Banyule Ghost Stories
[edit] Bundoora Homestead Ghosts
Bundoora Homestead staff have investigated the ghosts that are said to haunt it. The homestead, built in 1900, is now an arts centre but had previous lives as a horse stud, convalescent farm and mental repatriation hospital. It used to reside in the former Shire of Whttlesea but is now located in the corner of the Shire of Darebin and City of Banyule. Homestead director Jacky Healy says the ghosts that haunt the homestead and Bundoora Park are a wonderful connection with the home's past.
"All heritage houses of integrity have ghosts," she jokes. The homestead has two ghosts. The "human" one, George, was a World War I veteran and a patient at the convalescent farm in the 1920s. Although she has never seen George, Healy says she has heard stories that defy explanation, including accounts of nurses at the Mental Repatriation hospital seeing all the doors in the upstairs wing closing simultaneously. A builder at the homestead who was helping to renovate a few years ago also had what he believed was an encounter when the electric kettle turned on by itself. Ghost hunter Sinton says there's also a ghost horse at Bundoora Park, previously the grounds of the homestead. Apparently the ghost of a horse named Lurline, the stablemate of champion thoroughbred Wallace, still wanders the park. Lurline was accidentally shot dead by the stray bullet of a rabbit hunter. Sinton and Healy both say people sometimes hear the ghost hooves of Lurline, who is said to visit the graveside of her beloved Wallace.
Source: Haunted Bookshop Accessed 8 November 2011
A children’s book – “Ghost ride” by Rosemary Hayes has been written about the ghost horse.
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[edit] Ivanhoe RSL
There are no ghost horses in Ivanhoe but a story told to members of the Ivanhoe Returned Services League members could explain a strange sighting at their offices. On a Friday night 20 years ago, as Ivanhoe RSL president Fred Cullen walked towards the offices to finish some club reports, he was greeted by two RSL members fleeing the building in panic. The men - the RSL barman and a patron - told Cullen there was a ghost inside the offices, which used to be a homestead. For a moment, Cullen suspected he was the victim of a practical joke. But the men were genuinely perturbed. He asked them to stay near the rear office door while he investigated. When he went inside he stood dumbfounded in the hall. "I saw a luminescent light and quite clearly it was a woman in a nightdress, she was just floating above the ground," Cullen says. "The light was fading as I saw it was just there for a minute or so." A few years later, Cullen was told that one of the home's owners had a wife who was accused of having an affair with the homestead's gardener. When her husband confronted her, she hanged herself from a staircase balustrade. The suicide story is hearsay but Cullen reckons it is true. After all, he saw the ghost. As for Bundoora's mysterious Crocodile Man, Sinton believes he may be linked with the Aborigines who lived there centuries ago. For him, it is another strange experience to add to the list.
Source Haunted Bookshop Accessed 8 November 2011
[edit] Greensborough
In March 2004 the Age reported on a Mrs Bell who had come to live in Greensborough in 1943 with her one year old son. The house they moved into dated back to the 1840s. They grew their own vegetables and fruit, caught fish from the river and shot rabbits. They had no electricity or piped water. They pumped water from the river, had a wood stove, kerosene and gas lamps. Mrs Bell baked her own bread until 1994. Mrs Bell was quoted as saying “she came into the kitchen one night and saw a little girl, who simply faded away when Mrs Bell drew closer. At another time, she says, she saw a man in 19th century clothes leading two little boys by the hand as they came up the steps from the river. Neither experience was scary. It was only later, she says, that she learned of two little boys buried on the hillside, under jonquils which bloom in profusion each year, and on a little gitsl buried under a peach tree. This tree died and Mrs Bell planted a chestnut in its place. It has never borne a chestnut.
Mrs Bell may have been referring to what we know as the Greensborough Pioneer Grave Site
