Another True Ghost Story

Sometime in the mid-80s I was walking home late at night with my first wife through the city of Adelaide.

Central Adelaide is designed on a grid pattern — it’s one of the first planned cities in the world — and we lived in the south east corner of the mile-square grid, in a block of flats. The whole square mile of the city was surrounded by parklands.

We reached the entrance to the block but for some reason unknown to either of us, we crossed the road into the parklands opposite. We kept walking, saying nothing, our way lit by a single streetlight — but then my wife stopped and said, ‘I’m not going any further, there’s something there…’

I kept walking, maybe another fifty feet or so, until I was quite close to a large bush. It seemed to me that someone was standing behind it, though it wasn’t anyone visible to the material eye. I spoke aloud, asking if anyone was there, but received no response.

As seems to be the case with these things, there was no visual evidence that anyone was there, just a strong impression.

For some reason, it came into my head to explain (aloud again) that if it was a disembodied spirit looking for a body, there was a maternity hospital just down the road — and FLASH it was gone.

My wife and I walked back to our flat without speaking. Then we thought it would be a good idea for us to write down our impressions of the person we thought we’d ‘seen’, without consulting with each other, so we did. To our astonishment, our notes matched: a youngish man, scruffily dressed, perhaps a drug addict, but bodiless and confused.

I have no further information to give about that incident. But I did think it odd that we both had the same impression of the ‘person’. Either there was someone there in some form, or we were telepathically imagining the same person (which would also be noteworthy).

Then, the following night, something else happened.

We hadn’t really talked about ‘the ghost’ during that day, but that night I was walking home alone through the middle of the city, into the residential areas which were darker and quieter, heading for the same south east corner. As I turned down a particularly dark side street, I felt that I was being followed. I kept turning around, but no one was there. It just felt creepy.

As I got closer to the block of flats where we lived, the feeling intensified. I started up the well-lit stairs, and had the distinct impression that a whole group of people — maybe as many as twelve — was following me, step by step, though every time I turned round I could see nothing. I got to our flat and opened the door and they all came into the flat with me (it seemed). The impression was so powerful, but my physical eyes could see nothing. I got the mental picture of a ‘gang’, dressed in leather clothes, but could not make out any details.

I headed for the bedroom to go to bed and they seemed to follow. That was too much for me: I turned to them and said, ‘No way! Get out!’ and they seemed to vanish, never to be ‘felt’ again.

I can only speculate that my encounter the previous evening had somehow opened up a ‘connection’ to the world of spirits, and that they were hanging around me perhaps hoping for further communication. I have to admit I was relieved when they disappeared.