Halloween Haunts: An Australian Gothic Haunt…
Leanbh Pearson
I’m an Australian horror author which means our celebrations for Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, Dia de los Muertos occur in Fall in northern hemisphere. But for us Aussies and Kiwis the Spooky Season is in Spring. Mind flipping? Just a little hemisphere flip to the right…(insert Rocky Horror Picture Show Joke).
So, let me tell you a Halloween Haunts tale from downunder.
Here’s our scene. Our Trick O’ treaters deal with warm-hot temperatures, their costumes and plastic or rubber masks making them sweating and Face paint melting. No worries. We enjoy the Spooky season anyway!
While I’ve got your attention, I’m going to weave some of the inspiration for my latest release. It’s an Australian-based gothic horror and alternate history trilogy begun with Bluebells ( In the Devil’s Garden, 1) set in the historical Australian town of Berrima.
It’s one the oldest towns and was once the only major road between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne for horse-drawn coaches in 1890s. As with many colonial towns, Berrima was built using the labour of convicts from Britain and built with the raw geological ingredients on hand. In this case, golden-coloured sandstone blocks used to build the bridge, church, a few houses but mostly the jail and courthouse.
As a seventeen year -old, we’d drive back to home at dusk after riding my horses. I was fascinated with the view of the purple-blue twilight sky and the last golden sunlight falling on the bridge that crossed the river on the outskirts of Berrima. Dragonflies shone silver and tiny wrens flittered above the river.
Here, closest to our spring equinox if there was magic, it was here. The atmosphere was intoxicating and it called to me like a faintly heard tune by Pan. It whispered of tales from the town’s folk, the stories of the convicts and the merchants of the town. if ever there was a place where the past, present and futures overlapped in a charged atmosphere of awakening life and shaking off death’s cold grasp, it was in this place.
This was where my inspiration for an alternate history with the world as we know it had been irrevocably changed in 1917 in the war to end all wars.
What else haunts this town? The tales of convicts whose blood and sweat was marked into the stone jail with a signature from each convict builder. What was stranger to me, on the other-side of the river was the small sandstone church. Even further, about a mile out of town is a small graveyard, unfenced and untended in the middle of the Australian bush.
Driving home one October evening in the half-light turning the road and bush into a shadowland of eucalyptus trees and dense shrubs.
This particular night, it’s dark and raining. While we carefully navigate the narrow twisting road, the car headlights are bounce as we reach a bump in the road.
The headlights catch a figure on the side of the road, walking in the rain away from town. My breath catches in my throat and a clamminess slides along my skin. The man was tall man and dressed in a long oilskin coat and wide brimmed hat pulled low against the downpour of the rain. Who would be out on an evening like this? This road goes to the weir and graveyard then on for miles and miles until the next town.
The car headlights dip into the hollow and then resurface half-a- second later but the apparition is gone. Instinctively, my gaze went to the graveyard on the bare and rocky soil as we rounded the edge of it. Old eucalyptus forests and darkness of the plot face me through the rain. Yes, there was something otherworldly in this area. I look at the timber crosses and the sparse blocks of sandstone.
I am always pulled to this place. Berrima calls to me where these atmospheres are have infused into Bluebells and the following novellas In the Devil’s Garden (available from PS publishing UK – links below). This is a homage to my passion for gothic horror and alternate history. Where else could there be better inspiration than where past and present meet and shift to form new futures?
If this little haunting tale has sparked your interest to explore some Australian gothic horror, also do take a look at my chapbook “The Devil in the Loch Ard Gorge’ coming in 2027 from Meerkat Press. Another great Australian gothic horror author is Kaaron Warren who brings the Australian atmosphere to all her works.
Enjoy the spooky season wherever you are!
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