Port Elliot UFO Sighting 1995

 

 In 1995, Karen Lee of Port Elliot reported a UFO near her house. Her children called out to her because they were scared after seeing an object in the sky at about 7:10pm on Tuesday 29 August.
 Ms Lee ran from the kitchen to view the object, which she described as “big, round and red.”
 It hovered close to the family home, then sped away at great speed towards the ocean. Lee’s next-door neighbour, Ross Tuckwell also witnessed the UFO at about 7:30pm. Tuckwell was in his yard having a smoke when he witnessed what he described as a ‘huge floodlight’ that hovered over his Sorrento Parade home at Victor Harbor.[1]

Len and Louisa Quick also witness orange lights. They spotted four orange lights the night before floating in a triangular formation. They watched the UFO’s when suddenly one floated down from the sky. Len kept his spotlight on the object and watched it descend into the harbour, and very close to where they were positioned. It did not take them long to realise the UFO was an orange garbage bag!

 Only a few days later Victor Harbor police launched an investigation into the local UFO phenomena after a large orange garbage bag was found, partially deflated. Someone had turned garbage bags into sky lanterns.
 The fuel for the ‘UFO’s’ was believed to be a firelighter suspended inside the bag with light wire.[2]

 The police did not find it funny, stating, "For sure it's dangerous, It's a really silly act. For one, it's stirred up all this UFO talk but more importantly if one of these devices landed in a field or something they could create a bushfire. Because of the danger, we would recommend that people not try to undertake any similar activity."[3]

UFO mystery solved.

© 2022 Allen Tiller

[1] 'UFO sighted', Times, (1 September 1995), p. 1., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196384194

[2] 'UFOs all hot air', Times, (29 September 1995), p. 3., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196383187

[3] 'Police warn of danger', Times, (29 September 1995), p. 3., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196383189.

 The Haunting of the Exchange Hotel - Gawler

The Exchange Hotel was first licensed in 1868. On Saturday the 17th of May 1893, this hotel made national news after the suicide of R.F. Rankin. He had been wrongly prosecuted in Moonta for defrauding a chemist of 10 pounds.
 Rankin came to Gawler intending to stay the weekend. Rankin had some bad habits, he was an intravenous cocaine and morphine user.[1]  On Saturday evening, Mrs Lucas, the wife of the publican heard some painful groans coming from Rankins room, she alerted her husband, who tried, but could not open the door. They called their ostler, who climbed a ladder and broke into the room, opening the door. There on the bed was Rankin, lying dead among syringes and tubes of cocaine. Doctor Dawes was called to examine Rankin…but it didn’t take long for him to realise it wasn’t an overdose, but a case of poisoning.
  Found lying under the bed was a small bottle of prussic acid, which is also known as a solution of cyanide. It was used in fumigation and in mining, and the smallest amount can cause death instantly.[2]  Rankin had consumed about 15mls of the liquid. A jury concluded that most likely, Rankin was delirious from the amount of cocaine and morphine he had consumed, and possibly drank the bottle of cyanide without realising what he was doing. His death was listed as an ‘accidental suicide’.[3] 

 It is claimed a female houseguest died upstairs and she is to blame for several of the ghostly goings-on inside the hotel. Scott Fraser, a former publican of the Exchange Hotel has previously stated in the media that lights will randomly turn on throughout the various levels of the hotel. Even more unsettling is the strong smell of death that permeates the rooms of the hotel with no known source.
  Fraser had exterminators in twice, thinking a possum had died in the ceiling. After inspection, no source for the smell could be found, in fact, the smell seemed to move from room to room, and could sometimes be smelled in one corner of a room, and not another, as though an invisible wall was holding the smell in containment. The smell was bad enough that on some occasions people would choke, gag or vomit from it.

 This hotel is also claimed to be haunted by the spirit of a little girl. It is not known whom she might be, but she is often seen sitting on a bed in an upstairs room!

 

Researched and written for the Gawler History Team presentation ‘Ghostly Gawler’ by Allen Tiller © 2021

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[1] 'Coroners' Inquests.', South Australian Register, (30 May 1893), p. 3., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48521216

[2] ‘Hydrocyanic Acid Formula’, Soft Schools.com, (2019), http://www.softschools.com/formulas/chemistry/hydrocyanic_acid_uses_properties_structure_formula/228/

[3] 'Coroner’s Inquests.', Evening Journal, (30 May 1893), p. 3., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article197868964

 The Haunting of Euke House

Euke House was built on land subdivided from Mahoney’s Paddock and another allegedly haunted house, Yenda, in Gawler.

The land was bought at auction by the farrier, William Wilson Smith in 1874. In 1875, Smith sold the land to the auctioneer who had sold it to him, Mr John Wilkinson.
Wilkinson is assumed to have built the house between 1875 and 1879. Wilkinson sold the property to Joseph Wilcox junior and William Roe Lewis in June 1879, it was sold again two months later to John Frederick May who was in a business partnership with his brother Alfred at iconic Gawler business the May Brothers. May leased the house to Edward Luca who bought the property in May 1894.

 The property changed hands many more times, before becoming the home and medical surgery of Dr Gemmel Wilson Tassie in the 1960s until 1971 – and it is during this period that the alleged haunting began.

A cleaner in the home in the 1980s noticed that after she made the bed, the mattress would compress as if someone had just sat down. She noted sweet fragrances, in one bedroom, and every now and then, things would move around, she would walk in, place her cleaning items on a table, and a few seconds later, they would be on the other side of the room on a dresser. She never saw the spirits of the house, but claimed she felt that one room was haunted by a former doctor, another a former patient and that another spirit was a 'youngish' girl…could the girl be Gracie or Anna from Yenda?

 This information was drawn from my talk for the Gawler History Team in 2021. You can watch the entire presentation via the video link below:

© 2022 Allen Tiller

 A Haunting at the Royal Adelaide Hospital

The foundations for the Royal Adelaide Hospital (now Lot 14) on North Terrace were laid in 1840, but it took until 1855 for the construction of permanent buildings to begin. These new buildings took a year to complete and contained a surgery, dispensary, nurse’s dining room, chapel, and a surgeon’s quarters.  A two-story building was also constructed which featured inside it, padded cells and bedrooms.

A ghost story from the RAH comes directly from a nurse who was wrapping up a long night shift. The nurse was nearing the end of his shift and was running through the checklist of things to get done before the next shift started. He was tending to a patient who had just been pronounced deceased by the attendant doctor. The nurse washed the deceased man, completed the associated paperwork, then headed into the nurse’s station to await shift change.
  While sitting at the station waiting for the shift to change over, he felt like he was being watched, then noticed a dramatic drop in the temperature of the room. He looked towards the doorway, and saw, standing there, the deceased patient he had just washed. The man was fully dressed, with a big smile on his face, and was waving, as if to say “Goodbye” to the nurse.
  The nurse blinked his eyes in disbelief, and the man was gone... The nurse got up from his seat, ran across the hall into the room where the dead man’s body lay... and there he was, still laid out, still under his blanket, still deceased...

  The RAH also has a story about a ‘Grey Nurse’ the story is the same as it is in most hospitals worldwide. No one really knows who she is, but the Grey Nurse does her duties in death, much like she did in life, delivering comfort to the dying. Could it be that these “Grey Nurses” are Angels from God, sent to comfort the dying? 

© Allen Tiller 2022
(paranormal experiences are directly from the source)