Nick Jarvis
It seems like the last post about the Ward 5 ghost has ruffled a few feathers out in the community and that’s fine we all have our own beliefs which I respect however I tend to keep an open mind.
When it comes to the Paranormal I want to discover the truth, I want hard evidence, I want to experience something out of this world, but the other side of me is quite factual and requires solid evidence before I start to believe.
I take most second hand reports with a grain of salt, because if I don’t experience it firsthand it’s hard for me to believe.
However this one report keeps popping up every couple of years and the consistent way it’s reported and portrayed is very hard to deny even if it’s hard to believe.
The staff members who witnessed the ghost are adamant about the events that took place in Ward 5 even to this day approximately 30 years on.
Some of these people have gone to their graves swearing by this report. At the time working within Government they were risking their employment and credibility however that did not sway their belief.
All this makes me believe their accounts.
Usually over time people who witness something that’s out of this world slowly start to doubt themselves and tend to start trying to find a more natural explanation for things. I do this myself all the time, but these people still swear by it over 25 years on.
In all my experience I suggest there is a lot of credibility in their accounts and urge people to keep an open mind, even if it’s hard to believe.
The below account is from Trudy she worked on Ward 5 during the peak of the haunting and witnessed it first-hand. Her account once again is identical to another couple’s account when I interviewed them several years ago, sadly one of them has passed. That account is already uploaded on the website.
The first names have been changed to protect their identity. But I know who they are and know that these people did in fact work on Ward 5 and were involved in this incident.
Trudy- Registered Psychiatric Nurse - Ward 5 Account
(Should be noted that Trudy documented these events in an exercise book. Trudy is currently looking for the book and will give me a copy when it’s found.)
With regards to the possession that took place in Ward 5, I wasn't there to witness it. However Trevor told me he had never ever seen anything like it before, in all his years as a psychiatric nurse. Even Dr Pasha was mystified, along with the ambulance people. They had to sedate Mark apparently and took him to the RHH. Trevor said in all the years of nursing in Sydney and witnessing DT's, drug withdrawals, overdoses etc, he had not seen anything that even slightly compared to what he saw in ward 5. Marks eyes were rolling around and he was screaming for someone to help get it out of him.
I was working with Harrie on night duty and he told me that on the previous night he and a registered nurse were working in ward 5 when they both saw the ghost numerous times. They watched it float through a wall and hover above a lounge in the small TV room. The RN was annoyed by the ghost, she apparently had the spirit of a little boy in her own home and wasn't frightened or alarmed by it, so she was just annoyed that this thing in ward 5 as it kept hanging around them in the nurse’s office when they were trying to do some work. The RN told it to "go away, I am not frightened of you. Just leave us alone" apparently, according to Harrie. But it didn't.
The next night, I worked there with Harrie and he told me what had happened the previous night. He told me it was still there, but every time I went to go see it, it would apparently just shoot across the room and disappear, so for a long time I couldn't get close to it.
One time we agreed he wouldn't say anything but motion to me that it was there, so while I was sitting in the foyer watching him look into the glass window of a small "Activity room” he suddenly motioned with his hand to quickly come over to him. By the time I had reacted and stood up, Harrie said the ghost raced diagonally across the room and just disappeared. He said this ghost had RED EYES....and it had been staring at him thru the window. (I might just add here that a few others have said it had red eyes that it was completely different to the other spirits they had seen in that ward. They also say it is evil. VERY much so)
While walking down the corridor on the west side to do a round, with Harrie beside me, suddenly and without warning, he was pushed really, really hard and fell in front of me landing very heavily on the wall beside me. I could not see anything but when Harrie stood up, he just stood there motionless, staring straight ahead. The colour in his face drained away and tears welled in his eyes. He stood there like that for maybe one or two minutes. The hair on my neck went up, i felt very cold but that was all. The push that Harrie had was as if someone had been running up behind him and just pushed him with all their might, it was that hard. Harrie was frustrated and couldn't understand why I could not see it right in front of him.
We continued on doing our rounds after he calmed down and again he was pushed, exactly the same thing happened again. He was waiting to have a hip replaced and was very worried he would be pushed where there were no walls and he would fall onto the floor, causing major pain, but thankfully that never happened.
We then kept trying to do our rounds, but - it was if Harrie walked into a concrete post - suddenly, as he walked beside me, he would just come to an abrupt stop, stare straight ahead, went pale again, transfixed. That happened a couple of times.
After that, Sandra B was with me another night. She told me she had seen it many times and wanted me to see it. So we both walked down the corridor to the west end but I felt I couldn't go any further, it was frightening atmosphere. So Sandra went ahead and was looking in the glass windows of the empty rooms. She then went up to one of the windows, stood there for a few seconds and then let out an awful scream "Trudy get out of here!!! Go !!!!!" I took off as fast as I could back to the office. She told me she didn't know why she felt the need to say it, just that I had to get away from there fast...
After a few nights I rang the Night supervisor ( Cate A ) to come over as I was worried. The 3 of us (Cate, Harrie and myself ) walked around the west end of the ward until we reached an empty single room. Harrie entered and was just stepping slowly around in the room when suddenly Cate A grabbed my arm and began screaming. 'Look, look! It's right in front of him !!" I couldn't see anything and she was hurting my arm so i said "Cate, let go of me!! you're hurting me!" she didn’t let go straight away but instead became nearly hysterical, yelling " Look!!! It's right there!!!!".....I didn't want to imagine anything so I deliberately looked away and could see out a window on the other side of the hallway. There was a tree outside and it was slowly moving in the breeze. I concentrated on that for a few seconds then looked back to see, in front of Harrie ( Harries back was to us ) a faint white moving light. Kind of like a tv screen when it goes blank. This light was becoming brighter as I stood there and it began to take the shape of a head, neck and shoulders. Just then Harrie let out a blood curdling scream. "Trudy.... GO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I took off like lightning back to the office. I asked him why he screamed that to me but he had no idea why. Cate insisted that I report the ghost in the night duty book, which I did.
After that, management decided to move Harrie out of the ward. Harrie told me he had been present at the séance they had happened many years ago and felt that was the connection to him........
I then worked with a real sceptic - can't remember his name right now - but nothing happened that I could tell, though my off-sider was convinced he could hear it and sense it. Apparently when this guy worked there again, not with me, he was standing in the foyer having a cigarette, when he went to open the external door. He told others that he could see a face looking back at him through the glass window of the door and turned to see who was behind him but there was nobody there. He looked back at the window and just then the door slammed shut in his face. After that he apparently chained smoked the rest of his pack of cigs and refused to work there again.
Another staff member took his camera into the ward after that and took a series of random photos. I wasn’t there at the time. A lot of us had a copy of a photo he took which looked like half a white aura, starting from the middle of the top of a head, down the neck, out to the shoulders and down and just petering off into nothing. Management got wind of the photos and demanded them but we all refused as they were private property.I destroyed my photo many years ago as i felt it somehow connected me with an evil force and didn’t want it in my home anymore, sadly. Apparently all other photos have either mysteriously disappeared or been lost over time. The camera ( infra-red ) never worked again and it was taken to Kodak, along with the 'aura ghost' photo but they were not able to understand or explain why the camera would not work, or how that photo could be made, it was a complete mystery to them.
I have been told that this ghost followed another staff member home, shredded his bedding.
Also, Harrie told me he had not told his wife as she was a firm non-believer, but one night he came to work and told me how he had been sitting in his lounge room at home with his wife, when the ghost appeared in the room. His wife became hysterical. They got a priest in to remove it.
Trudy stated that there was one patient on Ward 5 that apparently could see the ghost she seemingly talked to it, the way she interacted with it seemed to us that she was referring to the ghost.
I do recall a TAN nurse telling me that when she walked into the ward one morning, the cross she wore around her neck on a chain, suddenly broke and was thrown across the floor. Also remember someone else telling me that some weird things had been written on the steamed up windows but when they went back it had gone.
Once staff were about to enter the nurses office once and saw 2 objects levitate, move across each other and land in opposite places again. Some smelt burning toast thru the night, some also heard toilets flushing constantly.
One night with Harrie, we had just come back from doing a round and all the cutlery that had been set up on the tables had been moved and were all back to front, also all the locked windows along the hallway heading west, were unlocked when we came back....
I asked Trudy what happened to the ghost, and Trudy said I have a friend who is psychic, she believes the ghost is attached to the grounds and not the building. She believes it is still there in the grounds.She said it was in Olga house for a brief period but it is back connected to the land that ward 5 was on and is still there in that area.
Trudy went on to say there were many ghosts throughout Willow Court apparently but nothing like the Ward 5 ghost. One ghost she heard of was an old lady who used to stroke the staff's hair, and ghost of small children.. one whispered into the ear of a ward aide saying "you're late, aren’t you" when she was putting laundry away.
