Toowoomba ghost stories and sightings: Spooky pictures will freak you out

TOOWOOMBA is an idyllic town with a rich colonial history, but something sinister could be lurking within the shadows.

There have been a number of mysterious ghost sightings and eerie paranormal experiences and the Queensland town even has its very own ghostbusters.

People have recruited Kylie Samuels and her team to identify paranormal happenings at their homes and have sent her pictures to determine what kind of poltergeists may be skulking around them.

Ms Samuels even created a Facebook page, Toowoomba Ghost Chasers, which has attracted a large following.

Ms Samuels has been interested in the paranormal since she was young and as she got older she started visiting cemeteries and took photos.

“After finding a few unexplained things in my photos, we decided to start a page just to share the pictures,” she told news.com.au.

“We have heard many stories from Toowoomba. We get a lot of people asking us to come investigate their homes as they are convinced they have something there.”

Ms Samuels said there were plenty of paranormal incidents happening in the town that not even she could explain, but there are some ghosts who make themselves known.

“We have our famous ghost girl we have captured a few times who we call little red girl. She seems to follow us around the Drayton cemetery.” Ms Samuels said.

HAUNTED HOUSES

According to Toowoomba’s ghost hunters, many poltergeists live in historic buildings around the city.

Locals have reported seeing a lady in a long, grey dress carrying keys on a metal ring inside the Gowrie House, a heritage-listed villa and YWCA hostel.

It is believed the rattling of keys can be heard in dead silence and the ghost has been spotted by both staff and visitors.

“Oakdene” is another historic house with a chilling story.

According to the ghost chasers, a man in a brown suit is often seen passing the front windows.

“A heartbeat can also be felt in the bed beside existing residents,” the ghost chasers said.

It is believed a mother and daughter once haunted another house named “Longview”, which was built in the mid 1800s. Even though it was knocked down in 1956, an eerie presence is still felt at Mount Lofty, which is right near the eastern end of North Street where the house used to stand. There is also a mysterious figure often seen at the Toowoomba Railway Station.

She is described as an attractive woman, wearing a long dress and gloves and carrying an umbrella. Ms Samuels said it was believed to be Elizabeth Perkins, a woman who died at the station in 1944.

MYSTERY OF MAGGIE HUME

Ascot House is one of the more chilling haunted houses in Toowoomba.

It’s another heritage building that was built in the 1870s for Frederick Hurrell Holberton, who was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council.

The mansion was bought in 1984 by renovator Lois Jackman and not long after moving in, Ms Jackman noticed the walls felt like ice and heard bellowing footsteps through the empty home.

She later discovered a ghost name Maggie Hume was still very much alive in the historic building. Maggie was a lonely servant who drank a lethal dose of strychnine, a toxic chemical used as pesticide, in July 1891.

According to John Pinkney’s book Haunted: The Book of Australia’s Ghosts, Maggie had a scandalous secret for the era in which she lived. She was unmarried and pregnant.

The book claims Ms Jackman tired to find the identity of the ghost for 20 years and only learnt the truth in 2004, after trawling through historic documents and police records.

Before discovering the truth, Ms Jackman spoke to a neighbour who lived on the street for 70 years. The neighbour used to play with the children of previous Ascot House owners, who told her there was a ghost inside, and they had seen it.

One night Ms Jackman was in her home, and entered a room which needed new wiring and light fittings. A stream of light was peeking into the room from the hallway, allowing Ms Jackman to see what was only in front of her.

“When I was about halfway, I got a shock. Someone dragged their finger across my left shoulder. I swung around to confront whoever it was. No one was there. Immediately I started to rationalise. I was tired. It was nerves. I’d imagined it. Or perhaps I brushed up against a potplant,” she told Pinkney.

“But there were no plants in that room. My desperate attempts at denial didn’t work. I had to admit to myself that something — a finger — had definitely touched me.”

Years after Ms Jackman began to trawl through newspaper clippings to find more out about what happened at Ascot House, she received a call from somebody who heard of her research.

That person was related to Maggie, the 23-year-old housemaid for Frederick Holberton.

According to Pinkney, Maggie has been spotted in the house for centuries.

That’s just one of many eerie stories that circulate around the town, and Ms Samuels believes them all to be true.

“I believe Toowoomba is one of the most haunted towns and I think it’s due to the history of our town and the fact that a lot of the old buildings are still around,” she said.

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