As promised, here’s Part II of my true encounters with the paranormal!
QUARANTINE STATION
If you’re ever in Sydney and looking to do a historical ghost tour, I highly recommend visiting North Head Quarantine Station (now affectionately “Q Station”) in Manly. This historic site is exactly what it sounds like — a former hospital and holding centre for people coming into Sydney on boats, where if even one person was sick the entire shipload of people would need to be quarantined for a period to ensure they weren’t bringing disease into the country. Being secluded, North Head was chosen in the early 1830s as a good site to build a quarantine facility, and so they did — and there North Head Quarantine Station ran until 1984, when it ceased operation as a quarantine facility entirely. These days the place is a restaurant, hotel, and popular wedding venue!
I assume people are either interested in the paranormal aspect of the place, or they don’t know they’re getting married on a site riddled with unmarked graves.
On top of hosting weddings, Q Station also offer ghost tours. Even if they didn’t know the place was haunted, it seems like a good idea, right? Hundreds of people lost their lives here; there are unmarked graves all over the place. It was, quite literally, a place of sickness and death. I’ve done the ghost tour twice. The second time was uneventful.
The first was not.
The first time I went, I took a lot of photos. It was 2008, and I was in my photographer era. The two above are shots of the hill the site sits on, where our tour guide explained there used to be a graveyard until the grave markers were relocated, but not the bodies. As was the way at the time, apparently. (Old Sydney Burial Ground, anyone?) I can tell you with certainty that there was not that amount of bugs flying around that night. I would have remembered being eaten alive if there was. But as for whether those round white things are dust or orbs, I’ll let you be the judge. All these years later, I still haven’t decided for myself.
I have one other photo I’d like to share before getting to my actual story. Full disclosure: I think it’s a trick of the light. I was using flash that night, so it’s entirely possible. My mum pulled this photo up and tried to tell me it wasn’t light, it was a little boy standing in the doorway. I don’t have this in the original size anymore, but thankfully younger me had the foresight to blow up the area and past it there on the right:
Possibly relevant information: Ghost Hunters International did an episode on the North Head Quarantine Station. It’s worth watching either way, but if you skip to 41 minutes in you’ll find them looking at a photo they’ve taken of the hospital area, where a little boy shows up behind a fence. The fence in their photo is directly to my right in this shot, just out of view in this photo. My mother didn’t know this when she pointed out this anomaly and called it a child.
So, these are all your standard “ghost” photos — the ones that divide opinions. Orbs or dust? Ghost or trick of the light? I can tell you these photos are authentic, because I took them myself. But I can’t tell you if what’s in them is paranormal, because I really don’t know.
But there’s one thing I do know about North Head Quarantine Station.
This is the Shower Block at Quarantine Station, and I will never, ever set foot inside it again.
They didn’t take us in there the second time I did the tour (I don’t know why — maybe we were in an earlier session?), and I am forever grateful, because the entire lead-up to me thinking we were going there was full of panic, panic, PANIC! Because the first time I did the tour we did go in there, and I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life. Ever.
At first it was fine. The guide brought us in, and told us to pick whatever direction we were drawn to and just walk around. There were three ways to go — left, right, or straight down the centre aisle. I did this tour with my best friend, her parents, and her younger brother. I don’t remember which way they went, but my bestie and I went left, followed the block around to the back, then met up with the rest of the tour group in the centre asile where we all stood around while the tour guide spoke. Bestie was on my right, her parents were a few paces in front of us standing sort of in one of the cubicles (keeping an eye on us three teens), and her brother was somewhere behind us. At this point, everything is fine.
Then I feel somebody jab me in the side.
My immediate thought is that it’s my best friend’s brother. It has to be, based on where I was jabbed and who I know is behind me. So I turn to confront him, to give him a standard big sister, “Very funny.” But this kid is further back from me than I thought, looking bored out of his mind as he listens to the tour guide tell whatever story she’s telling. With the time between I felt the jab and when I turned around, there’s no way this kid could have moved back to where he was and schooled his expression into one of such boredom. I’ve known this boy his entire life, and I know his tells. He hadn’t touched me. And there was no one else standing anywhere near me.
That was when the dread washed over me.
I can’t describe the way I felt in that moment. I was terrified. I felt like I was being hunted. The night was cold, but I started to sweat. I know my best friend sensed the shift in my mood, because she asked me if I was all right. I don’t remember what my answer was. All I could think about was getting the hell out of there.
It seems silly. It was just a little (hard) jab in the side. But I’ll never forget how scared I was in those minutes we waited for the tour guide to let us back outside.
I felt fine once we were out, but I had trouble drifting off to sleep that night. It wasn’t until a week later my best friend came over and said she had something she needed to confess. Something she hadn’t told me yet because she didn’t want to scare me, and her mother had wanted to make sure nothing had followed us home first.
Her mother is a Sensitive and a witch. I’m talking purple walls, crystals and candles all over the house, tarot cards, witch. It was just a fact of life growing up. She was like a second mother to me, and she’s never had reason to lie.
So when my best friend told me her mother had seen a dark figure standing in the cubicle right behind us in that shower block, I believed her.
I don’t know what it was, but I sure as hell know I never plan on meeting it again.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
We’ve moved around a lot in my life. By the time I was eighteen, I knew of fifteen different houses we’d lived in in my lifetime. It’s a lot, and for a kid it’s hard to always be moving around. My mum did the best she could in keeping to a single area once my brothers and I were all settled in school. but it took a lot. Sometimes we had to settle for houses that were too small or not-so-great. But my favourite house we ever lived in was one that sat on a hill, so it started as a single-storey house at the front and morphed into a two-storey at the back, with the garage, laundry, and what we turned into a playroom on the lower level.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the place was also haunted as fuck.
Now, I said this house was nice. It hard hardwood floors all the way through, and the back of the upper level was all glass walls to let in the sunshine or let you watch the rain. On New Year’s Eve, if you stretched and looked out of the right window, you could see the fireworks over the Harbour Bridge even though we were at least a twenty minute drive from the city (without traffic). There was a homemade pond in the yard full of tadpoles and frogs, and the biggest room at the front of the house (likely meant as a living area, but turned into a bedroom) had these gorgeous sliding French doors and a bay window.
In hindsight, our moving into this place had all the makings of a horror movie, and I fully plan on using this place in a story someday. I remember when we first viewed the place, Mum asked the realtor why the rent was so low. The place was going for $290 a week in an area that was easily $400. The realtor said the owner was just trying to lease the place quickly. Since Mum was friends with someone who knew said owner, we managed to get the place, and nothing was ever said about the price being so low again. But now I wonder.
Red flag number one?
The layout of the house was interesting. The front opened into a tiled foyer, which led to a hardwood hallway with the main bedroom on the left and that living space turned big bedroom on the right. The bathroom was dead ahead, in the centre of the house (weird placement, if you ask me), and on either side of the bathroom were two identical rooms — perfectly square with doors that led to the other side of the house. The one on the left led to the kitchen; the one on the right led to that area full of glass walls that we turned into our living room. But there was something else interesting about those two identical rooms. They both had trapdoors in them.
Red flag number two?
For a time my cousin and I shared the big room with the French doors and bay window, and it came with all the standard haunted house crap. It would get cold when it shouldn’t. We would hear footsteps when nobody was walking. The doors would be open when we’d swear we’d closed them.Nothing crazy, but definitely creepy to a thirteen-year-old.
After she moved out to live with our grandparents instead, my brothers moved into the big room and I took one of those identical rooms with the trapdoor. The one on the left, which overlooked the street outside slopping downward. No big deal. Let my brothers handle the haunted room with its opening doors and footsteps. I was getting the better end of the deal, wasn’t I?
Nope.
This room had two windows, both with pull-down blinds. If I knew it was going to be dark soon, or I knew I’d be getting home when it was already dark out, I would close those blinds. Because I’ve always been one of those people who’s terrified of looking out of dark windows. I just can’t handle it — I’m terrified there’s going to be someone looking right back in at me. I’m sure I had this fear before we lived in this house, but I’m even more sure this house solidified this fear in me forever.
At the time I would call it a poltergeist, but whether that or just faulty equipment, these blinds had a habit of springing back open. At the worst times. It happened a lot, but there’s one specific night I remember. I can’t recall where I was in the lead-up to this (study at a nearby friend’s house, maybe?), but I know I’d closed my blinds before I left because I knew I wouldn’t be back before dark. And sure enough, when I stepped into my room and turned on the light, both blinds were closed.
For about two seconds.
The left flung open first, spinning on its reel when it hit the top. It’s pull cord was whipping around so fast it slapped the window several times in quick succession. Not two seconds later, the one on the right flung itself open too, following the same pattern, and I stood frozen in my bedroom doorway hardly daring to breathe, because in this instance one is a coincidence, two is a pattern. I was terrified to move, because it meant having to go towards those dark windows.
Then I looked at the window on the right, and my worst fear became a reality — there was a face staring back at me.
Or at least, the impression of a face. It looked like somebody had pressed their face to the glass with their skin caked in foundation, leaving a sort of Leatherface mask behind. It was enough to make fourteen-year-old me scream and run from the room. I’m sure anyone would have the same reaction to finding that sort of thing on their bedroom window.
Is it scarier if I tell you the window was high enough up that it wouldn’t have even been possible for someone to press their face to it?
I had to get my mother to close the blinds. That window was directly over my bed, and I remember lying with my back to it all night, clinging to my blankets, absolutely petrified that the blinds would fly open again. They didn’t, but I never quite slept well in that house again.
Now, what would make a nice little house in the suburbs feel that haunted? Teen me had her theories, and adult me wishes I’d had the guts to explore them. Haunted or not, there’s one more thing about this house worth mentioning. And in true horror movie fashion, the realtor didn’t disclose this to us when we toured the place. I don’t know if she didn’t know about it, or if she just didn’t bother to mention it.
My mum and her at-the-time boyfriend were organising the lower level one day, cleaning the garage side of things. We’d dubbed the far left the garage, the centre part the playroom, and the far right was the laundry and the door outside. There was some kind of shelf along the back wall of the garage section, and when they moved it they found a door.
A literal hidden door that led under the house.
And what did we find behind this door? My logical adult mother said it looked like a wine cellar. To teen me, it looked like a dungeon or a cave. The walls were packed dirt, and from what I was told it stretched under the house for several rooms. Both of the trap doors in the house led to this underground area. (Why the hell was that necessary?!) I was always too terrified to go past the first little room here, but I never forgot that place was down there. And when you’re obsessed with both true crim and the paranormal, how can your mind not go those places?
So here we are, with a secret cellar/dungeon/who knows what under our house.
RED FLAG NUMBER THREE.
After that, there was absolutely no convincing me the place wasn’t haunted. Despite the fact that it was structurally my favourite house we ever lived in, I was glad the day we moved out. Our next house was way less haunted (read: not at all, unless you count the Woman in White entry from my previous post).
The house has since switched owners and been renovated, but I’m dying to know if the new residents have experienced anything — or if they know about their secret underground space.
THE PASSENGER
My last story is my most recent experience, from 4th August, 2023. I remember the date so exactly because I texted my bestie about it as soon as I could, because I needed someone to know what I’d seen — and I needed to calm my own racing heart. I’ve included that text below for what it’s worth.
I was driving to work that morning, having left my house probably around 5:40am. This isn’t unusual. I’m up at 5am every morning because one of my cats (who passed last November, sadly) was diabetic, and 5am and 5pm were his insulin times. So 5am was my wake-up time, and I would be on the road and on my way before 6am. I might have been tired, but I was not asleep. I’m a paranoid driver and would never get behind the wheel in that state.
It had barely been two minutes since I’d left my house. There’s a section of road where I pass a church (maybe relevant?) and then go around a bend, and it’s this bend where this encounter takes place. I’ve nearly been wiped out by idiot drivers on this bend a couple of times, so it’s become a habit to glance in my rearview to make sure nobody’s speeding up behind me. I did exactly that on this morning.
Glanced in the mirror, looked back at the road…
Then looked back in the mirror again, all within a split second of each other, because I’d seen something. The dark silhouette of a man sitting in my back seat, so solid and real and there that I turned my head to look at him and almost veered off the road.
Except, of course, there was nobody there.
I’d seen him with my first glance in the mirror, but by the second look he was gone. My first reaction was to think there was somebody hiding in my back seat, having ducked down after I spotted him, but nope. I checked, and there was nobody there. I had chills all over. I was shaking the whole drive to my train station. Because I knew what I’d seen, and I couldn’t explain it, and if there’s one thing in the world that scares me more than dark windows it’s shadow people.
I always try to debunk the things I’ve seen or experienced. Every morning since this happened, every time I go around that bend, I try to recreate the scenario. Was it the shadow of a tree I mistook for a human? Did I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think it was someone else? But no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I haven’t been able to get it to happen again. I haven’t been able to logic myself out of this one.
Because I know what I saw — clear as day, solid as you or I. The distinct black shape of a man.
And now every time my seatbelt alarm sounds off for no reason, I want to cry.
Well, that’ll be all for now, I think! I’ve officially given myself anxiety by reliving all these experiences, and I’m off to bury myself in a fantasy book for comfort.
Do you have any ghostly or paranormal experiences of your own? Let me know in the comments! And if you can help me debunk my Woman in White or Shadow Man, please do so, because I’d love to not be terrified of them anymore.
Happy Halloween!
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