Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

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

While the “big” and exciting events of growing up in a haunted house always make for the good stories, not everything was intense and amazing… the little things often made to just remind us ‘he’ was still around.

Mum was doing the laundry and going through all the bedrooms and tossing the dirty laundry into the hall where she could scoop it up and take it to the laundry in one trip. Mum noted a number of items; her navy slacks – my new Mickey mouse undies (very important to a 5 year old in the 60′s!) and my sister’s brand new ‘hippy’ shirt. Mum remembers throwing them into the hallway and even them flying through the air in her peripheral vision. It wasn’t until later when she was pegging the clothes on the line she realized all 3 items were missing. Being a single mum on a budget having 3 items of clothing go missing like that was not something you could gloss over! So she searched… and never saw them again. I can remember that event… though my mum told me at the time our dog chewed up my Mickey Mouse undies. I wasn’t very happy.

Many years later in the 80′s our ghost with the hankering for women’s clothing took a liking to my mother’s diamond earrings. Mum placed her diamond earrings on her dresser and when she went to get them they were gone! Being in my 20′s she naturally blamed me for borrowing them without permission… which I hadn’t. My sister’s lived elsewhere, so the obvious reference was made to the ghost now liking women’s jewelry and was he building up an outfit! But Mum was very upset, as this was a special present from my new step-father and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she had lost them. The house was turned upside down without success. A month went by and she had so far made excuses as to why she wasn’t wearing them but knew the time had come to tell my step-father she had lost the diamond earrings (he didn’t believe in ghosts even if he had heard our stories) as she walked in the bedroom that evening to break the news… she stared in shock. There were the diamond earrings exactly where she had left them on the dresser in the first place! She wasn’t impressed by our ghost’s antics at the time!

One weekend we were having tea and biscuits in the loungeroom. My Step – dad was sitting on the lounge on my left and my older sister who was visiting, was sitting on my right. Mum was out of sight in the kitchen when I felt a warm, large, gentle hand on my left shoulder. Thinking it was my mother who had come in behind me through the dining room and wanted some help in the kitchen, I was about to turn and see what she wanted when she walked into view in front of me from the other kitchen door carrying a tray of tea cups.

Realizing I could see everyone in the house… who had their hand on my shoulder? Now I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and just sat there as the feeling evaporated leaving a slight tingling in its wake. I took a big sip of my tea and announced casually, “oh the ghost just had his hand on my shoulder,” but that was normal ‘tea conversation’ in that house.

Yes my skeptical ‘step – dad’ eventually did have an experience. He had been working in the garden and came in to change, when he realized the bedroom door was much more open than was modest with a teenage girl in the house. Before he could move to shut the door he saw a pale, long bony hand come around the door and start to drag the door shut… what was odd was the door clicked shut with the hand still there! Then the hand slid from view. He rushed to the hallway expecting to find my mother or myself but the hall was empty. When he did find us… we were both at the clothes line bringing in clothes where he asked us were we just in the house and we had to say no. “Well, at least he’s modest,” my step-dad joked about the ghost.

One day I remember in the 70′s my elder sister was sitting at the dining room table by the French windows talking to my mother in the kitchen. It was afternoon and I still had my school uniform on – my sister asked me to pass her an apple – so I walked from the kitchen, the length of the French windows and approached her and handed the apple to her.

“Go back – go back,” she ordered and I was confused but walked back again towards the kitchen “come here – come here,” she now said and I walked forward toward her again now getting annoyed. “err mum,” she started sounding a little unsure, “I just saw Pop in the reflection of Jenny’s dress.” It seemed as my reflection on the glass had cut the glare – she had been able to see outside our grandfather’s head and shoulders (the windows are about 5″ off the ground) passing by as they would appear as if he was walking past – inherent to this was he also walked past the glass door where there was now a set of stairs now making this impossible – but the stairs hadn’t been there when he was alive.

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 8