The Lovers Ghost
Tristan James, ACT, Australia
May 2003
I used to live in Tasmania, in fact my family is from Tassie. I thought I had a rather boring family history (The usual rubbish about opening up the southern area Blah, Blah, Blah). So I was surprised to hear that there was a ghost haunting our ancestral home. I have never seen or heard it but apparently it is only seen by family members who are deeply in love with each other. It is a friendly ghost who just appears, smiles, mouths something and then disappears.
The ghost is of my triple great aunt who fell in love with an ex-convict but was engaged to the son of another wealthy family. When her father found out he locked her in her room and moved the wedding to an earlier date. Rose (That was her name) eventually, with aid from a maid, got out of her room and met up with Jonathon (the ex-convict) deciding to run away together and sail to Sydney to start a new life together. But Jack (the fiance) knew about the meeting and secretly followed her. He confronts her when she gets back home and she tells him that she is pregnant. He looses his temper and tries to rape her, when she kills him with a poker from the fireplace. She runs back to Jonathon and they head off into the bush. When Travis (the father) finds out that she is gone and that Jack is dead, he goes to the police and blames Jonathon on the murder and also says that he kidnapped Sara.
They send a search party out to find them but only Sara is found... by Travis. The story goes that Travis met up with the two lovers, finds out that Sara was pregnant kills Jonathon and begs Sara to come home with him. She does but later kills herself in her bedroom. I don't know much more, but when I tried to look for police records on the search there was none because most of the files were lost during a bush fire, so I don't know if the story is true, but the ghost certainly is.