Great Australian Ghost Stories by Richard Davis

to stand up to a long interview so Hudson agreed to tell the story in front of the camera and lead the audience on a tour of the flat. At the moment the camera started to roll a tremendous crash was heard. Hudson and Dunne rushed to where the sound had come from and found a tangle of mops, brooms, buckets, tins of polish and bottles of cleaner strewn in a sticky mess on the laundry floor. There was no one in the laundry (which was freezing cold, although the rest of the flat was warm) and if anyone had left they would have had to pass the two men and would have been caught on camera.
    Faye remained seated in the lounge during this commotion but was visibly upset by it. Before resuming filming the two men made a careful search of every room in the flat, ending in the kitchen which was separated from the lounge by a bench divider. The kitchen was scrupulously clean: everything in its place, cupboards and drawers firmly closed.
    No sooner had they returned to the lounge than the whole kitchen seemed to explode. As Faye and the men watched in disbelief, the curtains billowed and all the cupboard doors flew open with a mighty whoosh and a deafening clatter. Drawers crashed to the floor spilling their contents, crockery and cooking utensils rattled, banged and broke and a steel colander fell from the wall hitting the floor with a crash like a cymbal. Next a container flew out of a cupboard and rose high in the air. It turned upside down and salt began to pour from it in a fine stream. The container moved slowly around the kitchen in loops, the trail of salt inscribing figure eights on the sink and floor until it was empty. Then it floated gently down and came to rest upright in an open drawer.
    Hudson later described the destruction he had witnessed as the strangest and most frightening experience of his long career as a journalist.
    He was reported as saying: ‘Whatever it was that was causing all the banging, scattering and smashing must have had tremendous power. Things were happening all at once. It was like a storm roaring through the room — completely unstoppable. There was nothing we could do but watch in awe.’
    Much has been written about this family’s experiences and, as with the house at Gladesville, comparisons made with the events at Amityville in the United States. The mass of detailed corroborative evidence has been tested against theories about poltergeists (the term spiritualists use to describe mischievous disembodied spirits) and most investigators have concluded that some supernatural force, either external (a ghost) or internal (generated by one of the family) was involved. Some have suggested the mother, Faye, may, unknowingly, have been the source; that her mind, burdened by anxiety, could have developed the power to move objects or created a force that took on an existence of its own, which is, some theorists say, how all poltergeists come into being.
    The family disappeared a few months later. I don’t know whether the events stopped or the family decided to suffer them in silence. I hope it was the former. Thirty years have passed and Peter and Faye are probably grandparents now. Like the family in Gladesville, they may not wish to be remembered as the victims of one of Australia’s most public ghost stories, but the supernatural is arbitrary in whom it chooses to involve and no blame should be laid on the victims. Wherever both families are I hope they have found peace and happiness.

6.
Australia’s Most Famous Ghost
    What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
    Invites my step, and points to yonder glade?
    Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,
Alexander Pope (English poet, 1688–1744)
    It is a mystery why some ghost stories catch the public’s imagination and survive while others, often more shocking and more credible, are forgotten. A perfect example is the story of Frederick Fisher, Australia’s best-known ghost story, which has been the subject