Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

Have you read the previous parts of this story? Growing up Haunted in Sydney Part 1

Having already ‘grown up haunted’ soon it was my children’s turn. My son was around 5 or 6 when he gave the first indications he could see ‘things’. Coming home from school one day he announced cheerfully “I saw a ghost at school today mummy.” Given my history, I was well prepared that this day may come and I was determined not to handle it as badly.

“What did it look like?” I asked. “mmmmm a bit like white plastic in the wind all wobbly” he began starting on his cookie. Sensibly, I did wonder if he had just seen a discarded plastic bag caught up in the wind whip around the playground. “What was the ghost doing at you school?” I asked keeping it all very casual. “It was looking in all the windows” he said “it came along on my side of the classroom and stopped and looked in every window.” I realized a plastic bag ‘caught up in the wind’ wouldn’t pause to look in every window of a classroom. “It was looking right at me” he assured me “and I looked right back – what was it doing mummy?” “What were YOU doing?” I asked. “I was painting” he told me “I’ll bring my painting home tomorrow” he added as an after thought. “The ghost was probably interested in your painting” I suggested “it was just checking up on what you were doing.” He just shrugged and accepted that and went outside to play.

When we would visit Nanna at the ‘haunted house’ he would whizz around the rooms when he was younger playing imaginary games with someone – but we weren’t too bothered given we knew who it was. But he got older and like me learned it was not something other children took to too readily so he went quiet. When he was 12 my second husband and I took my son on two organized ‘ghost hunts’ in and around Sydney. The first was at ‘The Rocks’ which was the site of the earliest convict settlement in Australia. Aaron said outside one old sandstone building he saw a lot of people waiting around like they were ‘waiting for something’ and they looked like “olden days” – he said there were all kinds of people, kids, grand pa’s (old men) and ladies and soldiers, though we saw nothing.

When the tour guide came up and we asked what the building was, he explained it was one of the earliest morgues in Sydney and essentially anyone who died in Sydney ended up at this building eventually. When some of the group who had overheard my son’s comments cornered him for more information he felt instantly ‘on the spot ‘ and refused to say anything for the rest of the tour. But I watched him and his eyes told a lot more than he was saying.

We got to one cellar like location and he hissed at me “don’t go in there mum – its bad.” I took his advice and was told by the exiting tour (we had waited outside) that a number of murders had taken place in that location and there was a distinct “heavy atmosphere” inside.

On our second tour – I had already been to this tunnel location with people from work on a previous quick bus tour visit and I knew the story. Tonight however I were staying for a four hour vigil with my husband, son and a group. We took up position in our chairs, rugged up like mummies against the cold (it was -2C the night we were there!) it was a disused train tunnel from the 1800′s. No trains ran there now, it had been a munitions storage facility in WW2 and even a mushroom farm! I had made a point NOT to tell my son or my husband the specialty of the tunnel when out of the blue my son announces “who is the lady in the white dress at the end of the tunnel?”

The group who was sitting in complete darkness flicked on the odd torchlight and all turned to my son. “Can you see her?” hissed a dozen voices all at once. “Sure” he insisted like it was normal “can’t you?” I thought perhaps I could but it wasn’t very clear and thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. “What is she wearing?” I asked. “Olden days clothes” he said “the long dresses – you know, how come she’s so sad?” “She’s sad?” the tour leader asked. This was the first hint my son could pick up on the “feelings” associated with entities. “Oh yeah – she’s very unhappy – did a train run her over?” he asked matter of factly. “Well that’s what they say happened” the tour leader agreed. “She was sad – but it was an accident she thought she’d make it – she was in a hurry” my son elaborated. And that was the story – locals used the tunnel as a short cut between two towns and the story ran a woman had taken the short cut – misjudged the timing of the train and been run down – some said it was a suicide as she was a known “melancholic” (someone with depression in the 1800′s) but others just a tragic mistake.

Had my son ‘connected’ with the lady in white? My son is now 18 and tells me it is decidedly “not cool” to see dead people… even though recently we have found ourselves living in a ‘new’ haunted house in Darwin, Australia.

Written by Jennifer Mills-Young, Copyright 2009

Have you read the previous parts of this story? Growing up Haunted in Sydney Part 1 ~~ Growing up Haunted in Sydney Part 16