Grim Past

In the early 1950s I worked on a newspaper in Sydney Australia and after finishing work about 2 am would walk from a suburban railway station to my home. It was one of the few times that the area had no traffic and was silent. I used to notice that at one particular spot on Burwood Road, I would hear other footsteps as though somebody was walking with me but they would stop when I did, so I assumed that my footsteps were echoing from slightly rising ground ahead.

A few years later another friend was talking about a haunted house that his aunt had briefly occuppied. It turned out to be a house in Burwood Road quite near to where I had often heard the footsteps. Later I found that a gallows had once stood quite near to that spot and that several executions had occurred there. Co-incidence, imagination or some freak in the way sound travels ? I don't know. But when I first heard the footsteps I knew nothing of the area's grim past.

By: patg88@pcug.org.au