HAUNTED RUINS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20065, 11 October 1939, Page 12

HAUNTED RUINS

EERIE TALES TOLD “GHOSTS” OF NORFOLK SPOOKS’ MEETING-PLACE STORY OF “LADY JANE” In addition to its great natural beauty, and much architectural loveliness, Norfolk Island has its favourite “ghosts” as a further attraction. Sad to say, most of the old buildings are in ruins, but among those ruins and in some of the buildings of the convict era that still stand are, according to the islanders, wandering spirits, which are old friends of the present residents. Stories of -haunting are told of Government House, but their origin cannot be traced, and an old island lady who passed her youth in the house stoutly maintains she never heard or saw anything supernatural. Quality Row, where most of the official houses stand, has its eerie tales. Soldiers in the colourful uniforms of old, and Empire-gowned and crinolined ladies are said to have revisited -their old homes, and the clanking of the chain gangs is held to re-echo at times. Be that as it may, the lovely old stone cottages and the sad ruins are full of stories. Beyond Quality Row lies the graveyard, and if you walk past there after dark you must whistle, to send wandering spirits back to their restingplaces. On the way to the cable station there is one part of the road where ghosts are said to foregather after dark, and above the headstone land-ing-place a lone figure, it is persistently claimed, has been seen from time to time standing on the cliff and gazing out to sea. If you are brave enough to approach him he suddenly vanishes. He is supposed to be the ghost of a convict who expected to escape by a boat which was to pick him up off the headstone, and was drowned while attempting to reach the boat Limerick Cottage. In the famous Pine avenue stands an old stone cottage generally known as the Limerick Cottage. This cottage is one of the best-known “haunted” places in the island, and. should you visit it, the present owners will show you over it and entertain you with stories of the. ghost. In 1832, the story is told, William Henry Tennison Pery, grandson of then then Earl of Limerick, landed in Sydney. For a short while he occupied the position of clerk to the Post Office, and was then sent by Governor Bourke to Norfolk Island as clerk to the commandant, Major Anderson. The young man was probably unaware that a letter went with him from the Governor to the commandant instructing the latter “to keep a tight rein” on his new clerk, who had had a wild record at home. Whether because of the tight rein or not, the new clerk seems to have satisfactorily fulfilled his duties, and six years later he married Susannah, daughter of Lieutenant William Sheaffe of the 50th Regiment. The young couple set up housekeeping in Limerick Cottage, the residence provided by the Government. Here their son, who was later to become the third Earl of Limerick, was born. In 1841 Susannah Pery died, and her remains lie in the old cemetery at Kingston, with a gravestone’ bearing the customary record of her virtues. Her husband found assuagement for his grief less than a year later when he married Margaret Jane, daughter of Captain Nicholas Horsley of the 96th Regiment. Eye-Witness’s Claim The ghost story is based on idle go.ssip, which had absolutely no evidence to support it. The tombstone records that she died “Fifteen days after giving birth to a daughter.” But the story persisted that on certain nights every year faint moans and strangled coughs as of someone choked or being choked are heard. Residents on the island to-day claim to have heard those sounds. One woman now living says that one evening when it was nearly dark when she was staying in the cottage some years ago, a child playing in the garden called out, “Oh, look; come and look.” The woman claims that she and several others went on to the verandah and saw a light among the trees at the end of the garden. From that light a girl came towards the house. They all thought it was a living girl until the floating movement of the figure and a certain luminousness about it informed them otherwise. The face of the girl was pale and lovely, “beautiful like an angel,” and, though badly frightened, the spectators felt that the ghost meant them no harm. of those spectators saw the same thing again. The story, of course, has been told in many forms, and the ghost is often alluded to as “Lady Jane,” but there was no Lady Jane on Norfolk Island, and Margaret Jane, the second Mrs. Pery, separated from her husband years later and lived until 1875. The name given is probably a confusion between those of the first and second wives. Undoubtedly it was poor Susannah who died in Limerick Cottage, and, whatever the truth of her passing, she lies now in the old graveyard with her infant daughter by her side.