Local ghosts

I was talking to someone last week who works in a building in Brisbane which she feels certain is haunted.   I don't want to identify the building, just in case the story gets around, but let's just say it has a Catholic heritage.  Her office is at the quiet side of the building (in fact, near a part which is unoccupied now) and soon after taking up the job there, early in the evening while fully engaged in work at her desk, she heard a clear voice say "excuse me!" to which she responded.  The problem was, there was no one else in the room, or anywhere near it.  I think it was on another occasion, she felt something flick or brush against her ear, again while alone in her office.   She also hears sounds from the empty floor above her, as well as footstep-like sounds in the corridor, with (as you guessed) no one there when she checks.

Now, when it is night time and people are open to suggestion, innocent animal sounds can be mistaken for something else.   (She mentioned herself, though I don't think she believes it as the explanation, that maybe loud rats have something to do with the upstairs sound.)   But a clear voice that sounds close to you in your otherwise empty office - that is a little different and would, no doubt, be a tad disturbing.  She does not work in her office of an evening anymore. 

She indicated briefly some other stories of ghostly happenings in the building, but I don't have enough detail to pass them on.  I suspect that, if I wanted to, I could walk through the unoccupied part of the building, but she said her husband had done it and he came back pale and reporting it creeped him out.  I don't think I should bother...

Anyway, this led to me Googling around for stories of Catholic related ghosts of Brisbane, and I turned up this odd letter written by a nun in a pamphlet about Mary MacKillop:




This isn't, by the way, the same place I am talking about, but it still is an odd letter, I thought.  The first thing that occurred to me was "I hope these nuns were familiar with possum noises in the night"; but I think there were all Australian nuns being discussed, so one would hope the explanation was not so mundane.

The only other religious place in Brisbane which I have heard people claim is haunted is  All Saints at Wickham Terrace (which I see is Anglican Church, but one of the Anglo-Catholic type.)  I don't have any details to hand, though.  

There are some websites around talking about ghost stories of Brisbane, but to be honest, you couldn't exactly claim that it has much of a reputation for hauntings generally speaking.  In reading around, I was surprised to see a story in Brisbane Times a couple of years ago claiming the current Supreme Court building has had its share of odd experiences.  The building (or one part of it) is not very old, yet it is being replaced soon by a new court building.   These parts of the article sounded appropriately spooky:

Speaking to brisbanetimes.com.au, a female security guard at the court complex said she was certain ghosts roamed the building.  During night shift she often sees the chair in Court 21 slowly spinning as if someone was sitting in it.  "There's no draught in there, no way that any breeze is causing that," she said....

One guard tells how two years ago two painters were in a sealed-off room in the building's basement doing maintenance work when, they claimed, a gust of icy cold wind "whooshed" past them.
"They were quick out of there and never came back," said a court source.

"They were convinced there was something freaky going on down there."

One night as one security officer manned the front desk, he heard a nearby elevator 'ding' and then the doors open as if someone was about to get out on to the ground floor.

No one was in the lift, but moments later heard the hand dryer go off in the nearby public bathroom. Again, no one there.

"Then about a minute after that the exit doors just started to rattle rattle rattle, as if someone had grabbed the handles and was desperately trying to get out," he said.

"It got me worked up all right. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen."

The security guards are perhaps very happy to be moving into a new building soon.

I guess it shows you don't have to have an old building for it to have a certain reputation.  It would seem that the intensity of feelings experienced in a place are enough.  Yet if that were a reliable guide to hauntings, wouldn't nearly all hospitals have ghosts? 

Anyway, a bit of mystery adds spice to life.