ECHOES OF THE PAST

AH NORFOLK ISLAND; stunningly picturesque, unspoilt and serene, a little slice of paradise floating in the pure blue Pacific Ocean. And also quite possibly one of the most haunted places on earth.

There may be no hard and fast scientific way of measuring that last claim, but let’s put it this way: reliable sources say that up to half of the island’s population of 2,169 people have had some form of encounter with what they believe to be a ghost, so it would seem that Norfolk Island certainly punches above its weight when it comes to things that go bump in the night. Newspapers have been reporting on ghostly goings on since before WW2, books have been written about the ghosts of Norfolk Island, podcasts made, and even TV shows created about paranormal investigations there. Surely it can’t all be in our imaginations.

For Liz McCoy, a historian, tour guide and descendant of Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian partners, there are many reasons for this - and, as someone who has been organising guided tours of the Kingston area for over 20 years, Liz knows her stuff. “What we call the Second Settlement was absolutely brutal,” Liz says. “Its capital was Kingston and it was such a horrid place that to the convicts, death was a better option; they thought that if they moved on to the next life it could only be better than what they were going through. With all that anguish in the air, it’s no surprise that something remains.”

The Second Settlement from 1825 (as opposed to the First Settlement, which was largely about securing shipping materials), was a penal colony that took Sydney’s repeat offenders and strove to teach them a lesson once and for all. The wretched convicts of this Settlement suffered under a series of brutish commanders that were largely responsible for giving the colonies’ prisons their grisly reputations.

“The history of this area really is stranger than fiction,” Liz says. “Kingston and Arthur’s Vale had been the hub of all settlements here on the Island - from the Polynesian visitors, the First and Second Settlements, the Pitcairn Islanders, and through to the living museum it is today, which is said to have the best collection of originally designed Georgian Buildings, all in one street, in the Southern Hemisphere. The Kingston burial ground hosts monuments dating back to 1794, the only known monuments for executed convicts, children of the Bounty Mutineers, through to our modern-day burials, so Kingston certainly has some stories to tell.”

Take the legend of Bloody Bridge for example. It is often said that Norfolk Island was built on blood, sweat and tears, and in the case of this bridge found in Kingston at the eastern end of Quality Row, it is literally true. The legend goes that during the construction of the bridge, a particularly nasty overseer worked his gang of laborer’s so harshly that one of them embedded a pickaxe in his skull. To conceal their crime the workers quickly walled up the body in the bridge’s structure - and thought they had gotten away with it until the new gang boss noticed blood seeping from the damp mortar!

This is history writ large, and there are several guided tours offered on the Island to explore it and the ghostly goings on that are reported to be associated with it. But make no mistake, this is no case of holding hands in the dark and asking if anyone is there; there is a lot of history - and a lot of science - involved.

“We start out by getting a feel for the place and hearing it’s history,” Liz says, “then use instruments to check for electro-magnetic fields, temperature changes, motion, electronic voice phenomenon, frequency scanners - we don’t try to summon the Devil! We’re all taught to fear the unknown, but then again so many of us feel that we have someone watching over us, so I think a lot more people are open to how the universe might work that we care to admit. It’s about being open to things. We get skeptics on our tours - and they are usually the ones that come up at the end really shocked about what they have experienced!”

One common experience has been perfectly functional electronic devices that, well, fail to function at all, or produce images containing things that were not seen with the human eye when the shutter was clicked.

“It’s mostly about immersing yourself in the Island’s history,” Liz says, “and getting away from the pages of books and into the actual spaces to hear about the lives that were lived there. Come with an open mind - and expect anything and everything!”

To find out more about tours focusing on the Island’s haunted past and history; go to norfolkisland.com.au/stories/ghostlyencounters to find one that fits for you.