Great Australian Ghost Stories by Richard Davis Page B

in the crowd had managed to throw the rocks without being seen, or that invisible forces were at work.
    That weekend the story broke in the national press and curiosity seekers jammed the roads into Guyra and poured off the Sydney trains. There were journalists and photographers from city newspapers and a flock of self-styled experts on the paranormal. One of the latter, Ben Davey, described as ‘a student of spiritualism and theosophy’, told the press he had been called in by the authorities to subject the phenomenon to ‘the acid test of spiritualism’. Sergeant Ridge (who was showing signs of stress) and his two constables had more or less moved in with the Bowens and were only too willing to allow anyone who offered a possible solution to join them.
    Davey announced that the cause was almost certainly the spirit of Mrs Bowen’s daughter by a previous marriage, a young woman named May, who had died just three months earlier. May, he said, was trying to contact her stepsister Minnie, Bill Bowen’s twelve-year-old daughter, who occupied the bedroomwhere the thumping was loudest, and that Minnie was refusing to allow her to ‘come through’. This theory implicated Minnie Bowen and thereafter she was the focus of official and public attention.
    Minnie Bowen was a tall, thin girl with straight, dark hair and plain features, described by different newspapers as ‘a normal girl’, ‘not clever’, ‘introspective’ and ‘backward for her age’. They all agreed she didn’t smile very much and her eyes had a penetrating quality. An uncanny ability to anticipate questions was also remarked on. Davey took Minnie, her mother and a local sawmiller (just one of the troop of vigilantes who were stomping all over the Bowens’ house) into Minnie’s bedroom and told the girl that when the knocking started she was to ask the spirit if it was her stepsister. The noise began and, reluctantly, Minnie asked. Davey told the press, proudly, that Minnie then fell to her knees, crossed herself and raised her hands in supplication. The rest of the family and the policemen had crammed into the small room by then and they watched as the distressed child staggered to the bed where Mrs Bowen was sitting and laid her head in her mother’s lap.
    â€˜It was May,’ she stammered. ‘She said: “Tell Mother I am perfectly happy where I am, and that your prayers when I was sick brought me where I am and made me happy. Tell Mother not to worry. I’ll watch and guard over you all.”’ There was not a dry eye in the room when Minnie finished.
    Poor Minnie. Those present believed her, but second — and third-hand retellings of what occurred in that room robbed it of sincerity. Minnie was accused of being the cause of the whole affair. She, sceptics said, banged on the walls with a stick and threw the stones. A local doctor secretly coated the walls of Minnie’s bedroom with liquorice powder to detect the marks of blows and drilled a hole through the wall so he could keep herunder observation. The paranormal fraternity said Minnie was conjuring up evil spirits. Ordinary folk simply got the wind up.
    It was census time while all this was happening and the census collectors found themselves staring down a gun barrel whenever they knocked at a door. A small girl in town found the loaded revolver a parent had hidden under a pillow, fired it and wounded herself in the head. Unsubstantiated reports came in of a farmer’s wife committing suicide for fear of the ‘ghost’. Some claimed it was the shade of poor old Mrs Doran (who had been found dead) come back to haunt them. Lights burned long through the night, nerves strained and tempers quickened. A team of carpenters put heavy shutters over the Bowens’ windows, but one morning while the family were away someone or something ripped them all down and smashed every window in the house. A cocoa