In one of the poshest suburbs on the east side of Melbourne, where spanking BMW's, Mercedes and Porches are the favored mode of transport, there is a grand, old Victorian mansion. I say it is grand because the building is massive. It is three storeys high and sprawls over a total of 1,000 sq meters. And that's just the building, mind you. The 'garden' is even bigger. The huge beautifully manicured lawn of 10 acres id dotted with massive, shady oak trees, rows of rose beds and a huge fountain filled with fishes. In the days of old, the family that lived there rode their horses around the 'garden'. To put it in Singaporean context, we could well put 10 HDB block of flats on this one piece of land and still have room to spare. Melbournians come from all over the city to have cosy picnics here with their families when the whether is good, and the neigbourhood folk walk their dogs here on a daily basis. The truly wealthy go one step further; they hold their wedding receptions in the grand, old building for a princely sum.
Sounds peachy, doesn't it? But this impressive looking place, now used by the public for merry making and revelry was once the residence of a proud and wealthy owner. But how did the house of such a substantial man become public property? The answer lies in the tragic and brutal events that transpired behind the thick walls of that solid Victorian mansion more than 50 years ago. People believe those involved in the tragedy, long since gone on to the Other Side of the Veil, still restlessly stalk the grand building and its magnificent garden to this day. But wait, let me start from the very beginning, and tell you the story as I heard it first hand from the caretaker of the mansion...
Caretaker, male, 49 - The man who built the mansion was a Scottish merchant. They say he made wads of money from buying and selling land. But he was arrogant, ruthless businessman, disliked by most and feared by others. People claimed even his beautiful wife was afraid of him. but the merchant could not care less; he was interested only in having children. You see, he was obsessed with having children to whom he could pass on all the wealth he had accumulated. But his wife could not seem to have a baby. It really came as no surprise when she had difficulty conceiving, But the merchant abused and humiliated his wife for this; he often threatened to abandon her if she did not get pregnant. His poor wife was terrified at the thought of being turned out of the mansion as she had come to Australia all by herself, with her family and friends thousands of miles away in Scotland. The maids would often find the tall and elegant dark haired woman crouched in the corner of an upstairs bedroom, weeping softly into a pillow. Sometimes she wondered into the courtyard and had a good weep there. But 12 years into their marriage, the unexpected happened. The merchant's wife became pregnant. For the first time the two of them seemed genuinely happy. But their joy was short lived. The frail woman could not bear the pain of childbirth, she died while giving birth.
But the little baby girl grew up a splitting image of her mother, tall and slim with jet black hair that framed her beautiful face and highlighted her shimmering blue eyes. But like her mother, this elegant beauty was ruled by her father with an iron fist. Nobody was good enough for his daughter, so much so she had no contact with the outside world, except for the butler and the maids who ran the mansion they lived in. The merchant himself never found a woman he thought suitable enough to remarry and he remained a widower till he died. They say he distrusted everyone he came in contact with. He always felt people were after his money and nothing else. He jealously guarded his most precious treasure, his only child, his daughter. She was after all the only heir to all his riches. No man seemed good enough to be the husband of his precious daughter. But one fine day, the young woman chanced to meet a man, a guy in charge of the family stable and she fell in love with him. But she did not dare tell her father about him; she was sure he would disapprove of him as he was just a lowly paid servant of the family. But the butler in the mansion took pity on the love struck couple and acted as a go between for the lovers. he helped to cover up her absences in the mansion when she was meeting her lover. By and by nature took its course and the young beauty became pregnant. When her father came to know of this, all hell broke loose. He pressured her to let on who her lover was, but she refused. She feared her enraged father would have him killed. To avoid scandalizing the family name, the father is said to have drugged his own daughter and made a doctor perform an abortion on her against her own will.
The night it happened, the servants in the house heard strange noises coming from a bedroom upstairs. But before they could investigate the noises, it was all over. The house was silent again. Nobody knows where the fetus was buried. But many suspect the unborn child was disposed off by the reluctant butler. When he was threatened with losing his job, the old butler confessed his crime of acting as the go between; he was given the dreaded task of disposing of the fetus until today there is one particular stubborn spot in the back portion of the huge garden where absolutely perfectly good explanation for it. That is the spot on the infant's unmarked grave. When the merchant's daughter came to and realized what had been done to her, she was distraught and completely unconsolable. They say she lot her mind from the grief and turmoil of the whole tragedy. And then one cold, wintery night, she did the unthinkable. She plunged to her death from the third storey of the mansion. Her father finally realized, too late, the folly of his actions. They say the proud and arrogant man pined away in the huge study room, upstairs in the mansion. he buried himself in books and shut out all human companionship. He became pale and haggard, a shadow of his proud and stately figure of before. A lonely, bitter man, he grew increasingly distrustful of those around him as he became weaker and more vulnerable. Then one stormy winter's night, a horrible 'accident' happened. A terrible storm erupted. The angry, grey skies above poured down sheets of rain, and a wild wind whipped around the mansion.
The servants bolted every door and window in the house and huddled together around the fireplace. but the savage wind rattled the doors around the mansion as if someone was pounding on every door around the huge house, begging to come in. When the skies open up, the merchant looked out his study room window. He thought he saw a figure in white underneath the oak tree in the garden below, standing in the rain, staring at him. The frail old merchant was stunned. He was sure he recognized the figure. he moved closer to the window to get a better look. That's when tragedy struck. A piece of timber from the roof broke loose, flew down to the window and went right through his heart. The bitter, old man let out a piercing scream. Then he spoke no more. When the servants got to him, his eyes were still wide open, filled with shock and horror from what he had just seen. Many believe what happened to him was no accident, it was an act of God. It was punishment for his sin, they said. Others believe it was caused by the spirit of his daughter, seeking revenge. Sadly, we will never know the truth. But whatever the verdict, the mansion was now without a master or an heir. The servants who had stayed with him left the mansion and it soon fell into disrepair. Rumours flew around the neighbourhood of sightings of terrifying apparitions and eerie shrieks and cries coming from the huge mansion and its surrounding garden. No local resident dared to go near it. But the local municipal council, realizing the value of the house, stepped in. They negotiated to take over the little of the mansion, and then repaired the ruined house. Soon after, it was opened to the public for use for wedding receptions and other grand dinners and get-togethers.
But rumours that the mansion and its huge garden is haunted continued to this day. I must admit when I first accepted the job as caretaker of the building, I thumbed my nose at all those rumours. I just don't believe in all that ghostly garbage. At least I didn't then. But within the first few days of working there, a strange feeling would come over me everytime I started to climb up the stairs. I felt a chilly feeling touch me and slowly envelope me. At first I brushed it off as just the moist atmosphere of the old house. But in my heart I often wondered why it happened only when I approached the staircase to head upstairs. A few months passed before the eerie explanation slowly become obvious. One evening, just as I was getting ready to lock up the mansion and leave, I felt as if a pair of eyes were staring at me from behind. I instinctively turned around to see who it was. A young woman was eyeballing me from the staircase landing. I remember the first thing that struck me was how pretty she was. She looked just like a movie star. She wore an elaborate, old fashioned gown that emphasized her tiny waist. As I stood there gaping in awe, she simply vanished. At first I refused to even think about the incident again. You see, I couldn't explain it and that made me very nervous and uncomfortable, so I just tried to blot it out of my mind altogether. But it happened again several times, and always in the evening. each time I saw her, I was alone in the house.
From then on I tried to get out of the mansion before sunset. But one night I was forced to go back in there at night, against my better judgement. It was an emergency. I was forced to go back because I had accidentally left my house key there. It was almost seven pm when I returned to the mansion. because it was the dead of winter, the place was already pitch black. There were just a few sodium lamps lit around the garden, casting an eerie, orange glow around the huge, old house. I was definitely all alone when I unlocked the solid wooden teak door at the entrance to the mansion. But as I walked in and started to search for my keys on the groundfloor where I usually left them, I slowly became aware of something that frightening me. There was someone else in the house, very close to me. As odd as it seems, I have to tell you I didn't hear any footsteps or rustling of clothes. None of that sort of thing. Yet I know someone was there, observing me. It was the sting of the person's gaze that made me turn. A misty white figure stood at the edge of the corridor leading to the garden. When I made eye contact with the figure, it made a dash out of the room through the Victorian doors on the left, into the courtyard. But in the process of fleeing, the figure accidentally knocked the Venetian blinds on the door and caused them to sway back and forth. It was a freezing cold winter's night. Every window and door was bolted to prevent any draft from entering the house. Yet there were the blinds, swaying eerily before my eyes. I had taken more than 40 minutes to drive back to that grand, old house to get my own keys that I had forgotten. But I tell you, at that point I simply lost my nerve.
I flew out that door without so much as a second thought. All along I kept wanting to turn back and look to see if anyone was behind me, but somehow I resisted the urge. I knew I shouldn't look back. I just shot out. I crashed at a friend's place that night. The next day I found my keys out in the courtyard, where the figure had fled. From that day on, I have always got out of the mansion before sunset. I really believe the house becomes 'different' after that. I can't quite explain it. You have just got to be there to know what I mean. And there's one other eerie thing that happens in the house that makes my skin crawl. and it always occur on the anniversary of the young girl's death. Anyone who walks into the mansion, regardless of whether they know the history of the building, will do an uncanny thing. They unconsciously walk around the foot of the staircase as if they're avoiding an unseen object. They, of course, do not know her body landed at the foot of those stairs with a sickening thud on that very day, more than 50 years ago. And you know, it isn't just a one off coincidence. It has happened on every anniversary of her death since I started work here, and I have been working here for almost nine years now. But the mansion is not the only haunted place. many people have spoken of the presence of an evil, malevolent force in the garden on late, misty evenings. Some describe this evil spirit as a beautiful, darkhaired woman. Others say it looks like a tall, dark shadow of a woman in along dress and shoes. But I must confess I myself have not seen her. Not yet anyway. But there was this woman I know, C, who experienced something sinister.
I had seen C strolling in the garden on many pleasant evenings. She was fairly advanced in her pregnancy and I guess she came to the huge garden for exercise and relaxation. We had become accustomed to exchanging the token nods and smiles that come naturally when you keep running into a stranger at the same place all the time. But one Friday evening, as I got out of the mansion and headed towards my car, I noticed something by the footpath that made my heart skip a beat. it was the body of a woman. When I rushed to her aid, I noticed she was lying face down. I turned her over and I was shocked to find that it was C, the pregnant woman who I used to seeing in the garden at that time of the evening. When I managed to resuscitate her, C told me what had made her pass out. Quite frankly, her story made a little hairs on my body stand on end. Not just because of what she saw, but because I knew she was telling the truth. C was walking up the main garden path towards the mansion when she suddenly thought to turn back. She saw a woman some distance behind her. The woman appeared to have just walk in through the main gate and up the same garden path. At first C stopped and waited for her because she thought the woman looked like a friend of hers. But as the woman came closer, C realized she was mistaken; she didn't know her. But she also realized with a jolt, there was something strange about the woman. She seemed to glow all over right from the top of her long, black hair to the bottom of her white, flowing skirt.
The strange woman kept coming forward. but when she was about 200 yards from C, she seemed to abruptly stop. The she very deliberately started to wrap a long, white scarf around her neck, all along keeping her eyes focused on C. All this while C seemed transfixed, mesmerized by the woman. But when the woman stopped suddenly and started to wrap the scarf around her neck, for some reason C suddenly became frightened. She also realized she was staring her eyes out at a complete stranger and she felt embarrassed for gawking. She was just about to turn around and walk away when she slowly became aware of the most eerie thing of all. The woman had started to sink into the ground. Slowly but surely, bit by bit she gradually disappeared into the ground. It was only then C started to feel faint and everything around her begin to spin. A few day passed before C noticed that the seven month old fetus in her womb, previously very active, had now become still. It had not moved for days. When the doctors confirmed the baby had died, they performed an operation to abort the fetus. It was only then they found out what had caused the fetus to die. The umbilical cord had somehow wrapped itself around the baby and strangled it. When C was told this, she couldn't help remembering how the strange woman very deliberately wrapped the white scarf around her neck and how it had frightened C. I also know of another woman in the garden neighbourhood who saw something in the garden that totally creeped her out. Infact what she saw happened before C's experience. Coincidentally, she was also pregnant.
She was standing at the water fountain in the garden with her little four year old nephew, looking for fishes in the fountain, when she thought she felt someone looking at them. She instinctively looked up at the huge acorn tree just ahead of them. She thought she saw a tall, dark shadow standing under the massive tree. Strangely enough, just as she spotted the shadow, it seemed to disappear; but at that very point she felt a cold breeze come from that direction. The cold air seemed to whip around her and her little nephew. But just as suddenly as the cold wind appeared, it went away. She could actually feel it drifting away. She said she tried to keep calm throughout the incident even though she was stunned. But then her nephew looked up and asked her, 'Aunt B, why did that pretty lady run her hands through my hair?' At that point she started to tremble. She didn't even answer him. She just grabbed him by the hand and bolted from the park. Somehow she felt she just had to get away from there. For the next three nights, she had repeated nightmares where she felt herself falling from great heights. She would wake up with a terrible jolt and find herself in a cold sweat. On the third night she woke up from this same nightmare, she found she had started to spot. She wasted no time in going to see her gynecologist He checked her out and said she had suffered a miscarriage. He assured her it was common for a woman experiencing her first pregnancy to suffer a miscarriage, especially in the first three months of pregnancy. He said the baby was especially vulnerable during that time. But she was sure she lost the baby because of that sinister incident at the mansion.
Surprisingly, her nightmares stopped as soon as the baby had been lost. But I am glad to say she has since had two happy, healthy baby girls. when she was pregnant with her girls however, she avoided the mansion like the plague, even though it had the most beautiful garden in the neighbourhood. She said she just wanted to play it safe. Others, like the gardeners who tend the garden, have also said they have seen a filmy, cloudy figure of a woman in the garden. Most of the time they have spotted her sitting on one particular garden bench in the most secluded part of the sprawling garden. The sightings of her have almost always been during the evenings in springtime. And those that have seen her say they have heard her weeping. Others say she was humming a tune. But when she sees them, she always does the same thing. She raises her hand and motions them to go away. They say the gesture is so commanding, they have felt compelled to obey her. There is another report, an unconfirmed one, I found very interesting. It was from a group of children who had come to the mansion to play during the spring school holidays. They say a woman came out from the mansion and offered them chocolates. But they did not dare accept them because they could see through the woman she was transparent. The stories continue to come until this day. After all my years here, from what I have experienced first hand and all that I have heard from others, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion there is a ghostly presence here. There is no question about it; the evidence is overwhelming.
The real mystery is whose restless spirit stalks the place the mother's or the daughter's. Some believe both their restless souls wander around the garden preying on pregnant woman to avenge the child neither of them could ever enjoy.
But rumours that the mansion and its huge garden is haunted continued to this day. I must admit when I first accepted the job as caretaker of the building, I thumbed my nose at all those rumours. I just don't believe in all that ghostly garbage. At least I didn't then. But within the first few days of working there, a strange feeling would come over me everytime I started to climb up the stairs. I felt a chilly feeling touch me and slowly envelope me. At first I brushed it off as just the moist atmosphere of the old house. But in my heart I often wondered why it happened only when I approached the staircase to head upstairs. A few months passed before the eerie explanation slowly become obvious. One evening, just as I was getting ready to lock up the mansion and leave, I felt as if a pair of eyes were staring at me from behind. I instinctively turned around to see who it was. A young woman was eyeballing me from the staircase landing. I remember the first thing that struck me was how pretty she was. She looked just like a movie star. She wore an elaborate, old fashioned gown that emphasized her tiny waist. As I stood there gaping in awe, she simply vanished. At first I refused to even think about the incident again. You see, I couldn't explain it and that made me very nervous and uncomfortable, so I just tried to blot it out of my mind altogether. But it happened again several times, and always in the evening. each time I saw her, I was alone in the house.
From then on I tried to get out of the mansion before sunset. But one night I was forced to go back in there at night, against my better judgement. It was an emergency. I was forced to go back because I had accidentally left my house key there. It was almost seven pm when I returned to the mansion. because it was the dead of winter, the place was already pitch black. There were just a few sodium lamps lit around the garden, casting an eerie, orange glow around the huge, old house. I was definitely all alone when I unlocked the solid wooden teak door at the entrance to the mansion. But as I walked in and started to search for my keys on the groundfloor where I usually left them, I slowly became aware of something that frightening me. There was someone else in the house, very close to me. As odd as it seems, I have to tell you I didn't hear any footsteps or rustling of clothes. None of that sort of thing. Yet I know someone was there, observing me. It was the sting of the person's gaze that made me turn. A misty white figure stood at the edge of the corridor leading to the garden. When I made eye contact with the figure, it made a dash out of the room through the Victorian doors on the left, into the courtyard. But in the process of fleeing, the figure accidentally knocked the Venetian blinds on the door and caused them to sway back and forth. It was a freezing cold winter's night. Every window and door was bolted to prevent any draft from entering the house. Yet there were the blinds, swaying eerily before my eyes. I had taken more than 40 minutes to drive back to that grand, old house to get my own keys that I had forgotten. But I tell you, at that point I simply lost my nerve.
I flew out that door without so much as a second thought. All along I kept wanting to turn back and look to see if anyone was behind me, but somehow I resisted the urge. I knew I shouldn't look back. I just shot out. I crashed at a friend's place that night. The next day I found my keys out in the courtyard, where the figure had fled. From that day on, I have always got out of the mansion before sunset. I really believe the house becomes 'different' after that. I can't quite explain it. You have just got to be there to know what I mean. And there's one other eerie thing that happens in the house that makes my skin crawl. and it always occur on the anniversary of the young girl's death. Anyone who walks into the mansion, regardless of whether they know the history of the building, will do an uncanny thing. They unconsciously walk around the foot of the staircase as if they're avoiding an unseen object. They, of course, do not know her body landed at the foot of those stairs with a sickening thud on that very day, more than 50 years ago. And you know, it isn't just a one off coincidence. It has happened on every anniversary of her death since I started work here, and I have been working here for almost nine years now. But the mansion is not the only haunted place. many people have spoken of the presence of an evil, malevolent force in the garden on late, misty evenings. Some describe this evil spirit as a beautiful, darkhaired woman. Others say it looks like a tall, dark shadow of a woman in along dress and shoes. But I must confess I myself have not seen her. Not yet anyway. But there was this woman I know, C, who experienced something sinister.
I had seen C strolling in the garden on many pleasant evenings. She was fairly advanced in her pregnancy and I guess she came to the huge garden for exercise and relaxation. We had become accustomed to exchanging the token nods and smiles that come naturally when you keep running into a stranger at the same place all the time. But one Friday evening, as I got out of the mansion and headed towards my car, I noticed something by the footpath that made my heart skip a beat. it was the body of a woman. When I rushed to her aid, I noticed she was lying face down. I turned her over and I was shocked to find that it was C, the pregnant woman who I used to seeing in the garden at that time of the evening. When I managed to resuscitate her, C told me what had made her pass out. Quite frankly, her story made a little hairs on my body stand on end. Not just because of what she saw, but because I knew she was telling the truth. C was walking up the main garden path towards the mansion when she suddenly thought to turn back. She saw a woman some distance behind her. The woman appeared to have just walk in through the main gate and up the same garden path. At first C stopped and waited for her because she thought the woman looked like a friend of hers. But as the woman came closer, C realized she was mistaken; she didn't know her. But she also realized with a jolt, there was something strange about the woman. She seemed to glow all over right from the top of her long, black hair to the bottom of her white, flowing skirt.
The strange woman kept coming forward. but when she was about 200 yards from C, she seemed to abruptly stop. The she very deliberately started to wrap a long, white scarf around her neck, all along keeping her eyes focused on C. All this while C seemed transfixed, mesmerized by the woman. But when the woman stopped suddenly and started to wrap the scarf around her neck, for some reason C suddenly became frightened. She also realized she was staring her eyes out at a complete stranger and she felt embarrassed for gawking. She was just about to turn around and walk away when she slowly became aware of the most eerie thing of all. The woman had started to sink into the ground. Slowly but surely, bit by bit she gradually disappeared into the ground. It was only then C started to feel faint and everything around her begin to spin. A few day passed before C noticed that the seven month old fetus in her womb, previously very active, had now become still. It had not moved for days. When the doctors confirmed the baby had died, they performed an operation to abort the fetus. It was only then they found out what had caused the fetus to die. The umbilical cord had somehow wrapped itself around the baby and strangled it. When C was told this, she couldn't help remembering how the strange woman very deliberately wrapped the white scarf around her neck and how it had frightened C. I also know of another woman in the garden neighbourhood who saw something in the garden that totally creeped her out. Infact what she saw happened before C's experience. Coincidentally, she was also pregnant.
She was standing at the water fountain in the garden with her little four year old nephew, looking for fishes in the fountain, when she thought she felt someone looking at them. She instinctively looked up at the huge acorn tree just ahead of them. She thought she saw a tall, dark shadow standing under the massive tree. Strangely enough, just as she spotted the shadow, it seemed to disappear; but at that very point she felt a cold breeze come from that direction. The cold air seemed to whip around her and her little nephew. But just as suddenly as the cold wind appeared, it went away. She could actually feel it drifting away. She said she tried to keep calm throughout the incident even though she was stunned. But then her nephew looked up and asked her, 'Aunt B, why did that pretty lady run her hands through my hair?' At that point she started to tremble. She didn't even answer him. She just grabbed him by the hand and bolted from the park. Somehow she felt she just had to get away from there. For the next three nights, she had repeated nightmares where she felt herself falling from great heights. She would wake up with a terrible jolt and find herself in a cold sweat. On the third night she woke up from this same nightmare, she found she had started to spot. She wasted no time in going to see her gynecologist He checked her out and said she had suffered a miscarriage. He assured her it was common for a woman experiencing her first pregnancy to suffer a miscarriage, especially in the first three months of pregnancy. He said the baby was especially vulnerable during that time. But she was sure she lost the baby because of that sinister incident at the mansion.
Surprisingly, her nightmares stopped as soon as the baby had been lost. But I am glad to say she has since had two happy, healthy baby girls. when she was pregnant with her girls however, she avoided the mansion like the plague, even though it had the most beautiful garden in the neighbourhood. She said she just wanted to play it safe. Others, like the gardeners who tend the garden, have also said they have seen a filmy, cloudy figure of a woman in the garden. Most of the time they have spotted her sitting on one particular garden bench in the most secluded part of the sprawling garden. The sightings of her have almost always been during the evenings in springtime. And those that have seen her say they have heard her weeping. Others say she was humming a tune. But when she sees them, she always does the same thing. She raises her hand and motions them to go away. They say the gesture is so commanding, they have felt compelled to obey her. There is another report, an unconfirmed one, I found very interesting. It was from a group of children who had come to the mansion to play during the spring school holidays. They say a woman came out from the mansion and offered them chocolates. But they did not dare accept them because they could see through the woman she was transparent. The stories continue to come until this day. After all my years here, from what I have experienced first hand and all that I have heard from others, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion there is a ghostly presence here. There is no question about it; the evidence is overwhelming.
The real mystery is whose restless spirit stalks the place the mother's or the daughter's. Some believe both their restless souls wander around the garden preying on pregnant woman to avenge the child neither of them could ever enjoy.
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