Best Australian Ghost Stories - Graham Seal // Shelf Improvement

I feel the best way to kick off this series is with a dive into Australian spooks. As this will come out after October, please know that it was intended for Halloween. 🤦‍♀️🎃

For a country that has been around for countless years, and proudly the land which has been walked by the worlds longest and continuous culture in the First Nations and Torres Strait Islander people, there is 65,000+ years of folklore and stories waiting to be told.

So what are my hopes for this novel?

What I really want told are the stories of cryptids and folklore which came to existence due to the vast Australian outback. Obviously Australia has a lot of dangerous and scary things... snakes, spiders and the cutest blue ringed octopus. All are dangerous and venomous and mortally wounding if medical attention is not prompt. However, with so much uninhabited land, what else could be out there?

Sure there will be some traditional and historical ghost stories, but my thirst for knowing about what was spoken about before convicts invaded the lands are what my heart truly desires.

Now to jump into the book and narrate my thoughts!

'Yarn count' - 56

Definition: To have a casual chat, discussion or to tell a long winded story.
Context: Australian and First Nations slang.

So, as an Australian I am definitely familiar with our slang. However, the amount of times this writer uses the word 'yarn' is actually ludicrous. I get the theme, and chatting about the history to make a book truly 'Australian' in context. However, this really is not necessary...

That being said though, the below truly is perfectly Australian:

"Is the story real, or are the bush undertaker's solitary mutterings just hallucinations brought on by grog and loneliness? Of course, the reader doesn't know, making the tale an unresolved mix of everyday realism shot through with possibly supernatural elements. Creepy in a distinctly Australian way."

I don't believe there would be an Australian (for legal reasons, over the age of 18) who hasn't been completely pissed and thought they saw a specter when really it was a bath towel thrown over the corner of an open door. The commonality of people coming home from a hard day's work and cracking open a case of beer just to be accosted by what they thought was their dead parent is not lost on me. Being drunk and alone can do things to people - and having a few on the daily is pretty established here.

As a South Australian, (born in New South Wales... but that's not the point) I have a keen fondness for the stories which I have grown up hearing about - especially the Bunyip. I know our country towns were mostly mining towns, and who knows what sorts of atrocities happened around them. A modern badge of shame is the Snowtown murders, and a historical one is of a murdered woman who allegedly haunts one of the Arcade's off Rundle Mall. There's also Dead Man's Pass - a scenic 10 minutes away from where I work! 😊

I've noticed fairly quickly that the chapters - or stories - being told are all well and good but the conclusion to each chapter is exactly the same as the previous, only with a few topic words traded. Personally I believe this would have been better had the current writing format been kept and a final chapter at the end tied all the storied chapters together into a single conclusion/discussion rather than repeating it each time.

The discussion around ghost/cryptid tales and folklore being connected has always intrigued me. Nothing within the tale itself could have literally happened, however a story forms based on wanting to keep a message or a legend alive in a certain way. I resonated with the below quote as I believe it perfectly highlights why these stories are universally popular.

"Ghost stories allow us to maintain a connection with those parts of the past we wish to remember."

For someone like me who loves the past and learning about people who lived in times prior, ghost tales provide a glimmer of mystery surrounding the land, building or town they're told from. All it takes is someone to say they saw an apparition of a woman walking up the stairs for people to invest time into researching who it could have been. This in turn could unearth long forgotten crimes, or the history of buildings which may never have been considered if it wasn't for the phantom. The ghost might get a name if enough connections could be made, adding to the history and tying a formerly real human being to a place and time, even if she is never seen again.

Continuing through the book, there's definitely a trend of one place having roughly two ghosts or events of supernatural activity and is then considered the 'most haunted' of that place in Australia. As I mention below, Kapunda is allegedly the 'most haunted' town in Australia and it at least had listed more than two ghosts... 

Due to the location of some of the items mentioned in the novel being in the city I live in, I have found myself doing a lot of googling and looking up the places and stories Graham is referencing. Mostly to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, but also to look at pictures of the landscapes and portraits of the people if they exist. This has unfortunately lead me to questioning the research he has done for this book. One example is during 'Specters of the Sands' in Chapter 3. He ends the section with:

"Other beaches around Australia have their ghostly lore, including Bunker Bay in Western Australia, Glenelg in South Australia and Minnamurra River and beach in New South Wales."

I can't help but be a little skeptical, only because of the mention of Glenelg. A quick search brings up nothing about Glenelg being a place for hauntings or paranormal activity. I've never heard of any paranormal stories around there and for me, it used to be an almost nightly place I would be with friends into the wee hours of the morning. It is well known (in SA at least...) that Glenelg Beach was where the three Beaumont children went missing, and the Somerton man was found (surprisingly) at Somerton Beach which is almost 2km's away. Neither of those have ghost stories attached to them.

Another point I'd like to make is about the fact checking. Within the same section of the book there is mention of a lighthouse which sits at Cape Otway in Victoria. Again, my nosey little ass wanted to see what the lighthouse looked like, and google maps has it photographed on a cracking day - genuinely it's stunning.

Literally a screenshot taken from Google Maps...

See what I mean, stunning!! Where this turns though is the history of the people who lived here and tended this lighthouse. There's two discrepancies here and, again, a simple google search and a little digging into some old grave photo's pointed this out.

"Catherine Evans, wife of assistant light keeper William Evans, lost two children in childbirth during their twenty-two years at the light."

Incredibly sad and tragic for the family to have lost two children. They were born around 12 months of each other and died within 12 months of each other. What is infuriating here though is the misinformation. There is a plaque at the cemetery in which the children were buried, one was aged 1 year & 3 months, and the other was 11 months old. They did not die in childbirth, and I am nitpicky enough to mention that their mothers name was spelled Katherine... not Catherine.

At least during the section on theatres and stages, Graham does get something right. 🤷‍♀️

"Actors should never be wished 'good luck' before a performance. Instead, 'break a leg' is the phrase preferred to ward off evil or mishap. In Australia, a colloquial variation - 'chookas' - is used in the same way."

200 pages in and FINALLY there's a story in here which predates colonialism. It may not traditionally be a 'ghost story', however it is a story of a spirit who gets angered. TLDR; two boys fucked up and pissed off the Rainbow Serpent, probably the most revered spirit in Fist Nations culture. In its anger it caused the ground to rumble and crack, the sky turned red and the landscape began to change. 10,000 years ago, this is believed to have been what happened. However, what makes this story amazing to me is likely this Dreamtime story is verbal record of a volcanic eruption which created some crater lakes in northern Queensland.

What comes next from the author is practically a dismissal of how formative stories like this are, evidenced by a newspaper article from the 1930's, and segway's to a woman's spirit named Maud who forces open doors shut and may peek her face through walls. Genuinely I thought we were finally going somewhere ancient and truly unknown.

What have I learned from reading this novel?

Kapunda is allegedly the most haunted town in Australia. A fun fact I will keep in mind but also has me intrigued to find out more about this small town which has been on the outskirts of my life for over 3 decades. It's also a beautiful town with a 'beautiful golf course' according to my dad who goes golfing there at least once a week.

I do not believe I would want to be related to someone who has died and is supposedly responsible for a haunting. Regardless of my stance on the matter being discussed, if ghosts are real, the thought of a loved one or relative I didn't know meandering around being unable to truly rest is honestly quite saddening. I felt detached when I'd read or hear about hauntings from so far away, like in England or America, but to think of them 45 minutes up the road in a small town I've lived around has now formed that new enlightened thought. Though if I were to be honest, I would be more likely to find one of those distant relative ghosts in England than I would in Australia. It's still not a pleasing thought, but now it's opened up a can of worms into looking at my ancestral towns to find out if maybe one of my great-great-great uncles is being a menace.

Reverend James Norman Jenkyn was a man whom I would have loved to have met. What do you mean he seemed to enjoy the hauntings of his Church! He took it over and was warned by others that there were spooks, and yet his response was effectively "yeah, and?". In his own words:

"I was not perturbed by their statements, for, thought I, the Bible itself was full of ghost stories, so I took up my residence in the old house. I had not long to wait for the thrill of the ghostly visit."

Norman also heard people walking around where there were none, he and his cook went to investigate and after the incident his cook resigned and went back to Sydney. Another night he heard someone coming up the stairs, decided to wait until the intruder made it to the landing where he was waiting, jumped out when he heard they were by his bedroom and there was no one there. Next he's saying "Ghosts, I suppose." and goes back to fucking bed! Whether or not these accounts are true, I don't know, but man his outlook on life in general was superb.

"The things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 

Apparently in Australia, a lot of old buildings never seem to survive into the 2020's. Numerous have been Heritage listed, yet they have still managed to be torn down. It's a bit of a shame really since Australia seems to be modernising at an alarming rate. Housing developments (at least in South Australia) have taken off and swallowed older country towns. Whether it's a safety issue and older buildings here are not structurally safe, even with renovations, to continue to be used I'm not sure. It is however, a little sad to see them being endangered.

We finally get to 'Dead Man's Pass' - as mentioned above, a leisurely 10 minute walk away from where I work and frequently a place I drive by in order to get my favourite Pad-Thai. The story of the area is credible enough, however who the man was and how he died has never been confirmed. I didn't know that it was Colonel William Light (the man who founded the location for Adelaide and surveyed surrounding area's) who was the one to find the deceased. There are also newspaper articles describing the discovery as well, so there really was a dead man found in this stretch of the South Para River. Ghost stories on the other hand? Never heard of any, and there are houses built along the road facing this parkland. Surely someone would have seen something by now.

Final notes after finishing!

What I have come to appreciate is how little I have learned about my own country growing up here. Many countries have such rich and deep written history, however, when it comes to Australia and the stories of our First Nations people, as always it's barely ever elaborated on. Their culture is rich, spiritual and tied so closely to the land they inhabit and I want to know about their legends. It would be significantly creepier than reading about a ghost who walks from the bar to the gaming lounge in a hotel. 🤦‍♀️

Just like the Skinwalkers told by American Indians, Ireland's Dullahan, Chupacabra, the Kraken and even the damn Loch Ness Monster are all one single cryptid in worlds where their respective folklore is full of them. Australia has more than a Bunyip and really the best Australian ghost stories are with those who have been on this land far longer than European settlement. It's disappointing for an author to harp on about roughly 200 years of Australian history for 95% of the novel, while giving the other 65,000 years practically nothing.

Realistically this book should have been called 'Best Colonial Australian Ghost Stories'.

The further I got through this book, if you read all the way through my post, you could probably tell I was getting more and more irritated. Whether it's to my detriment or not, I am someone who likes to look up places and see the buildings or sites where people lived and died. If there is mention of where someone is buried, generally I will also see if I can find their grave listing or find a photo of their plot/headstone. I love to read the engravings their family chose, or any pictures which were chiseled into the stone. It connects me to the real person, and not the 'ghost' being spoken about. So it irks me when a basic bitch from Adelaide (aka, me) can find accurate information and a researcher writing a book can't.