Mount Evelyn History Group receives regular enquiries about ghosts, many publicly on our Facebook page. Maybe you can help?

One such query was about a ghost of a past tenant of a property thought to be formerly a nudist colony, who was ‘looking’ for something. The person being haunted was 'extremely scared by the visitation'.

There was a nudist colony in a large log cabin that stood back from 53 David Road. It had gone out of use as a nudist camp long before 1948, which is as far back as our information goes. From the verandah you could see a wooden bridge over a tributary of Olinda Creek, which ran through the property. The creek fed a lake or swimming pool, formed by a stone embankment, and once used by the nudists. This cabin burnt down about 1960. [Doug Knox, Things Past #118, p.9]

Rin Vanderwerth and others recall that there was another nudist colony called Bishop's behind the Recreation Reserve where ‘Bishop's Palace’, built as 'Brother Bill's' Holiday House, formed part of St Mark's Social Settlement.¹ Rin has a brochure for Bishop's.

Rachael Foley posted on our Facebook page because she was researching if 'a young boy ever lived and died near my house. I live on Cameron Road Mount Evelyn, off Francis Crescent. The house was only built in the sixties but is most likely part of a larger property initially.' Rachael was posting because both of her sons 'years apart and without prior knowledge of each other's stories, have complained of a boy in their rooms'. Cameron Road is in the vicinity of the former nudist colony at David Road.

Not far away is the Kookaburra Lane area, and Sue Harris Dickson posted, 'I too have tried to find any information related to a young boy. Two of my children have seen him in our house on Hereford Road and our dogs behave very strangely when entering the areas of sightings'.

Also in Hereford Road, on the corner of Bailey Road, was the original Grantully, which was reputed to have a haunted room [The Argus 22/3/1941, p.7s]. The house, which had belonged to banker Thomas Elder Boyd, had stood at South Yarra from the 1840s, and was called Rosemount. His youngest son, Douglas Kennedy Boyd, died there in 1871, aged 22. The house was moved to Mount Evelyn about 1917.

Priestley Crescent has more than its fair share of ghosts. Jeannette, a home owner in Priestley Crescent, sold up in the mid-1970s because she said there were ‘strange things’ there, and she was no longer comfortable. Jenny Stone enquired because she had come to think that there was the spirit of a child locked in a shed at the back of their Priestley Crescent property. There were sounds of chains, and the spirit was calling out to her children, particularly to a then four-year-old daughter, seemingly about a drowning or a death near the creek.

The original selector, David Birtles, did mention the death of a child in a letter. He selected a block on Monbulk Road, about opposite Margaret Road, putting it near Priestley Crescent, some time before 1895. He was the father of the champion long-distance cyclist and driver Francis Edwin Birtles [Things Past #72.] Rachael Foley notes that David Birtles was also the father of another Francis who died at age four in 1881, the same year that his famous brother Francis Edwin was born. We know nothing of how the child died. Another young boy, Joe Moschetti, was drowned in Olinda Creek in 1938.

From August 2004 to August 2006, Jenny H. and her son Stephen in Currajong Avenue felt the presence of a lady in the walk-in wardrobe in their end room. A previous owner, a woman, slept in that bedroom until her death in March 2001. Though supported by a friend, she was bitter and refused visitors. Her death notice says 'Passed away peacefully at home, aged 46 years. … Peace at last'.

For several years around 2008 a ghost was seen by many family members and visitors in a house in Hordern Road. The vision, seen (independently) by Leanne Groen and a mate of her husband’s, was of a young woman, seen in silhouette, about 20 years old, with long white hair and a white cheesecloth-style dress. She breathed in the ears of people sleeping in the room; visiting family, especially children, now won't sleep in that room. On one occasion the woman appeared with a baby dressed only in a white cloth nappy. Leanne says that by 2020 the apparition had not been seen for years.

And finally we have reports of a ghost in View Street in the 2000s, and years ago of a little girl haunting a rented house in Bailey Road. Over to you, readers!