Feb 28 2008
The Miserable Ghost of George Grover
Being a ghost can’t be much fun.
Imagine the discomfort of being a disembodied personality, the flotsam of a soul, an entity essentially cast adrift in the twilight zone between the spiritual and physical realms. No wonder ghosts enjoy frightening people, it must break the bloody awful monotony.
But generally speaking Australian ghosts are not very scarey at all.
Take, for example, the ghost of the vicious George Grover who was beaten to death by convict labourers and thrown into the river during construction of the Richmond Bridge in Tasmania.
Grover was a particularly nasty man when alive. Transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1825 for the common catch-all crime of theft, he managed, in just four years, to thoroughly ingratiate himself with his jailers. There’s a word for someone who does that and I’m sure it’s not unique to Australia.
In any case by passing on information about his fellow convicts to the authorities and proving himself to be a ferocious bully and stand-over man, Grover got himself a job as the Flagellator at Richmond. Savagely flaying the unprotected flesh of another human being with a cat o’ nine tails is a particularly heinous job in any part of the world.
One morning in 1832 his tormenting of his fellow prisoners went too far and George ended up, according to the Coroner, “fallen or pushed” from the parapet (four feet high and difficult to trip over) of Richmond Bridge.
Now his spectre haunts the bridge. But does he gibber from the walkway? Does his ghastly apparition leap out wielding a whip still spattered with the blood of his victims? Does he give out a hair-raising shriek as he plummets, or do you shudder when you hear the hollow laugh of a dead man? No. These days his phantom merely strolls up and down the bridge giving the occasional tourist a bit of a start.
Indeed, Grover’s miserable spook takes a back seat to a pooch. Richmond Bridge is also home to the ghost of a large black and white dog which has sent hundreds of innocent people running in horror in broad daylight.
Give it up, George, just go to hell.
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* Photo of Richmond Bridge by Jenny Campbell
* The Richmond Bridge, Tasmania, built in 1823, is the oldest bridge in Australia still in use. It’s roughly 25kms from the state capital, Hobart, and spans the Coal River in the heart of a region known for boutique wineries, convict history, and natural beauty
* Do not try ghost-hunting at home
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