1    Haunted House in Hindmarsh
2    Haunted House Update
3    Haunted House Explanations

Some heard "singing and music", others "knocking sounds". One felt a "tingling sensation" up his spine and a "feeling of being watched". Another saw a golf-ball-size light move horizontally two metres above the floor for one second. Also a UFH transceiver exhibited "unusual activity" and there were sharp temperature changes – 23^o up to 31^o in one instance and down to minus 2^o in another. Several saw "ghostly apparitions". Also a "gooey, sticky substance" oozed from the inside walls.

The brick house, built about 1850, is a former rectory next to a church in Hindmarsh, Adelaide. It has seven rooms at street level and three more down some stairs. The investigators who investigated the house from December to April were from P.R.I.S.M. – Paranormal Research Investigation Services and Monitoring.

Mr Pearce, president of P.R.I.S.M., experienced a: "knock, knock right in front of me, it echoed through the room." Another time when he and his sidekick, Pas Cutri, checked the kitchen: "we found the walls were again oozing with this substance…"

When the writer visited the "Hindmarsh house" in March the walls weren't exactly "oozing", but there were brown vertical lines such as might be made by hot chocolate spilt against the wall and left to dry. I suggested a taste test but no one complied.

P.R.I.S.M. member Warwick Doolan, who believes he has been abducted by aliens and wishes to start an Alien Abduction Support Group, saw a "white light" in the kitchen. He went in with an EMF metre which measures magnetic fields. A normal reading is .02 to .05 but Mr Doolan got 1.5. "This is a highly significant reading," he said. However, Mr Pearce said that next to a microwave the reading would be about 70.

Karen Roberts who believes she can contact "spirits" said, "We've been connecting with Reverend John Madden. He lived in the Hindmarsh house when he died when he was 79. That was in 1943." Ms Roberts added, "We heard footsteps on the stairs when we were communicating."

Another P.R.I.S.M. member – Linda – said, "I see things in dreams. I saw a short woman walking toward the house. She was wearing 1920s clothing."

Mr Pearce thought the dream significant because according to the Investigative Services of the Anglican Church a girl once died in a fire at the house.

Publicity via The Messenger led to a traffic jam when Pearce and Cutri spent the night of January 19 in the house. They met no ghosts but lots of sightseers who fired questions and clicked their cameras.

Mr Pearce's final assessment after investigations ceased in April was: "The reports that have come in so far seem to indicate that indeed the house is haunted, we have had a report from a lady whose father was a rector at the church, Rev John Madden. She was there from about 1937-1942 and remembers seeing a ghostly figure in a cape come into her room."
 

The ghosts of Hindmarsh House are keeping a low profile.

Members of PRISM – Paranormal Research Investigation Services & Monitoring – completed their investigation in April 2001. Their president, Laurie Pearce, concluded, "The reports…indicate…the house is haunted." (See Investigator 80)

The PRISM investigation stopped when the former owners sold the house and the new owners, the Nature Foundation, painted and renovated it.

There have been no further occurrences of any brown "gooey, sticky substance" oozing from walls.

The new owners have Mr Pearce's phone number to notify him of anything unusual, but have not phoned. It's as if the ghosts have left.

On re-reading the editor's article (No 80 p 30-31) I note that the reference to an "oozing substance" coming from the walls was in fact confined to the kitchen walls. This could easily have been cooking fat.

Another explanation for the vertical brown lines described by the author could be possum pee from a nest in the roof. "Vertical lines" suggests something (a liquid) running down the walls.

All the investigators were believers. One convinced that he was an alien abductee, another believes that she can contact spirits and a third who has dreams (so what?)!

Mr Pearce himself convened an organization specifically to investigate alleged ghostly phenomena. This implies a personal belief in such things and therefore anything lacking an immediate rational explanation would be seized upon as evidence of a haunting.

Perhaps a little knowledge of the expansion and shrinkage coefficients of timber and metal may help explain the knocks, creaks, bumps, cracks and sundry noises in the next investigation.

With solid and impeccable "investigative qualifications" such as those above Mr Pearce's unconvincing assessment was a foregone conclusion.

Harry Edwards
NSW