There are no ghost horses in Ivanhoe but a story told to members of the Ivanhoe Returned Services League members could explain a strange sighting at their offices. On a Friday night 20 years ago, as Ivanhoe RSL president Fred Cullen walked towards the offices to finish some club reports, he was greeted by two RSL members fleeing the building in panic. The men – the RSL barman and a patron – told Cullen there was a ghost inside the offices, which used to be a homestead. For a moment, Cullen suspected he was the victim of a practical joke. But the men were genuinely perturbed.
He asked them to stay near the rear office door while he investigated. When he went inside he stood dumbfounded in the hall.
“I saw a luminescent light and quite clearly it was a woman in a nightdress, she was just floating above the ground,” Cullen says.
“The light was fading as I saw it was just there for a minute or so.”
A few years later, Cullen was told that one of the home’s owners had a wife who was accused of having an affair with the homestead’s gardener.
When her husband confronted her, she hanged herself from a staircase balustrade.
The suicide story is hearsay but Cullen reckons it is true. After all, he saw the ghost.
As for Bundoora’s mysterious Crocodile Man, Sinton believes he may be linked with the Aborigines who lived there centuries ago.
For him, it is another strange experience to add to the list.
