WRITING GALLERY - SEPTEMBER 2024

THE MUSICAL GHOST by Elaine O

 Lucy sat up in bed frowning. She reached over and shook Ray by the shoulder. “Ray, someone is downstairs playing the piano!”

Ray sat up so fast his head spun. They sat listening to the music wafting up the stairs for a moment then jumped from the bed. Ray grabbed the first weapon he could find close by… his shoe… and crept out the door. From the top of the steps he had a view of the piano in the restaurant below. He froze with his mouth open in amazement. In the moonlight coming through the window behind the piano he could see the keys moving but no fingers above them and no one on the seat.

Lucy peered over his shoulder. “It’s the ghost – the one they told us about,” she whispered.

“It can’t be! Ghost don’t exist,” Ray gasped. He threw his shoe at the piano. Suddenly, the lid of the piano slammed down. Lucy screamed… then everything went quiet.

They stood there shaking. In a quivering voice, Lucy said, “Should we go down?”

Ray hesitated for a moment then said, “Errr… no. I think we should go back to bed and lock the door.”

“But ghosts can go through walls, Ray. Locking the door won’t help.”

Ray stared down the stairs for a moment then shrugged. “The previous owners of the restaurant told us that the ghost never bothered them. It just played the piano.”

Lucy glanced down the stairs nervously. “But they never threw a shoe at it,” she muttered.

Ray took her by the shoulders and turned her towards the bedroom. “I think it will be alright… I hope it will.”

They lay in bed, eyes open, all night, listening for noises below. In the morning, they crept down to the restaurant. After checking that the place was secure, they started the preparations for their first day of service in the restaurant. They soon put the incident behind them… until Lucy walked into the storeroom to get the wine coolers.

She stood frowning for a moment. Goosebumps crawled up her arms as she looked around. She was sure that yesterday she had changed the room around. She put the wine racks to the back of the room and put the coolers to the front where they could be picked up easily. Now it was back to the way it was before. Oh well, we were so busy setting things up our way, I must have imagined it was done, she thought.

She rearranged the room and finished just as the first customer walked in for lunch.

After a busy day and no sleep the night before, they fell into a deep sleep that night… until there was a mighty crashing and the sound of broken glass below. They both sat up in fright.

“Someone is breaking in. Call the police,” Ray exclaimed. He tore down the stairs.

Lucy groped for the phone and hit triple zero. “Someone’s breaking into the Courthouse Restaurant,” she cried as she followed Ray.

The room was silent. They crept around checking doors and windows but found nothing disturbed. The sound of police sirens disturbed the silence and, as they heard the police car screech to a halt outside, they opened the door.

After confirming the noise and the fact that no entrances had been disturbed, the policeman said, “Well lets check all the rooms for the source of the noise.”

One of the policemen went with Ray to the kitchen and the other followed Lucy as she checked the two private rooms in the restaurant area and headed for the storeroom. When she opened the door, she gasped in shock at the mess before her. Wine coolers were scattered all over the floor. A couple of ceramic ones were broken, and smashed wine bottles spread red wine all over the floor like a pool of blood.

“Did you change this room around?” the police officer asked.

“Err... yes, yesterday morning, why?”

“The previous owners had the same problem. It seems the resident ghost doesn’t like it changed. I’d leave it as it was, if I were you.”

“So… you believe there is a ghost here?” Lucy said, her voice high with amazement and fear.

“Yeah, no doubt. We got called out a lot when the last owners took over. We even planted a officer here for a couple of nights to see what was going on. He reported that he witnessed the piano being played by a ghost, but it never did anything else unless the owners changed the order of things.”

“But… who is it and why does it care about the changes?”

“Beats me. This used to be a courthouse, as you know, and way back, hangings took place in the yard. So it could be the ghost of one of them or the ghost of the first owner who died in bed upstairs.” Lucy groaned. He continued, “My money is on the first owner. If you don’t change things you should only have to put up with a piano recital in the middle of the night.”

“The people we bought it from said the same.”

Ray walked up in time to hear their conversation and sighed and said, “Oh well. Nothing wrong with a bit of midnight music, I suppose.”

WOOLPIT'S GHOST by Ron D

Ben Woods retired from his job in London and he and his wife Shirley made the decision to move east to the small village of Woolpit in the county of Suffolk.

They searched for some time, then settled on an attractive weaver’s cottage from the 16th century. It was two stories high with large windows on the top floor through which in years gone by, wool had been delivered from high wagons for wool weavers to turn into yarn and cloth. Oak beams created a sense of strength and beauty to the front façade.

They moved their furniture and selected a large second-story room for their bedroom. Exhausted from all their unpacking, they sought their bed early and soon dropped into a deep sleep.

Around midnight they were aroused by loud footsteps climbing wooden stairs outside their bedroom. ‘Clump! Clump! clump!

Shirley grabbed her husband in fright. Clinging to his arm for protection, she whispered, ‘Who is that, Ben. Is it a thief?’

Ben listened for a moment, shuddered, thought for a moment then asked, ‘Do you remember a staircase outside?’

‘There must be one. Someone is trying to rob us!’ she said. ‘What are you going to do, Ben? Do you have a stick or something to protect us?’

‘Don’t worry, Dear. I’ll grab a chair if I need it.’

The footsteps climbed higher. Shirley slid further down the bed and covered her head with the blankets. ‘Do something Ben. I’m frightened,’ she whispered.

As Ben was about to climb from his warm bed to investigate, the footsteps stopped, then a door was shaken loudly as if the person on the stairway was trying to open it. The door was rattled for several minutes.

Ben dived under the covers to join his shaking wife.

Eventually the noise outside their bedroom ceased. They fearfully climbed from their bed and checked all the doors and windows upstairs before creeping downstairs to make a soothing cup of tea.

The next morning Ben and his wife searched for an outside stairway but found none. They looked for a high door, but no second story external door could be seen either. They were totally puzzled.

‘We must have been over-tired,’ said Shirley.

Ben nodded his agreement. ‘There is no outside stairway and certainly no external doors on the second floor. We must have just had a nasty dream. Let’s slow down our unpacking today so we are not so overtired tonight.’

That evening they watched some TV before climbing to their bedroom. But on the stroke of midnight, again they heard the ‘Clump! Clump! clump! of loud footsteps climbing the outside stairs that led to their bedroom. Again, they heard the rattle of a door as someone tried to open it.

They both hid under the covers, but then Ben lifted his head. ‘Shirley. We know there is no stairway and no external door on this second story. There must be another reason. Perhaps it is a strong gusting wind.’

‘’Maybe,’ replied Shirley, ‘but it still scares me silly.’

‘We’ll ask someone tomorrow,’ decided her husband. ‘That talkative woman at the Post Office might be able to explain it.’

The next day the pair set off down the street to the Post Office. The woman behind the counter smiled her welcome to her new clients.

‘What can I do for you today?’ she enquired.

‘We have a problem,’ began Ben. ‘Each night at midnight we hear footsteps climbing an outside stairway and then there is the rattling of an outside door. But we are confused. We can’t find an outside stairway. Nor can we find an outside door at the second level.’

The Post Office lady’s face spread into a wide smile. ‘Oh, you’ve met our Woolpit Ghost, have you?’

The pair shuddered in shock. ‘A ghost?’ They listened closely to the Post Mistress. She continued, ‘Many years ago, a young lady named Lizzie lived in that house. She knew lots about herbal remedies and was often called out at night to attend sick infants and adults. It was said she also used spells.

‘She slept in an upstairs bedroom, possibly the one you are now using. When she came home from curing others, she would climb those stairs and enter through a door that used to be there at the second level.

‘The local Priest accused her of being a witch and organised a false trial. Soon after, she was tied to a witch’s Ducking Stool and drowned in the local pond. The next owner of the house blocked that upper doorway and took down the stairway, but she still climbs it at midnight.

‘Lizzie won’t hurt you. She was a healer, not a malevolent person. Call out to her next time you hear her. Welcome her home. She is a friendly ghost.’

GHOSTS by Julie S

 The two young men disappeared up the grand staircase in this beautiful home just before midnight. This was not in an upmarket suburb in Victoria, but on the small remote Pak Island, in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.

The large copra plantation on the island was managed by an Australian named Gus Dodderidge whose liking for alcohol required the assistant manager, a capable mixed race man, to run the Edgill and Whitely owned plantation.

One Easter in 1965, we visited and stayed in this grand manager's house. Built in the 1920’s for the then manager and his new bride, it was built to standards not seen before. Materials arrived from Australia by ship, and labour was brought in from surrounding islands. The peoples of Pak Island, who believed in animism, refused to go near the house and assist with the build, as it was being built across a path where two newly arrived Irish missionaries had been ambushed and slaughtered only a few years earlier. Those primitive people believed these men were carrying evil messages and were not welcome, but were now afraid their spirits had returned. It was also normal on Pak Island even in the 1960s, for the local witch doctor to point the bone at someone who had committed a crime, causing that person to die.

To appease the spirits the local people demanded a doorway at the top of the stairs to open onto a void where these spirits could escape. We were aware of this story when late at night, the legs of these two young men in long grey trousers, would walk up the stairs and disappear. Our first night was in the company of only the Manager, as the Assistant Manager refused to visit or move into the house.

The air felt heavy with the high humidity and as the evening progressed and the gin bottle slowly emptied, justified by the quinine in the tonic water, we were beginning to believe the story, and kept glancing at the stairwell. The open air living area where the stairwell rose, serviced the kitchen and amenities, and as Gus slunk lower into his large canvas chair where he would spend the night, muttering ‘bloody little black bastards’, as he slapped his arms to ward off the mosquitoes then uttered ‘they should be coming soon’ as he gazed towards the staircase. Before midnight we collected our lantern as the generator had been switched off several hours earlier, and made our way to our bedroom on the upper floor across from the door which opened to a void.

We felt unsettled as spending time with the village people that day, we learned they were horrified that we should stay in this house.

Around midnight we awoke from a very light sleep, to a door banging. The only light was from the candle in the lantern, which had now begun to flicker.

‘What was that?’ I whispered as I nudged my husband, who was already attempting to get up, but becoming entangled in the mosquito net. When we eventually touched the floor, we crept onto the landing, and were shocked to see the door opposite open, and a cool breeze blowing in. Had the wind opened the door causing it to bang against the wall or had these two young men just passed by.

The next day, we were relieved to join the work boat for the three hour trip back to Lorengau, with troubled thoughts that we may have been party to a ghostly experience. Sixty years later, now the country has independence and the Pak Islanders would have taken over the plantation, we often wonder whether the house is still standing, and if so, whether the spirits of these two young men still climb the stairs, or whether they have found peace.

THE BUSH CALLS by Cindi B

 It is an unusual place in the bush that manages to be eerie infull sunlight, but somehow the campsite managed it. Tall gums almost hugging the donga seemed only to have birdlife at the very tops of their canopies and the air was still and silent. It was just a few acres of bush, set between the three-rail-motors-a-week railway line and a dirt road. Across the road were low hills and then the mountain. No electricity, tank water fed from the roof of an old donga and plenty of fallen timber for a campfire, it was an adequate getaway for a few days.

She was Postmistress, running the local store, and telephone exchange. Recently a local retired stockman had started making suggestive phone calls, which were really difficult to deal with, and her job description required that she answer all calls.

“Why don’t I take some leave and run the business for a few days and have a few words with him?” her partner had suggested. “Take your camping gear and a few books and chill out with no phone calls at all.” 

She’d arrived late afternoon, foraged flat rocks to make a safe campfire, swept the donga and tossed up whether to put up her tent or just throw down her mattress and sleeping bag in the donga. Strangely the dingy old room seemed the more inviting. The rock fireplace worked well and sausages and bread made a good enough meal but she was tired and darkness seemed to envelop her early. Deciding not to read by torchlight she closed the loose fitting door and wriggled carefully into her sleeping bag. The still dusty room settled around her and she slept.

Rigid with fear she woke. Every muscle seemed to have contracted to hold her still, with her ears acutely attuned to the sound she was hearing. Someone was trying to start a chainsaw! The sound came again and she struggled to think rationally about who would be trying to start a chainsaw in such an out of the way place. It had to be a threat, the phone call man? Surely no one knew where she was. Another trial chainsaw start died away, vibrating on in her brain. Ominous silence stretched out for aching, worrying minutes. Would she hear footsteps? Finally, a familiar sound, a crash and the unbalanced scrabble of a possum landing on the roof. 

Whoever it had been must have gone. Now she needed to face her fear and go outside and check. Or not. Torch, for light and as weapon, gripped in shaking hand, as silently as possible, she circumnavigated the donga, the torch making scary moving shadows through the tree trunks. Nothing was out of place that she could see, anywhere. Nobody. Relief flooded through her whole body, making her legs unstable. Flopping down near the fireplace, with her back against the donga, she tried to make sense of it. Had she imagined the weird sound? You do hear stories of dead stockmen haunting their old stamping grounds. Just how old could the donga be? What stories could it tell? Utter nonsense!

The grass rustled and a lizard scampered over her foot. Insects were investigating spots of sausage fat on the fire rocks. She could hear the possum rustling through leaves. Friendly wildlife sounds dominated the campsite, the darkness more reassuring now than the sunlight.

GHOST by Sallie H