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)

A ghostly murder tale. (PB)

'The Mystery of Major Molineux is a strange and weird production, evidently founded on a fact connected with the early history of Tasmania. As a psychological study it approaches in subtlety to some of the most successful efforts of the author of Adam Bede; while for intensity of sustained interest and soul-thrilling excitement it is only surpassed by Edgar Allen Poe in The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

'That the story is based upon fact does not detract from its interest, but rather lends an air of vraisemblance to a story which would otherwise be too appalling. It is an introspective study, a psychological romance, a social drama - worthy of the author of His Natural Life.'

[Source: Burra Record 22 June 1881, p.2]

A Frenchman seeks work and ends up at a cattle station, where he has trouble settling into his new role. 

'A Haunt of Jinkarras deals with the discovery of a primordial race that dwells entirely underground.' 

Source: L.W. Currey, Inc. https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/167311/ernest-favenc/the-last-of-six-tales-of-the-austral-tropics 

Jim Turner receives news of the death of his friend, the third of a group of five who were involved in the murder of an Aboriginal woman and her baby many years before. Believing that she cursed them to all die violent deaths, Jim feels his own is inevitable. While travelling with his wife and child and the fifth member of the original party, a violent incident leads to him being blinded and to the death of his remaining friend. Turner suffers for years before finally dying, all the while claiming that his final sight before being blinded was of an Aboriginal woman and her child staring at him. 

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 this story is surprised to discover that Jonnie Holmes, an intelligent bush-bred young man, believes in ghosts. One evening, Jonnie tells him about the two kinds of ghosts he believes in and what happened when he saw one of them.

An old shepherd discovers his mate, Brummy, dead and mummified in the bush. Saddened, he feels compelled to bury him.

A story about a disagreement about authority between a group of workers in the bush. 

"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.

Following a shipwreck of a vessel headed to Sydney, Ellen Hammond is stranded with three men on the Gippsland Coast. In the night, the men are murdered by a group of Aboriginal men but she is spared and brought back to their camp. 

The perspective switches to Ellen's husband, Tom Hammond, who insists to the police captain on coming along to search for Ellen, who has been leaving "E.H." scratched into trees. They track the group of Aboriginal people and creep up on their camp before storming it. In the confusion and chaos, a shot is let loose against the orders of the police captain. Ellen is found beside the fire - dying, from the fired shot. In the aftermath, the captain is certain that it was Tom Hammond himself who fired the bullet that ended up killing his wife, but they decide to keep it quiet, believing that Ellen was better off dead after what she had experienced. 

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

A menacing weed known as "the curse" begins to take over the hut of the strange and isolated Alf.