Ghost stories at historic Morpeth

It was the perfect night for a ghost tour. In the inky darkness, the chilled wind rustled through the trees and whistled past our ears, and the street lights created light and shadows that both illuminated and disguised.

On “Front Street”, the name locals gave to Morpeth’s Swan Street, the shop windows glowed, shining a path on the flagstones walked upon for more than a century – footsteps of the living and dead.

My companion and I were well-rugged against the cold, and the shivers down the back of my neck had nothing to do with the icy wind.

For this was the Morpeth Ghost and History Tour, which, along with well-versed tales of this once bustling river port, came with stories of previous participants who saw apparitions in windows and felt ghostly fingers touching their arms. Even then, we could not know the twist our night would take; or the ghostly companions that would follow us on this tour.

First stop was Morpeth Courthouse, in the shadow of historic Morpeth Bridge and the darkened waters of the Hunter River. There was one ghostly inhabitant here, our guide told us, believed to be a Maitland doctor whose body was discovered wedged under a jetty. He had been missing for 16 days since his empty boat came ashore one night when he had tried to row home to Morpeth from Hinton pub. His body was taken to the courthouse for the autopsy, and many people who had worked in the building since attest that his spirit stayed.

Along Swan Street we continued, past the voices and activity in the Commercial Hotel, our collars turned up against the wind, and with our footsteps our guide painted a picture of a Morpeth from another era, with gravel roads conveying bullock teams past an incredible 11 hotels.

Along the river were no less than a dozen wharves, some privately owned, and the river – not the road – was the major transport artery. And all of it was built on an estate first granted to Lieutenant Edward Close, who capitalised on the location of the land the government had bestowed upon him, sight unseen, and built two majestic homes on the hill that once had a river view.

Suddenly our guide stops outside a glamorous looking make-up emporium.
This is a building apparently visited by a ghost.

“Old Tom” is reportedly a poltergeist, and shop owners tell numerous tales that he “moves” objects put into a particular corner of the store.

Our guide invites Old Tom to join us on our tour, and we move on to an elegant boutique where we hear of an apparition that appears as either a young woman or an old witch in the front window.
Two children on separate tours have seen a woman through the window, in one case as an old woman first on the stairs, and then moving towards the front window.

But digital cameras have captured two spirit orbs in this window; for this is a building with another ghost, a little boy, who inhabits the residence upstairs. He has a penchant for moving shoes and sometimes appears as a bright blue orb in the back of the store.

We peer inside, past elaborate dresses and shawls.
Neither the woman nor the little boy present themselves this night.
I am relieved.
We move on to the slab hut on Green Street.

Our guide points to the right window, and shows us how it appeared in two photographs: one with a lace curtain illuminated by the camera flash, the other a blur of shadows captured without the assistance of artificial light. In the centre of the window is a ghostly figure, with a clearly defined tapering skirt and bell-shaped shirt sleeves, clothing from another era.
This was a photo taken on a previous tour that pointed to the belief that the figure was Eliza Cantwell, destined for eternity to watch out the window for her lost son, 10-year-old Stephen, who on a grey day drenched by rain drowned in an unfinished well behind Campbell’s Store.
The window was the perfect vantage point: before development encroached in between, it provided a direct line of sight to the well and thus became Mrs Cantwell’s torment, as both the portal to her son’s wellbeing and a reminder that he slipped from her sight.

In the darkness we peer through Mrs Cantwell’s window, but she keeps her presence hidden in our photos.

We head towards the well, down the alley behind Swan Street to Campbell’s Store, once frequented by convicts and servants who were not permitted to use the front doors to the grand buildings on the main street.

This is where our guide tells us the secrets of orbs, mysterious balls of light and energy believed to be the spirits of those who had passed on. A relatively new phenomenon, orbs only began to appear in digital cameras with the advent of infra red technology that magically reacted with the orbs and captured their presence. On closer inspection, some display the blurred features of a face, with eye sockets and a mouth.
Our guide tells us the lane is usually a popular place for orbs, but they are few and faint tonight.

At the fence to Campbell’s Store on Tank Street, we peer at the site of the long-covered well where Stephen Cantwell met his death more than a century ago. Our guide says his orb often appears in an arbour behind the well; he points his camera and snaps. Stephen is faint tonight; but he is there in the camera, sure enough, near the arbour.

The atmosphere takes an uneasy turn, and I start to feel shadows that I know cannot be there, but cannot dismiss.
The feeling grows as we head towards St James Church. The night seems somehow darker, and despite the bright headlights of passing cars carrying people to a Saturday night out, we seem somehow isolated. The wind rustles in our ears and blows the trees, casting waving shadows; and the darkness settles like a blanket around us.
The lamp I carry seems to swing of its own accord.
I feel uneasy.

Our guide tells us about Bishop Tyrrell, once a custodian of this church and parish, whose spirit may not have left this post. There have been sightings of ghostly figures walking the grounds and disappearing into the rectory, and our guide saw a white ghost walk behind the church.
On his tours, women have reported ghostly fingers touching them while they sat on a bench seat behind the building; a woman with back pain was miraculously healed after sitting down.
And it is a popular gathering place for orbs.

The sandstone of the historic church appears milky against the black night sky, and the secrets of the clergy and the worshippers who walked these grounds suddenly seem close, the structure of the church serving as a reminder of those who once lived. My companion walked ahead and stood at the corner of the building, turning to face us, hands in pockets.

I feel strangely glued to the footpath. All is in darkness; there are no lights to shine on this historic site. The wind is cold on my cheeks.

Our guide pulls out his camera and with the push of the shutter button discovers we are not alone.
Excitedly, he calls to my companion that there are two bright orbs at the back of the church, and they are zooming towards him, floating right beside him, hovering above his head. And their progress is perfectly captured in a series of photographs replayed in the digital camera, showing the two lights moving forward, from different points of the church, but distinctly and obviously the same shapes and forms.

My companion later confided that he did not feel the presence of any other beings on the site; nor did he have any sense of unease. But I felt acutely aware of something else there, of unseen eyes that were watching, waiting, and I could not go on.

There were shivers inside my veins and a tingling in my fingertips that rooted me to the spot: my legs could not move beyond the footpath onto the grounds of St James, or beyond the road to the next part of the tour where, as I later discovered in the comfort and safety of the pub, there were more orbs, captured by our guide and my companion as they continued on the tour without me.

I hadn’t seen a ghost; I hadn’t felt a touch that transcended the layers of clothing and chilled my skin; but I had seen something in the camera that wasn’t there when I looked with my own eyes.

And it was unnerving that this could be a kind of proof that something else was out there, that as the living went about everyday activities – work, shopping, a meal out – there might be another layer of existence stuck in an era long gone, still searching, still waiting for their son to come home, still holding onto a life they could not accept had ended.