re: REAL LIFE GHOST STORIES...
Another story told to me by a neighbour-lady whose house backed onto ours.
Our neighbour was called Betty and she had five (dreadful) boys. The dreadfulness of the boys is not germane to the story, but I just want to say that when her middle son shot my mare in the backside with a BB gun while I was riding her, I was less than impressed. Actually, I lie: I was very impressed - by gravel - but let's not split horse-hairs about that ...
Anyway, what Betty told me was that each of her boys had, at one time or another, used the back verandah of their house as a bedroom. The room was enclosed but had opening screened windows which made for a cool and pleasant night in summer. One by one, though, each of the boys had elected to move back into the house to sleep after a very short period of 'sleeping out'. Betty never really asked them why, she just assumed they were lonely and preferred to mess in with their unruly brothers.
Good luck came to the family with a respectable lottery win! Of course, the first thing that happened was the back part of the house was torn down and rebuilt to include a big family room and an extra bedroom for the twins to use. While all this was going on, the builders found a few interesting objects in the soil beneath the old verandah. One of the objects was the porcelain decoration from an old brass bed. Another was an old buttonhook used for buttoning ladies' kid boots. The most interesting, though, was a lovely old gold wide wedding band. Everyone was amazed to think it had lain there for at least thirty years and belonged to someone who could probably not be traced. Betty took the ring to the local jeweller's to have it valued and was told it would be sent away to an assaying jeweller and would be back in a couple of weeks' time.
Well, the extensions were finished and the twins moved into their new bedroom. After only two or three nights, they were asking to move back into the old room they had shared with their evil sniper brother, John. When Betty quizzed them about this, the twins shamefacedly said 'The Lady still comes...' The other three brothers all drew in their collective breaths and looked horrified.
'What are you talking about?' asked their mother.
That's how the story came out.
Whenever anyone had slept out on the verandah, a silent lady 'dressed in black like in old-fashioned days' would come and stand in the doorway. She always pointed her finger at the floor and would remain there until someone got up and put the light on. Then, she would suddenly be gone as if she'd never been there in the first place. All the five boys had seen her on many occasions and, of course, the twins had often seen her while together. They were most disturbed that 'The Lady' had returned, even though the old verandah was now gone! The twins moved back into their old room and their parents would occasionally inspect the new back rooms of an evening. Both reported an unusual chill in the air and a draught that seemed to waft about one's legs as if a woman in long skirts had just swept by.
When the ring was returned from the jeweller's, it was pronounced to be worth a couple of hundred dollars in the way that most old gold rings are. Its gold content was high compared to those of today, but as a representative of its time, it was not much to write home about: just a common wedding band. Betty put it on her finger and it fitted loosely, so she wore it.
Now, Betty was a cake-maker and decorator. She made beautiful wedding cakes and won baking competitions all over the place. In fact, she made my own wedding cake (which was chocolate and contained half a bottle of Tia Maria). One afternoon, she was baking and had her hands full of fruit cake batter which she'd been smoothing off the tops of filled tins with her wet hands. Without realising it, the ring came off her finger and was lost. She swears it never appeared in any of the fruit cakes she had made and it never turned up in sweepings from the floor either. It was just gone...
... and so was The Lady! She was never seen again by any member of the family. Everyone assumed she had come to retrieve her ring and was now satisfied.
However, that's not the end of the story!
Years later, when I moved to my current home, I met the family who lived in the heritage-listed house opposite ours. They were very fond of history and had bought the place as a chance to do an historical restoration of it using authentic materials and based on the history of those who built it. This is how they came upon the story of the Brooks family.
The Brooks' were a pioneering family of our area and had been granted enormous tracts of land that covered many hundreds of acres to the west of Newcastle. Most of these acres were covered in market gardens and stone fruit orchards and from these, Mr Brooks made his fortune. He later invested the profits from this into the budding coal industry of the area and made an even larger fortune. He was one of Newcastle's leading citizens of the time and he had three beautiful and eligible daughters.
Now, two of the daughters never married. Their father settled a pleasant colonial dwelling on them and it's still there at the end of our street. It features wide verandahs and a fireplace in every room. The roof has a plethora of chimney pots and passers by still stop to take photos of the curiosity. I remember being taken to visit the Misses Brooks as a young child: it's where I learned to loathe and despise cucumber sandwiches! They were very old then and lived a different life with lace handkerchiefs and doileys and tea trolleys and lavender water.
Well! My neighbour, during her research, turned up a tale about the third and heretofore unmentioned Miss Brooks. It seems she had become enamoured of an Italian gentleman who worked at the market where her father sold his produce. Because of this connection, she had occasion to see the gentleman quite often and before too long they had formed quite an attachment. When she approached her father for his permission to marry, he refused violently, saying she was far too good for the Italian 'peasant'. Miss Brooks was twenty at the time and so it seems she resolved to wait the few months until her twenty-first birthday and then ran off to marry her suitor in Maitland, where she was not so well-known.
No one knows exactly what happened after that, but the elder Mrs Brooks' diary is held by the local Historical Society. There is an entry in May 1883 which said 'My husband twisted the ring from Louisa's finger and threw it forcefully upon the floor. Then, he sent her away and warned her never to return to this house again.'
Soon after the disappearance of Miss Louisa Brooks, her parents moved the entire family to a newly built home in my street. It reflected the Brooks' prosperity and social standing in the area and was described in early articles as 'a superb Italianate villa of stone and brick'. The old home near my parents' place was torn down and the land left vacant. The neighbour, Betty, and her husband bought the land and built their place on it following his return from serving in World War II.
The ring lay beneath the foundations of Betty's house until Louisa came to claim it in the 1970s.
I wouldn't put it in the bedroom lol, but it's very nicely done. Thanks for sharing your talent with us! 
