Great Australian Ghost Stories (12 page)

The spectacular Blue Mountains of New South Wales have been a popular playground for holidaymakers and day trippers for over a century, but their rugged beauty was not always appreciated. To early colonists the mountains formed a seemingly impenetrable barrier to the expansion of the settlement; and it was not until 1813, twenty-five years after the colony was founded, that a primitive road was hacked through the dense bush and rugged sandstone ridges, opening the western plains to acquisition and development.

Convicts laboured and lost their lives building that road, moving thousands of tonnes of rock with picks and shovels and constructing stone bridges as strong and dependable today as they were nearly 200 years ago. The steepest section of the road wound up and over Mount York, but the danger of accident was so great that an alternate route (only slightly less precipitous) was opened and Victoria Pass came into being in 1832. Modern travellers speeding along the smooth black ribbon that is the Great Western Highway give little thought to the perils, physical and otherwise, that lurked at Victoria Pass. In earlier times it was quite a feat to climb to the top and descend the other side without mishap or delay and, if travelling at night, there was the added risk of encountering the Ghost of Victoria Pass, which haunted the second bridge on the eastern side.

Travellers reported that their horses would become restless as they approached the bridge, then the ghostly and ghastly
figure of a young woman would suddenly appear in front of them. As suddenly as she appeared the spectre would then disappear, leaving witnesses anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the scene of their harrowing experience.

History can put a name to this ghost. She was born Caroline James, and at the time of her death she was Mrs William Collits. Caroline came from a shady and unstable family. Her father ran a sly grog shop on the land where the old Woodford Academy now stands in the village of Woodford and her drunken mother had hanged herself there. Despite this unsavoury background Caroline married into a respectable family: the Collitses, proprietors of the inn at Hartley Vale. Unfortunately for Caroline, the Collits who took a fancy to her was the black sheep of the family, William, described by his father as ‘a spendthrift idiot'. William Collits and Caroline James were married in 1840, but their marriage was anything but blissful. Caroline's younger sister was married to a thug named John Walsh, who was Caroline's as well as her sister's lover before and after their marriage. When her new husband turned out to be a poor substitute for Walsh, Caroline left him and moved in with her accommodating sister and brother-in-law in a
ménage à trois
.

There was talk of reconciliation between Caroline and William in the New Year of 1842. They met, along with Walsh, for a drink in Joseph Jagger's tavern near Hartley, but soon after leaving the tavern Walsh attacked William. Caroline came to her husband's aid by holding Walsh's arms and screaming to William to run for his life — which he unhesitatingly did.

The next morning a postman delivering mail came upon the battered body of Caroline Collits beside the road on Victoria Pass. Her skull had been smashed with a large stone which
lay, stained with her blood, nearby. John Walsh was arrested for her murder but pleaded innocence, accusing not William Collits as you might expect, but Joseph Jagger, the tavern keeper, of committing the crime. The jury at Walsh's trial did not believe him. He was convicted and hanged.

William Collits remarried seven months after Caroline's murder and lived a long and happy life. His family achieved posthumous fame in the 1930s when they and their inn became the subject (with much alteration of fact) of the first successful musical comedy entirely written and produced in Australia on an Australian subject —
Collits' Inn
, starring Gladys Moncrieff and George Wallace. Needless to say, the black sheep's branch of the family and this gruesome episode do not figure in the plot.

Poor Caroline achieved fame of an entirely different kind — destined to spend an eternity of cold and windy nights haunting the bridge at Victoria Pass, spooking horses and terrifying travellers. There were numerous hair-raising accounts of encounters with her ghost including this one from two youths driving a cart over the pass near midnight one night.

The youths reported that as they approached the bridge their horse became so skittish that one of them had to climb down and the lead the animal. The youths assumed it was a night bird or another animal that had spooked the horse but as they drew closer to the bridge they saw what the horse had already seen or sensed — a tall, slim, female figure dressed in a black gown of some shiny material that glowed darkly in the moonlight. The figure was standing beside the stone parapet of the bridge looking down into the gully below.

The youths assumed it was a living person and the one leading the horse called out: ‘You're out late, miss. Are you all right?' At first the figure seemed not to hear, then it turned
slowly towards the youths and their horse and cart, keeping its head tilted downwards and its features in shadow. When the figure moved, the horse stopped in its tracks and no amount of encouragement or tugging would make it step onto the bridge.

The youth sitting on the cart called out. ‘Would ya mind steppin' off the bridge for a moment, missus? It's our horse, ya see, she's scared —'

The youth never finished his sentence. The words froze in his mouth as Caroline's ghost raised its head to show its face and stared directly at the group. ‘I never seen nothin' so
bloody
frightenin' before or since,' he later said. ‘A soon as we saw 'er face, we knew she weren't 'uman. 'Er eyes shone like a tiger's … there were sparks of fire in 'em and shooting out of 'em. She raised one arm 'igh in the air then t'other and her 'air streamed out in the breeze like seaweed in shallows. Then the worst part 'appened. The thing's mouth slowly opened and a soft moanin' noise came from inside the black 'ole. It got louder and louder until it seemed like it was all around us and
inside
us; and it changed from a moan to a terrible 'owl. You know they talk in the Bible about demons howlin'? Well I reckon that's what that were … a demon howlin'! It sounded like no 'uman or animal I ever 'eard.'

The terrifying sound was too much for the horse. Using today's vernacular we might say it ‘freaked out' at that point and, unable to turn around, reared in the shafts of the cart. The youth on the driver's seat had to hang on for dear life as the animal bolted, carrying the cart with it. The other youth grabbed the tailboard as it passed and clambered aboard. Horse, cart and passengers careered across the bridge — over the ghost, through it or under it — and on down the road for several hundred metres before the youth in the driver's seat managed to bring the horse under control.

‘What in the 'ell
was
that?' one youth asked the other.

‘I dunno, but I 'ope I never see it again. It ain't
followin'
us, is it?' his companion asked.

The first youth mustered his courage, turned and looked back. ‘It's
still there
… on the bridge,' he reported. ‘Go mate! Just
go
!' he shouted, his voice quaking.

The youth on the driver's seat flicked the reins and the horse picked up speed again. They didn't stop till they reached their home town, Blackheath, five kilometres further down the range; horse and humans all lathered in sweat.

Some comfort from her tormented afterlife may have come to Caroline in the 1880s when Henry Lawson came to live in the nearby village of Mount Victoria: the young poet wrote a sixteen-verse poem about her, entitled ‘The Ghost at the Second Bridge', quoted in part at the beginning of this story and reminiscent of the youths' experiences. The poem gave Caroline a permanent place in Australian literature, but it was small recompense for the ills done to her in life.

Some say that Caroline Collits put a curse on the village of Mount Victoria, but its current prosperity belies that. No one has seen the Ghost of Victoria Pass for many years, which is hardly surprising. The road has been upgraded and widened so many times that the old bridges are barely visible; and if Caroline was still inclined to put in an appearance on the roadside at night, dressed from head to toe in black, it's doubtful if the occupants of the cars hurtling by would even notice her.

Most doctors (like other practitioners of the sciences) are sceptical about things supernatural. An exception is Dr Chloe Hill — and, no, that's not the good doctor's real name. As her remarkable story unfolds you will understand why a pseudonym had to be used to preserve her anonymity and her reputation.

Chloe is currently doing her internship at a Sydney public hospital and hopes to set up in private practice in a year or two, but her story begins when she was still a student in the autumn of 2010. The school of medicine Chloe attended offered dissection of human cadavers as an elective component in the medical degree course and Chloe, like most of her fellow students, opted for it, believing that exposure to a real body would be more beneficial than studying plastic models or computerised images.

The cadaver allotted to Chloe to work on was that of a middle-aged man who had bequeathed his body to medical science. The man was overweight and had succumbed to a massive heart attack, so the external parts of his body were untouched, but large flaps of fatty tissue had to be divided and
clamped back before Chloe could begin work on his internal organs.

Chloe worked quickly and deftly, all the while trying not to let her gaze wander onto the cadaver's face. A short, thick, grey-streaked beard that looked more like steel wool than human hair framed the lower part of the face in sharp contrast to the upper part which was hairless — no eyelashes, no eyebrows and a smooth, shiny scalp. This curious arrangement made the cadaver's head look as if it was attached to its body upside down. That might have struck your average medical student as comical, but a twisted mouth and tiny, pig-like eyes gave the face a sinister cast, as though cruelty in life somehow lingered on in death.

After removing all the cadaver's abdominal organs and laying them out on stainless steel trays, Chloe reached for her laptop and began making detailed notes of her observations. Apart from the cadaver's face, which continued to trouble her, Chloe found the whole exercise exhilarating and engrossing. The professor of anatomy who was supervising came by and questioned Chloe about the condition of the cadaver's heart, praising the acute observations she had made about it. Time passed quickly and in what seemed much less than the four hours the clock on the wall of the dissecting room indicated, Chloe was removing her surgical gown and mask and cleaning herself up in the scrubbing room.

That evening Chloe's boyfriend Reece took her to a Thai restaurant for dinner. During the meal Chloe regaled Reece with all the details of her morning's anatomical adventure. Now Reece was not a medical student (he was studying architecture), but he knew Chloe well and appreciated how passionate she was about medicine. He put up with all the gory details while he tried to enjoy his roast duck in red curry
sauce and his jasmine-scented custard, but when it came to responses the most he could manage was an occasional, unconvincing ‘wow' or a half-hearted ‘terrific'. Reece was a patient and trusted friend and although neither he nor Chloe knew it then those qualities were about to be tested.

A week later Chloe discovered she had a minor problem with her laptop. A tiny spot of bright light (no bigger than a pin head) appeared in the centre of the screen. Chloe thought nothing of it the first time the spot appeared, reminding herself that the machine was getting old. If the spot didn't go away, Chloe decided she would drop her laptop off at the local computer repair shop to have it checked, then thought no more about it.

Chloe had noticed the spot of light on a Friday and did not switch her computer on again until the following Monday morning. When she did the spot was still there and she fancied it was a little brighter than she remembered. It was annoying, but nothing more. That night when she checked her emails the spot was definitely brighter and also a little larger; and to her surprise Chloe found that it remained on the screen after she switched the laptop off. Thinking there must be some leakage of power from the battery, Chloe made the decision to call into the repair shop the next day.

Before she left home the next morning Chloe checked that the spot was still there and it was, but when she reached the computer repair shop and opened the laptop to show the technician, the spot was gone. ‘Prob'ly just a glitch in the wiring that's fixed itself,' the technician said. When Chloe reached home she opened the laptop again and the spot was back, glowing brighter than ever in the centre of the empty black screen. It also appeared to be larger again, as if it was growing a little in size each time Chloe looked at it. It was now about the size of a match head and large enough for Chloe to
discern that it was not round but oval and slightly elongated, like an egg lying on its side.

Chloe had a lecture that day and she took her laptop into the lecture theatre, but it would be fair to say that she did not hear most of the talk. When she opened the laptop, the elongated, glowing shape was now about two centimetres long and Chloe found herself absorbed in trying to work out whether the shape had any recognisable form. As the lecture came to an end and Chloe closed the laptop she concluded it did not and that the thoughts of planets, glow-worms and jelly fish that had flashed through her mind were all fanciful.

Reece came around that evening and Chloe told him about the annoying fault in her laptop. ‘Give us a look,' suggested Reece. When Chloe lifted the lid of the laptop she gasped. The glowing spot was now about four centimetres in length and a centimetre in height and its shape instantly triggered an alarming memory. Reece was mystified when his girlfriend slammed the lid down and announced firmly, ‘
No
, I don't want to look at it any more … let's go out and get a coffee.'

Reece sensed Chloe's distress and over two cappuccinos tried to reassure her with: ‘Don't let it get to you, love … it's only a machine'. But Chloe knew that sitting on her coffee table in the lounge room of her flat was something much more than a few circuit boards, a collection of wires and a plastic case.

Later that evening after Reece had gone home Chloe summoned up the courage to open the laptop. The glowing shape had grown larger again and Chloe could now make out the shape of the cadaver she had dissected ten days earlier, laying in profile on its dissecting table, half covered by a grey cloth as she had first seen it. There was no mistaking the shape: the cadaver's belly rose like a smooth mound in
the centre, its feet stuck up at one end and its bald, bearded head made another bump at the other end. Chloe stared at the image in disbelief and with fear rising inside her. Again she slammed the laptop closed and before she went to bed she locked it away in a drawer.

For the next two days Chloe could not bring herself to unlock the drawer but the longer she delayed the more morbidly curious she became. Finally, near lunchtime on the third day, when bright sunlight was streaming into her flat and the noise of birds, cars and people going about their business in the street drifted in through the windows, she unlocked the drawer and carefully took out the laptop. Chloe placed it in the centre of her kitchen table and gingerly opened it. A second later she began to tremble uncontrollably. The ghost of the cadaver (for that most assuredly was what had entered Chloe's computer) was now quite clear and filling about a third of the screen. Its head was turned towards her, the face carrying a hideous scowl and those pig-like eyes wide open and staring back at Chloe.

Now most of us might have smashed the laptop at that point or taken it somewhere and burned it, but Chloe lacked the resolve to do either. She locked the laptop away again and tried to forget its existence, but curiosity inevitably got the better of her. The next time she looked the ghost had ‘grown' again in size and had raised itself up on one elbow. Its free hand was extended towards Chloe and those awful eyes were still staring directly at her.

A week later when she looked again, she found the ghost had begun to rise from its table and now had the grey sheet secured around its belly. The head and the hand were halfway across the black void between ghost and victim and reaching out towards her. A day later it was closer again — almost filling
the screen — and Chloe could see the individual hairs on the ghost's chin, its bloodshot eyes and the blackened fingernails on its outstretched hand.

On what would prove to be the last time Chloe looked at her ghostly tormenter, it was so close its face alone filled the screen. Chloe realised that the ghost's next step would be to leave the screen and to materialise in front of her. The whole experience had been terrifying, but that prospect did not bear thinking about.

Chloe slammed the lid, grabbed the computer and ran from her flat. With the computer held firmly under her right arm she ran the two kilometres that separates her flat from Reece's. People stared as Chloe careered along quiet suburban footpaths. Two individuals asked if she was OK as she rushed by, but Chloe didn't stop to reply. All the while she was praying that Reece would be home when she reached his flat.

He was and responded immediately to Chloe's pounding on his front door. ‘What's wrong, babe?' he asked. ‘You look
awful
.' Chloe was panting and between gasps for breath she asked Reece if he would get his car out and drive her somewhere. ‘
Any
where,' he said and five minutes later Reece, Chloe and the laptop were speeding along Oxford Street then Old South Head Road, heading for The Gap.

‘Why are we going to The Gap?' Reece asked. He was growing increasingly concerned about Chloe's state of mind and her insistence that they drive to Sydney's most notorious spot for suicides alarmed him.

Chloe had thrown the laptop onto the back seat of Reece's car and she now pointed over her shoulder to it. ‘We're going to get rid of that
thing
,' she explained and a shiver coursed through her body when she spoke the final word. ‘I want to see it smash into a
million
pieces and be swallowed up by the sea!'

Reece concluded that he must trust Chloe and pressed her no further, concentrating on his driving and fulfilling Chloe's insistent pleas to go faster.

The car screeched to a halt in the car park in Military Road at The Gap and Chloe reached into the back for the laptop, but it had shifted along the seat during the journey and she couldn't reach it. Reece reached over and took hold of it. ‘Don't open it!' screamed Chloe and Reece assured her he would not.

Reece carried the laptop once the couple had abandoned the car, leaving the doors open. They raced along the cliff-top paths towards the highest point, startling lazy lizards sunning on rocks and making gulls squawk indignantly and take flight. Finally they stopped at the railing of an observation ledge, both breathless and windblown.

Stretching as far as the eye could see was the vast blue Pacific Ocean. To their left rose picturesque North Head across the entrance to Sydney Harbour and to the right the spectacular coastline stretched away towards Bondi Beach. 100 metres below them, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff, the sea boiled and roared as it crashed onto jagged rocks.

Chloe took the laptop from Reece. She held it in both hands, raised her arms above her head and hurled it out into the windy void beyond the railing. Reece and Chloe clung to the railing so tight their knuckles turned white as they watched the laptop falling and tumbling over and over as distance made it grow smaller and smaller. Finally it struck a jagged rock at the base of the cliff and shattered into ‘a million pieces'. A huge, foam-capped wave rolled over the rock and swept away what remained of the laptop and, Chloe hoped, its ghostly occupant. At that moment a sound that resembled an immense sigh resounded through the jagged rifts in the cliff and swept up and over the two tiny figures on the cliff top — a combination
of wind, waves, the cries of seabirds and perhaps another element that had once been human.

One day if you are unlucky enough to need the services of the accident and emergency department of the hospital where Chloe is now an intern, you may encounter her, but you will be unlikely to realise it is she as she tends to you with calm professionalism and gentle skills — and that's exactly how Chloe would like it to remain.