Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

My mother’s haunted house is in Liverpool, Sydney, Australia. The next suburb over, called Ingleburn (and also home to Ingleburn Army base) is home to a very old Australian ghost story that goes back to convict days.

In convict days, Liverpool and Ingleburn were rural outposts of Sydney. On the evening of June 17, 1826 a Mr. Fred Fisher was at the local pub drinking with friends, but after leaving the pub Mr. Fisher disappeared without a trace. Mr. Fisher was a ‘ticket of leave man’, which means he was a paroled convict but just the same, he had managed to accrue some land, a horse and a small shack of a house. The local constabulary made enquiries but it was very difficult to prove anything without a body.

One of Mr. Fisher’s drinking partners that evening, George Worrell was adamant that Mr. Fisher had skipped town and gone back to England, with Mr. Fisher having conveniently given him power of attorney over all Mr. Fisher’s property before leaving. While everyone had their suspicions about Mr. Worrell’s story, nothing could be proven to the contrary given the difficulties in communication in the early 1800′s (it would take years to make enquiries in England!) and the lack of any real evidence of foul play.

Subsequently, a local man, John Farley ran into the pub very upset one night not long after, claiming to have seen Fisher’s ghost sitting on the local bridge pointing into a paddock. The police searched where the ghost had pointed and found Fisher’s body hidden where the ghost had pointed. Subsequently, George Worrell was arrested, he confessed to the murder and was hanged.

The bridge is still there and so is the creek. I think every teenager in Liverpool must visit it at night as part of some unwritten rite of passage. (I know I did). The area now even has a Fisher’s Ghost Festival every November!

But given this ghost only appeared once and to one man only, the story is still doing the rounds almost 200 years later!

Written by Jennifer Mills-Young, Copyright 2010

Jennifer also wrote Growing up See all of Jennifer’s stories at Jennifer Mills-Young

Haunted in Sydney