The Guyra Ghost

On 8th April, 1921, the Bowen family were^[2] woken up with loud thumpings in their cottage. Over the coming days there were knockings on the walls, stones were thrown onto the roof and outside walls of the house. On the third night, sharp bangs were heard on the inside walls of the house, shaking the cottage. Almost all of the windows in the cottage were smashed.None of the family could find the source of the activity, although most the activity seem to be around,the Bowen's twelve-year-old Minnie. Ben Davey, a student of spiritualism and theosophy, visited the Bowen house. He learned that May, a daughter of Catherine Bowen's by a former marriage, had died about three months earlier.

He told The Sunday Times, he suspected the spirit of May was trying to communicate with her half sister Minnie. ^[3]"I said to the girl, If the knock comes again, ask if that's your sister May.She replied, I can't speak to my sister she's dead.I coaxed her, saying, 'Speak, dear. Even if your sister can't speak she might knock again.'I hardly spoke the words before the knock came again. I can tell you my hair stood up on end. But I continued to coax the girl, and about five minutes later a third knock came. Then the little girl crossed and blessed herself, put her hands up in supplication, and said, 'If that's you. May, speak to me.She was silent a moment and then began to cry.I asked her, “Did May speak ?'She said, 'Yes, May spoke.She said, I can't tell you. The message is for mother.She then went over and laid her head on her mother's lap, crying. Her mother said, Well, tell the gentlemen what she said ,she told her mother ,Tell mother I am in heaven, and quite happy. Tell her it was her prayers which got me here, and I will look after her for the rest of my life."

The Bowen family,held séances to contact the Ghost.Who they now believed to be their daughter May. Soon the town of Guyra had heard of the hauntings The police arrived at the Bowen house, and kept watch over the house as the the phenomena continued. One policeman was so affected by the activity he was sent away for a rest. The locals were so terrified, that they armed themselves and began sleeping with their weapons. A five-year-old boy found a pistol on a bedroom table. The boy thought it was a toy, and he picked it up and shot at his six year-old sister. She survived but was left with a bullet in her skull, which could not be removed.

On the 18th of April, Harry Jay Moors arrived in Guyra.^[4] Harry Moors, was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle.He was very well known for his interest in the supernatural. Harry Moore spent three days in the Bowen house, before he returned to Sydney.He was convinced that a poltergeist was responsible for the hauntings in Guyra.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, on the 22nd of April, it was stated that, "Mr Moors, in discussing the matter yesterday, said the people of Guyra resented very strongly some of the reports which had gone out from the township concerning the affair, because of their ceaseless vigils and very exhaustive efforts to get at the bottom of the disturbances. Mr. Moors speaks from his own experience of these ceaseless efforts on the part of the people of the district, and the police and others, and says that any criticism levelled against them is quite unfair. He had spoken to the girl, who had impressed him as being normal, although, according to one party, her mother had described her as being highly imaginative."

The Bowen family returned from the fields to find that heavy shutters and battens, nailed over broken windows, had been smashed and piled on the verandah.A few nights later, two large stones struck a wall against which a policeman was standing.William and Catherine Bowen,believing that the hauntings were centered on their Minnie,^[5] sent her to her grandmother's house in Glen Innes 60 kilometres away.After Minnie arrived at her Grandmothers,the wall started shaking ,there were unexplained thumps and noises.Ornaments fell off the sideboard.After a time Minnie's parents brought her back to the Guyra cottage. The the strange phenomena simply faded away.^[6] Minnie did admit to throwing three small stones, on the roof to frighten her sister-in-law.But she denied having anything to do with, anything else that went on in the house.

Possible reasons for the Guyra Ghost Hauntings

Colin Newsome,a historian from Glen Innes,New South Wales,heard two different accounts of Minnie sister May's death. One story has it that she died after a botched abortion, the other that, young, pregnant and unmarried, she threw herself into a waterhole and drowned.

Maybe twelve year old Minnie, was a poltergeist medium as it has been reported .A Sunday Times journalist considered her a rather odd little girl ,"Minnie is tall, thin and dark, with peculiar dark, introspective eyes that never seem to miss any movement in a room. When she speaks to you she never smiles, and seems to look beyond or through you ... she has a rather uncanny aptitude for anticipating questions, almost before they are asked".

A few days before the Guyra Ghost ,began to haunt the Bowen's the townspeople of Guyra ,^[7] there had been the unexplained disappearance of an 87-year-old Irishwoman, Mrs Doran.On 5 April, a farm worker had reported seeing Mrs Doran "walking across the fields with a potato in each hand. She topped a rise and was gone".After search parties had thoroughly searched the entire district looking for the Mrs Doran, no trace of her was ever found. She had vanished into thin air.