head and trying to remain calm. I thought perhaps I had been dreaming and if I waited a few seconds and looked again, it would have dissipated. Although extremely terrified, on lowering the sheets to look again, the macabre vision still stood there. Eventually it disappeared in front of my eyes.

Some years later when I had moved to Sydney to work, my middle sister phoned me to say that they had approached a psychic …. as a “face had appeared” in the fireplace. I said, “what do you mean a face has appeared in the fireplace” and trying to comprehend, how they had convinced my father to even contemplate a psychic entering the limits of our family was beyond me. The fireplace was never used while we spent time in that house, yet on viewing it when I went home shortly after this for a holiday, a face certainly appeared to be etched into the fireplace, as if drawn by an artist with charcoal, or imprinted by fire of a man with his face turned to the side, moustache, eyes closed and one of the eye sockets looked bruised, as if he had been punched in the face and had a black eye. The face was life size and no one in my family was an accomplished artist. None of us could explain how this creation had appeared all of a sudden from nowhere in our fireplace. The spectre of a face, none of us could identify, was incredibly haunting and chilling to say the least. One would even go so far as to say, ominous. The face had never been there before, it had just appeared. The psychic from memory of the conversation with my sister, upon her retelling of the conversation to me, said that there were two ghosts present in that house. Both male. One malignant, the other benevolent. On listening further to a tape that the psychic had given my sister, he intimated that one of the three sisters was open to spirit communication.

After another occurrence in Sydney with the Edwardian ghost of a little boy presenting himself to me in an old heritage listed building, last night in a top floor apartment, before the place was to be gutted and renovated, confirmed stories that the place was haunted. There had been stories that an old woman haunted the place. I never saw an old woman, but I did see the vision of a little boy dressed in Edwardian pantaloons, at least I think Edwardian. We were moving out of the place, due to rennovations and having moved the furniture out of the place throughout the day leading to this occurrence, had decided to spend the last night in the apartment, sleeping on a matress in front of the fireplace in that apartment. It will have been winter, perhaps, June/July/August 1983 or 1984, as we had the fireplace lit with a roaring fire that warmed the place up. I awoke around possibly 3am, certainly early in the morning, as the fire had died down to just-glowing embers, to the vision of little white stocking legs and pantaloons, right down to the big buckled mustard brown shoes of the thing, the spectre of a little boy with blonde hair holding a big red and blue ball out to me, saying, in an eerily high pitched sing-song voice, “Play with me……” drawn out to an echoing ghostly eeee, which finally stopped, as he bent down and peered into my bulging eyes. I remember his pudgy little fingers holding the ball as he knelt down with his face like a white grey shadow next to mine, and the cold air turning to fog coming out of my mouth as I screamed. And I mean really screamed like a banshee. I woke my daughter’s father up who had been lying fast asleep on the mattress beside me. By the time he had woken, the boy had disappeared. I think he certainly believed me. From memory, not that night, but another night in that place and once again during the breezeless heat of a sweltering Summer, a door had slammed visciously shut with no explanation, as to who or how. My daughter’s father will remember both these occurrences. Military Road, Mosman, Sydney.

Perhaps, the sister, open to spirit communication, the psychic spoke of - might be me.

I often have dreams where my mother and father and other dead relatives present themselves strongly with messages, usually during times when I am experiencing some great sadness, or worry – they say, the dead can visit you in your dreams. They come into your dreams to reassure you, or to pass on some important message.

My father passed away in May 2010. During the day of his funeral, which was another stinking hot day in Brisbane, with not a breeze of any sort to cool the temperature down, as we all stood around the open grave wilting in the heat - as my father’s coffin was lowered into the open pit, and the priest said his final words, a strong breeze blew over us, my aunt will remember this, as we both looked at each other, incredulously, trying to comprehend how the breeze had all of a sudden from nowhere, just hit us, at that very moment. It was incredibly eery to say the least. As quickly as the strange breeze had arrived, it had gone. It was as if my father was making himself known, he was present.

Sometimes when I am writing, I wonder, if it is really me writing, or am I writing automatic. Not my higher self, but some other ghostly presence imprinting stories into my mind and guiding my hand over the keyboard. For the life of me, I read back some of the poems and stories I have written, and wonder how on earth I managed to come up with the thoughts I have transferred into written form. Perhaps it is a sign of some dreadful impending insanity.

And then we have, "The White Lady of Skipsea", a real ghost story traced back within the deep and rich history of the BURTON family crest, a murdered woman, the niece of William the Conqueror, no less, who to this day still haunts Holderness, Skipsea. There is the interwoven mystery of her haunting and death being connected to two Abbeys haunted by Benedictine Monks. The mysterious dissappearance of a husband, was he murdered too? I leave this for my daughter to further investigate from the research I have gathered, so far. Perhaps she can solve the mystery. The ghost's name was hard for me to uncover, but research has revealed the name Albina.

It is more than likely I will make an exceptional ghost when I have passed over and I do intend to haunt various people. I will do it with glee, but never with malice. Just a pre-warning.

Leanne.

The White Lady of Skipsea

https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/the_white_lady_of_skipsea_983667

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