Ghost Story #2

Even for the misty Blue Mountains, the fog was thick… one could only see about 10 yards ahead. My two friends, Mark and Sam, called for me at my house in Leura Mall. The plan was to go to a ‘blue light’ disco being held in a hall just up the road, but we decided to head the other direction down to the historic mansion Leuralla, which at that time had been uninhabited for several years. Built by Ehrenriech Andreas in 1904, it burnt to the ground in 1909, but was rebuilt and passed to the Evatt family when Andreas' daughter married Clive Evatt, and is still owned by the Evatts. Its most famous resident was Herbet “Doc” Evatt, former Deputy Prime Minister and head of the UN General Assembly in the late 1940s where he presided over the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. Evatt’s brilliant political career was cut short when was he succumbed to a degenerating mental illness. Today Leuralla is both a Heritage-listed residence and Australia's largest museum of toys, most of them antiques brought back from Dr Evatt's foreign trips in the 1940s. But in 1978 its garden was hideously overgrown, situated just across the road from a sheer cliff overlooking the Jamison Valley - the very epitome of a haunted house.

No lights shone from its windows, the place was said to have a caretaker but nobody ever saw him. I can’t remember exactly why we decided to trespass on the property – probably just a show of adolescent bravado that presented itself because the gate was unlocked. Just a few steps up the driveway we were in such pitch blackness we laughed nervously. Branches clawed at us as we followed the only thing visible, the white-pebble driveway. After what seemed like an eternity we came to the front of the house. Suddenly Sam had a panic attack.

“Aaarrgghh!!” came from his direction as he ran back towards the main gate.

“What’s wrong?”

“I saw… a white face… in the window!”

“What? Where? You’re joking” I said.

“I’m not joking… I’m outta here” said Sam. He took off towards Leura Mall at a quick pace and the security of street lighting and the discoteque.

Mark and I were amused at Sam’s scaredy-cat retreat - we couldn't see any 'white face'. We decided to follow him via a parallel street. Our plan was to get ahead of him, hide behind a tree in the darkness, and jump out and frighten him. But he must have hotfooted it even more than us, he was just in front of us when we sought to head him off at Leura Mall. He heard us, because he looked over his shoulder and quickened his step. But we were invisible to him in the shadows and fog, just as he was invisible to us, except when he passed directly under a street lamp.

We gave up the chase and decided to walk. Hot from exertion, I took my bulky knee-length knitted cardigan off (in the 1970s we called them ‘Starsky and Hutch jumpers’) and held it rolled under my arm. Just as we came to the last street light before the dance hall, we saw Sam standing out the front with two others. He was looking in our direction, and pointed excitedly at us as we approached from about 50 yards away. It was then we decided to play a trick on him…

“Lets cut across the street” I said to Mark, “and come at him from behind. We can say we walked the long way around… “

We crossed the street safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t see us, though we could see him all the time, as there was a street light outside the hall. We walked up to the shopping precinct and came back about 20 minutes later. Sam was with a small crowd of youths, straining to see something.

Sam nearly jumped out of his skin when I tapped him on the shoulder from behind.

“Hey!” he blurted out “I was followed back from the mansion. Two guys chased me all the way up the street. Other people saw them too…”

“Two of them…following you from Leuralla?” I said, stringing him along.

“Yeah …they followed me all the way from there… and then they just vanished right in front of us…I have these two guys as witnesses.” His friends nodded in agreement.

“I saw them too!” said one of them “they disappeared between the two streetlights.”

To this day Sam swears he saw a ‘white face’ in the window, then was followed by two sinister figures who vanished into the fog – one of whom appeared to be dragging a body along under his arm.

Sam looked angry as Mark and I smirked.

I slowly unrolled my bulky ‘Starsky and Hutch’ cardigan and put it on, trying not to laugh.