Cirrus@Austlit

The tale of Fisher's Ghost's originally from John Lang's Botany Bay, or, True Stories of the Early Days of Australia . Penrith, NSW, was the scene of Edward Smith's murder of his neighbouring farmer John Fisher, both of them ex-convicts. Smith's plan is foiled by suspicions aroused by Fisher's apparition, the skills of a black tracker, and the sagacious magistrate, Mr Cox. Smith is hanged. (PB)

This story was first published in the Australasian, 14 September, 1872, with the title 'Human Repetends'. This version of the story, which includes a character called Marston, has been republished several times in anthologies and selections. A second version of the story, with a different beginning and featuring a character called Hylton, was first published in the posthumous selection Sensational Tales with the title 'A Mysterious Coincidence'. This version has been republished under both titles.

A story about a group of men camping near a creek who begin telling ghost stories and get onto the topic of the bunyip - an uncanny creature said to live in lagoons and possess a supernatural influence over its victims. At hearing a strange cry from the bush, they become convinced it's the bunyip and set off to discover it. Instead they find the body of a young girl from a nearby town with a snake twined round her (supposedly it is this which killed her). However, the young girl has been dead for some hours and they don't believe she died from a snake bite, leading them to question whether the cry was the bunyip after all.  

"The narrator of his ghost story, a medical practitioner, becomes a convict after he is wrongly accused of his wife’s murder and transported to the Australian colonies to work in Fremantle building roads. After landing in Australia he seeks his liberty by fleeing into the bush with two fellow convicts. Taking advantage of the capture and shooting of his accomplices, the narrator makes his escape into the wilderness—travelling to a “far off and as yet unnamed portion of Western Australia” (Nisbet 116). Wandering delirious in a hostile environment, Nisbet’s narrator, who is “expectant of something ghoulish and unnatural” to come upon him from “the sepulchral gloom and mystery” (110), suddenly comes upon “a house of two storeys”.

Source: "National Hauntings: The Architecture of Australian Ghost Stories" by David Crouch. 

An explorer arrives in Darwin to look for traces of Leichhardt's expedition. His party are found dead months later on the edge of the Simpson Desert. Four years later the explorer is discovered and tells of an improbable story about ghost horsemen.

A strange old man tucked away in the bush tells an interesting tale of his opal-mining days in Queensland.

A guest on a sheep station in outback Queensland sees an apparition which he believes is an ill omen.

An uncanny story wherein strange inexplicable events befall a stockman at an isolated location in the bush.