HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) Why has it got to be rocks? I'm working on it now. I'm working on it. We're here. I'm steeped in it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We're on the other side of the world.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm trying to find it again. (Australian accent) Why'd it have to be rocks?
ED LARSON
What is that? Is that Australian?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It's a vibe here. You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Right. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm going. I'm just trying to capture an essence.
MARCUS PARKS
But we're not even in Australia yet. We're still in New Zealand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's the thing, I'm trying to get more of the New Zealand vibe. (New Zealand accent) New Zealand.
ED LARSON
Yes. That actually is better I think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm getting there.
MARCUS PARKS
All right. I would say that you're getting there but you're never gonna get there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not there. I'm never gonna land on a helipad, it's not about that.
ED LARSON
I feel like no matter if you were great at it or horrible at it, everyone's gonna be mad at you no matter what.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're right. And that's the magic of radio.
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm... Oh man, oh man. Am I not jet lagged, that's for certain.
MARCUS PARKS
Exhausted Henry Zebrowski and-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just have trails.
ED LARSON
Surprisingly fine Ed Larson.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are you fine?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why?
ED LARSON
I don't know. I feel like my body's just built differently.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I don't know what it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's because you can go to sleep in an instant. You have that-
ED LARSON
I choose to go to sleep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And none of the rest of us have that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
Last night I woke up at like 1:30 and I was like I should go back to sleep, it's a little early. I went to sleep early, I went to sleep at like 10. And then I woke up again at 4. I was like I should go back to sleep.
MARCUS PARKS
My god.
ED LARSON
And then I woke up again at 7 and I was like you know what? Back to sleep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One more round.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible that like a fucking giant from a fairy tale, you can just (snoring) for eternity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When I met Ed he as asleep on a giant cart of melons.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was asleep on it and chickens were running away from him.
ED LARSON
Surprisingly comfortable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well since we are on the continent, since we're on the other side of the world, we are gonna devote the next two episodes to Australia. But not as we usually devote episodes to Australia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true. Because a lot of times when we go out of the country, we're largely fascinated with true crime-
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And kind of what like the differences of what you guys all... What are the fun new crimes?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I like to see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we kind of had a little plan. It's like one of the proposed projects that we're gonna do Ivan Milat.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we're like the thing about Ivan Milat is that kind of it's just you go out in the woods and you don't come back.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like it's a story. We might get to it but we're like what's spooky in Australia? You never hear about it. I've never heard anything about it. And then I let my fingers do the walking.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then I found out that there is like a whole world of paranormal activity that's happened on these island nations that are extremely specific to this world.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Not in New Zealand though. Everyone just... I was talking to our wonderful guest producer Jo. And yeah, everything's just... Ghosts are like remembering your family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They have different-
ED LARSON
And they just kind of give you a hug and they're like I hope you're doing well.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh no. Here, even over in Australia, the ghosts are surprisingly friendly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're more connected to it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They're friendly, they're not really violent. Like in America and the UK, you get people thrown across the room, you get people that get covered in flies. Here they toss things at you almost in a flirty way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well or in a truly and really very interesting examples of what they call the trickster phenomena. Like the idea-
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, it's very trickstery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard to pin it down and it's in a bunch of different ways and it's also very confusing. And I think it's also, which is some to America, which is some of this, especially when it blends more into the high strangeness world, it does seem to affect those that are of a certain substrata of the populace.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is in the Australian terminology, you'd call them Bogans.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We call them white trash in America.
ED LARSON
You should stop saying that word.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that bad?
ED LARSON
Before you get us into a fistfight.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's bad?
ED LARSON
I will not stick up for you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
I won't either. I absolutely will not stick up for you. I am not gonna say like what he really meant was... I'm gonna say go ahead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I'm gonna say I told him not to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm a renegade.
MARCUS PARKS
So for the next two episodes, we're gonna be covering stories of Australian poltergeists that span well over a century, from 1887 until 1999. For our source, we used 'Australian Poltergeist: The Stone-throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases' by Tony Healy and Paul Cropper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Healy and Cropper are these... I see that pop up in all of the other research I was doing about Australian ghosts. Like they must be something along the lines of their Warrens.
MARCUS PARKS
I feel like they're kind of like Maurice Gross and Guy Playfair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Where they're a nice team. They work together and they like each other. I hope they like each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they embed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, they very much embed. Like Playfair and Gross.
ED LARSON
They sound like Blues Brothers backing band members.
MARCUS PARKS
Tony Healy. But one thing I wanna say right up top is that every story we're gonna discuss on these episodes, save for the one involving the sex worker, involves stones and/or pebbles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I'm not talking about just a few rocks here. These stories have hundreds if not thousands of stones, almost as if the stones of Australia are themselves charged with some sort of paranormal energy.
ED LARSON
Now am I wrong by assuming that a stone is slightly different than a rock? Like when I think of a stone, it's like smooth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Same.
MARCUS PARKS
Exactly.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I think. I think stones are fancy rocks.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Strangely though neither we nor our research assistants could find not only no explanation for this but not even a question as to why stones were such a central part of so many Australian poltergeist encounters. It's as if Australians never even thought to question why so many of their cases centered around stones. It's bizarre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I honestly wonder if it's just a straight up lack of interest about just the content in general, just the idea of the paranormal. Where they inherently don't necessarily believe it all that much to think about it. But it's weird because every one of the stories involves what they call apports.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is like a thing, that's like a term in paranormal work where it's like the idea of something appearing out of nowhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Think of it in like Poltergeist where shit just kind of falls from the ceiling.
ED LARSON
Okay, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it happens a lot. And then I feel like also we talked about it with Gef the Talking Mongoose, that was like that. I actually feel weirdly in UK stories there's a lot of apports.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But normally it's all over the place. It's like keys, like weird objects, personal things.
ED LARSON
Why would they care about ghosts if they gotta deal with all the fucking spiders?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probably. That's the problem. If the birds can kill your family, why are you scared of a rock throwing ghost?
MARCUS PARKS
However I must say that the repetition of the chosen poltergeist projectile in these stories does nothing to affect their fascination. Personally I think they add to the veracity of these stories, especially when we get to the more modern stories where scientific readings can be applied to set projectiles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Projectiles.
MARCUS PARKS
And we're only gonna be covering like a few stories here. I read probably seven or eight different stories that all involve stones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. I don't know why!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I have a theory that means nothing. Because there is a fairy character called the kobold that it does-
MARCUS PARKS
From where?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is in a German folklore. But it's the only other thing I could find that specifically said it's a wood sprite that sometimes lives in mineral areas and throws rocks around.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean I know in... The only thing that I can think of is that in Australia they have the dream rock, like out in the outback.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where the UFOs hang out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the big dream rock, it's a big aboriginal like huge place of importance. So maybe that gigantic rock is making all the little rocks go nuts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all wanna be rock! That's what you think? They're all like oh man, that's our aspirational rock hero.
MARCUS PARKS
But if we're gonna be talking stones, there's no better place to start than in New South Wales in 1887 with the story of the Large family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Great name.
ED LARSON
Yes. Yeah, I'm so happy about this.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this story occurred in the town of Cooyal 180 miles northwest of Sydney, at a farm owned by a family with the surname of Large. Bill Large.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't you call me Mr. Large, that's what I that's what my son called me. You call me by my first name, Very.
ED LARSON
How did they get to their house, beanstalk?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very funny.
MARCUS PARKS
And indeed they did live up to their name, for the wife of the Large family, Mrs. Large, gave birth to 15 children over the course of her life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Holy shit. Ugh god. At what point... I think that if you get to 12 children that becomes human trafficking. Because then you're just a child factory.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well despite having had 15 births under her belt-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Reporters at the time of the haunting were always eager to describe Mrs. Large's quote "classical shape, well formed body, and beautifully formed head."
ED LARSON
I don't know what that-
MARCUS PARKS
Pretty.
ED LARSON
Oh that means pretty?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think it means... It said specifically the shape of her head was beautiful.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what did it look like, a pair of tits? Wouldn't that be amazing?
MARCUS PARKS
It was also noted that she had excellent powers of description and reporters found her to be credible. Therefore they deemed the poltergeist experiences of the Large family to be legitimate. Now as most of these stories do, the story of the Large family began with a sustained shower of stones, although they did not rain down on the family's roof. Instead the stones appeared to fall through the roof and land softly on the farmhouse floor. Nevertheless reporters called these stones ghostly missiles, even though the projectile seemed to float through the walls and ceilings and they did no harm when they bumped into the family. As the Large family put it, it felt as if they were being struck by a bag of feathers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
ED LARSON
That is weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So like I'm trying to even imagine what that motion is in my head. So they're saying they're sitting in the living room and they're just watching rocks slowly fall to the ground?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Inside the house?
MARCUS PARKS
Very slowly. It's not necessarily like slowly fall to the ground. It just moves at a pace that is slower than you would expect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then it's not falling, it's floating.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's like floating down but at a faster... It's faster than a float but slower than a fall.
ED LARSON
Is gravity different down here?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Have you not noticed? Now the arrival of the poltergeist or the polt, as Australians call them, or at least in the book they use the term polt a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're good with nicknames here.
MARCUS PARKS
They are. That came when Mr. Large was riding home in February of 1887. He said that his horse got spooked by something and ran off.
ED LARSON
Maybe it was how big he was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just lost it inside of himself.
MARCUS PARKS
Mrs. Large blamed the spooking on the local children whom she said were miffed because she'd refused to host a dance party at her house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That also seems to be a very big constant in all of these stories, groups of children holding adults hostage. And I don't know why. In every one of these stories, there's some group of rapscallion children that run these small towns, they're all scared of them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why is that?
MARCUS PARKS
I have no idea. I think it's just the tradition. Maybe in Australia it's accepted that like when you're a child you're allowed to be a monster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you just band together with other children against the adults?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then when you become an adult, it's understood that children are allowed to be monsters and you let them be monsters. And then when you're an adult, you deal with it just like adults when you were a child dealt with you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
Getting it out of their system.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah because you know Australians, not violent at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Hey, they're not excitable is what he means.
MARCUS PARKS
But that same night, stones began to fall through the ceiling, flying in unnatural directions and at odd speeds. Interestingly from what I can tell, some of the behavior of the stones described by witnesses throughout all these stories closely resembles the movements described during UFO sightings. And I have no idea what that means but you know how UFOs, they say that they move in directions, like they'll move straight up and then it'll turn-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
At an angle that doesn't make any sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
That no object could actually turn at that speed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if it was piloted, the person inside of it would be smashed to pieces.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the stones sort of moved in that same way but just slower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems what they talk a lot in UFO terms, they use the word 'display' a lot. Like the idea is that when you see something, they know you're looking at them. All right? And so they do a little dance for you, they show you what's going on. A lot of it's to, they say if you believe the idea of the trickster phenomenon, the idea is to make it so you do sound like an idiot when you describe it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they want you to see something that doesn't happen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah and something that's very difficult to describe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
It almost sounds like they're coming from a portal from another dimension.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's very interesting.
ED LARSON
Rather than stones themselves. Where are the stones? Do the stones look like the rocks outside?
MARCUS PARKS
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's interesting. But then maybe we can go back through that dimension, we can go where Nelson Mandela died in prison.
ED LARSON
Don't even get me started.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We could get the technology. No! We get the free energy technology-
ED LARSON
Let them have their technology! If we deserved the technology, we would have invented it ourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We changed the name to Berenstain and nothing's been good ever since. And I don't know who did it and I think it was Nelson Mandela!
ED LARSON
I just think if you crack open the stones, you'll see little male aliens in them, dragging them around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That would be incredible!
MARCUS PARKS
Now the mysterious appearance of stones continued for five days. But that wasn't the only presence the Larges saw. They also reported to see a sort of levitating black sphere which incredibly will show up again in one of our stories that occur 100 years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does spook me a little bit. That's the stuff that always freaks me out. Because all of the other stuff doesn't really make... Kind of like you've heard it somewhat before in poltergeist cases. But this idea of like a lot of these end up having weird UFO stuff attached to them.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I also read that in Australia, there is... In America we do talk about flaps where UFOs and poltergeist activity-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Bigfoots and cryptids and everything, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But here it seems to be it's specifically like UFOs and poltergeists show up a lot together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well the next series I want to do Australian-based is talking about the secrecy around the US nuclear bases that are on Australian soil that have now been decommissioned. So now all of the people that used to work at those old nuclear bases are all coming forward and saying oh, you want to hear about UFOs? And some of these stories are fucking nuts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like weird. Again, you know my different shapes. One of my favorite new shapes I've heard, walking legs.
MARCUS PARKS
Ooh, walking legs is cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just legs, like flappy legs.
ED LARSON
And where's the rest of them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't know!
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's flappy legs.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the authors of 'Australian Poltergeist' speculate that the reason why the polt briefly made its home with the Large family was because there were just so many goddamn kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it just was another one in there.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And since many of them were adolescents, their close grouping created a small psychic storm which attracted a paranormal entity or phenomena. Quite possibly it might be that the Large family was just too large for the poltergeist to handle and that's why it dissipated after only five days.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And Too Large was actually his brother's kid.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm trying to not. You know what I mean? All in my head. If I sound distracted, it's because I'm just running various large joke puns that I don't want to do.
ED LARSON
No, I know Too Large and he was killed by Puff Large.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. See? We're stuck in this shit! We're built like this! Help me, god! Why is it like this?!
MARCUS PARKS
Our next story however-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, next story, please.
MARCUS PARKS
Is far stickier and far more aggressive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning)
ED LARSON
Hold on, so what happened?
MARCUS PARKS
It went away after five days, that's what I just said.
ED LARSON
They just left?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
It just left. And that's also another part of Australian poltergeists that I saw again and again. They just sort of leave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They fuck off.
MARCUS PARKS
At some point they just sort of leave. Yeah, it's not like in America where they bring in the priests and they start screaming.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There are some priests that show up later but they're very lazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all remind me of the guy from Dead Alive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they are very much like the guy. I think the guy from Dead Alive-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) I kick ass for the lord.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's of course based here in New Zealand. Yeah, it's very much like that priest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now this story, the next one, is that of the Guyra ghost which occurred in New South Wales in 1921. Now the Guyra ghost is one of Australia's most famous poltergeists. A persistent, wall-bashing, stone-throwing entity that tormented a man named William Bowen, his wife, and their children. Particularly, the poltergeist focused its energies on the Bowens' 12 year old daughter Minnie. Now Minnie seemed to be a bit of a Lydia Deetz, as several journalists described her as strange, odd, dark, sullen, peculiar, introspective, and incredibly observant.
ED LARSON
Maybe they should look in the fucking mirror.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a fucking 12 year old girl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they're really paying attention to this 12 year old. She was sultry and sweet. Everything you want. Long legs going all the way up to her ribs.
MARCUS PARKS
They wrote that she never smiled and had a piercing gaze. But it was also said that Minnie may have had some psychic powers. It was written that she was capable of answering questions before they were asked. And some reporters speculated that because the haunting was so attached to her, no matter how many dozens of people showed up, she possessed an occult power which gave her the ability to quote "bridge the great gulf between this life and the next."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She sounds very interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Very interesting person. But the most incredible claim came from Minnie's half-sister. In 2010, she claimed that Minnie had psychokinetic powers and often moved things with her mind. But this was when Minnie's half-sister was 97 years old. So do with that what you will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She'll say anything for attention. Once you're 97 years old, no one's coming around. You're not going to the disco anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're not going to the fuck lounge anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
You got three more years before you're special again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because 97, at this point people are like meh, we can't even call the news.
ED LARSON
How long are we gonna deal with you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So she's just like (Australian accent) I'll tell you something else, she could use all sorts of mind powers. Like whatever, grandma. All right? We fit the casket already. We bought the tomb.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Do me a favor, don't get any bigger.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Feeling her legs.
MARCUS PARKS
But back in 1921, Minnie Bowen was the center of one of the most talked about stories in all of Australia. And it all began on what was a seemingly normal April afternoon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was just a Tuesday. Just a beautiful Tuesday. Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Beautiful Tuesday in September. Minnie said that she was walking home when a strange man began chasing her. And he pursued her for a quarter mile, hurling a seemingly endless supply of stones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually I think these were more rocks themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These are rocks.
MARCUS PARKS
These are rocks.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
These are round, if they hit you, they're gonna cut you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If they're getting tossed by a guy you can see, they're rocks.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then, ooh man, that's gotta be scary.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The man however disappeared when Minnie made it home. Later that night, the family heard stones striking the outside walls of the house. And the family assumed that it was the same strange man from that afternoon. They searched the area but found no one. Now having an unhinged Australian man chasing your daughter and throwing rocks at your house all night is enough to make any family nervous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless you pull them into the family.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Being like well you'd better marry her if you want to hit her with a rock. You're gonna need to marry this little girl.
MARCUS PARKS
So the Bowen family contacted their local constables and asked them to guard the house the next night. Shortly after the constables arrived though, a pane of glass was smashed with what appeared to be a bullet from a .22 caliber weapon. But no bullet was found and no one heard a shot. Mysteriously, the appearance of bullets is another frequent appearance in Australian hauntings. And again, no one knows why or even fucking asks about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean we covered a story about an older gentleman that we did not know. So people were suffering, I guess this town it was something like 12 years of random broken windows. They didn't know what was going on until they finally centered in on this 80 something year old man that had a professional slingshot. And he used to sit in his backyard and shoot his slingshot into the sky out of pure rage of being still alive.
ED LARSON
And the moment he had to stop, what happened?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Died.
MARCUS PARKS
He died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He died, right. Because they cut off the one thing he did. Like if you took my father's cigarettes away.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? But the problem is that has a high population density. So if you shoot a slingshot up, yeah, you're gonna hit a bunch of people. This is more isolated. So I don't know if it's just getting sniped by rocks.
ED LARSON
See I think all of Australia is haunted and they just don't give a shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting.
ED LARSON
Yeah, they're like it doesn't bother me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now the next night the local sergeant joined the constables along with four civilians to guard the Bowen home. But despite them covering every angle they could, stones still managed to hit the house without anyone seeing who threw them. The next night, 10 people came to keep watch. But this seemed to only energize the poltergeist. A window was smashed at 7:30 pm and over the course of half an hour, 20 stones struck the house, including one stone half the size of a brick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Half a brick!
MARCUS PARKS
That's a big stone.
ED LARSON
That's a big old stone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a big stone.
MARCUS PARKS
Now authorities were pretty sure that there was just one or many clever hooligans at work here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're all saying this. There's so many rampant groups of hooligans that they're all just like oh it's got to be the hooligans.
ED LARSON
It's like 10 guys sitting outside the house, hitting it with rocks. And they're like we don't see nothing!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know who's doing that!
MARCUS PARKS
I never thought that the call could be coming from inside the house!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Certainly not us!
ED LARSON
Looks like you're haunted again, yeah. Go get me some more rocks.
MARCUS PARKS
Well on the fifth night, 80 people came out to guard and watched the Bowen house with a battery-powered searchlight that could immediately swing to the direction of a stone's throw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is all this whole town wanted. This is awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
It's something to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This again was unsuccessful. Furthermore-
ED LARSON
Something To Do, is that the name of the town?
MARCUS PARKS
Furthermore the house began to fall victim to the tell tale raps and thumps that accompany almost all poltergeist hauntings. The noises were similar to what they heard when stones hit the house but sometimes they'd hear the noise and no stones were found. And many of the sounds centered around where else but whatever room Minnie was in at the moment. These sounds grew progressively louder every day, unabated, to the point where they were shaking the walls. And reporters confirmed that the thumps could be heard from as far away as 300 ft. Now unfortunately for the men outside guarding the house after dark, most of the nights were overcast and it was sometimes raining. So the volunteers had a hard time seeing where the stones were coming from.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's the thing is if they're getting thrown at the house, at some point, you'd see where they were coming from.
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna get to a possible explanation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But what's interesting about this is that even though the stone throwing continued in the rain, the stones that were thrown were always dry and always very warm, regardless of the weather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know when a ghost has handled a rock when it feels it's like a freshly laid egg. If you can touch it and it's got that heat-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it ain't been in a butt.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or like a theater seat after a large man sits in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or like a toilet after a large man sits on it. Ah, the comforting warmth. Nothing I love better than being at the airport.
ED LARSON
Honestly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you sit down and a big hulking, big swinging-butted man with a loose belt comes rolling out and you get to sit in a literal hot toilet seat.
ED LARSON
It's weird, as I get older I enjoy a warmer toilet seat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but I like a purposely warmed toilet seat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, not a pre warmed toilet seat by another man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Just because it's accompanied always with the (groaning). Yeah, being like you're gonna wanna enjoy some of that later on. And you're like sir, please don't talk to me, leave me and my family alone.
MARCUS PARKS
But despite the mysterious temperature of the stone, some police claim that the stones were being thrown by a group of local larrikins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's an Australian word for a mischievous yet good hearted little boy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have a word for a piece of shit child.
MARCUS PARKS
But has a good heart. It's like the Inuits with like 56 words for snow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The Australians have 56 words for a little bastard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For so many tiny evil orphans.
ED LARSON
Honestly I feel like I was a larrikin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You definitely were a larrikin.
MARCUS PARKS
I think we all were larrikins.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was a larrikin in thought.
MARCUS PARKS
Or a la-RICK-in. Who knows?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's a LARE-ikin.
MARCUS PARKS
Larrikin.
ED LARSON
Larrikin!
MARCUS PARKS
The theory was that the kids were way out in the bush with catapults which meant that they were too far away to be seen at night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's very... But that's a lot of organization. But I guess if you're a larrikin, what else are you doing?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're not in school, you don't get a job, you fucking live by the wharf, all you do is fight the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with you and your other rambunctious child criminals.
ED LARSON
Yeah. In America they would have made this kid a quarterback.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Being like feeling his shoulder.
ED LARSON
You got a good arm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need protein.
MARCUS PARKS
Now one of the other interesting and unique phenomena about Australian poltergeists, as opposed to similar stories from America and the UK, is that the poltergeists tend to move to different houses in the area. They don't just stay at the center of activity, they go and visit other places.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really strange. You really rarely see it in one of these stories. They move around.
MARCUS PARKS
I've never heard about it in any other story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's almost like the area. Something is happening to the ground. It's like happening there. That's why I weirdly think it's something almost natural.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like there's something to this besides just child warriors.
MARCUS PARKS
I know there's always been incredibly strange things going on with the dream rock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, something going on in there.
ED LARSON
When I was a kid, unexplained shit happened in our house in Boca. And then we didn't really talk about it. Then one day I told my neighbor and he was like we have weird stuff going on. And they're like and so does Aya and so does... And then we found out, which could be horseshit, but then we found out it was built on a big plantation.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
ED LARSON
It's all like each house had their own thing going on but it wasn't like the house was haunted as much as the land was haunted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was it the original New Jersey Cannoli plantation?
ED LARSON
Florida. We had real-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh this is south Florida.
MARCUS PARKS
Boca. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought this was in Jersey and I was like what would they be growing? Moozadell?
ED LARSON
It's the garden state. Everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But it's like bad fruit.
ED LARSON
It's grape tomatoes. What are you talking about?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Immediately got him angry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Sitting here telling me the Jersey doesn't have good gardens.
MARCUS PARKS
Well see in America or the UK, a poltergeist will mostly move only when the person it attaches itself to moves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Although the activity tends to be strongest in one particular location. In Australia however a poltergeist will move freely about the region to bother the neighbors as well. In the case of the Guyra ghost, it bombarded two nearby houses in the first week that it was active with stone showers. And one of the neighbors, the Hodder family, decided to abandon their home and live with the Bowens because that was the house that was being protected and they had a familial connection. The other family nearby that was affected however, the McGuinness family, they had all their windows broken but decided fuck it, we're not leaving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) I ain't leaving!
MARCUS PARKS
And that's also gonna be another feature to these stories is (Australian accent) I ain't leaving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) I ain't leaving!
ED LARSON
Did anyone talk to the window maker in town?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come, larrikins! (Australian accent) I've got a business venture for all of us.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at various points, policemen did find boot tracks outside of the Bowen home and outside of the homes of the neighbors who also reported stone throwing. The boot tracks however did not lead to a culprit or a catapult. And the boot prints could have very well been left by the 80 some odd people milling around these homes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I read one, there was a good comment, I was watching one of the cases that we covered. It had a good comment. And I love this, this is from someone from the outback. (Australian accent) "No one needs to fake things in Australia to this extent. We were very well looked
after when this happened. Especially Australians do not grow up in a celebrity-driven culture. It takes each day it comes. Fame does not dominate us, we have actors that do their own shopping, pay their bills, go for coffee. No one understands Australia, especially a big Australia, until they actually come here."
MARCUS PARKS
You know I actually didn't understand Australia until I came here, until the last time. And I describe it as more chill America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ho very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
It's cooler America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't gotta worry about it as much because not everybody's trying to kill them.
ED LARSON
I was walking around last night and I was just like I don't think anything's gonna happen to me. That's always in the back of my head.
MARCUS PARKS
Always in America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You are the most dangerous man in this city right now.
ED LARSON
I said that to Julie, I was like I feel like they're gonna lock me up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. If I was one of those police officers, I would send six men to come arrest you.
ED LARSON
Also haven't seen one cop.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Actually I haven't seen any cops either. It's incredible.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm used to seeing six cops. Like when I leave my house, seeing six cops and then two helicopters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I see one in the mirror every morning.
ED LARSON
Do you know that the NYPD is larger than the entire Australian army?
MARCUS PARKS
But they're tough fucks, the Australian army.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
They're very fucking tough.
ED LARSON
So are the NYPD. Don't fight me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Come and see us at the-
ED LARSON
KIng's Theater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The King's Theater in Brooklyn.
MARCUS PARKS
Now paradoxically, many people suspected that 12 year old Minnie Bowen was both the focus of the poltergeist activity and the person who was causing all this ruckus in one in some way or another.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just depends on whether or not she was having her menarche.
MARCUS PARKS
So to test the theory, Minnie was taken... It's cool, like you waited 50 minutes, about 45 minutes to bring up the word menarche and I'm very happy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See?
MARCUS PARKS
I'm very proud of you for that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm in another country. I'm wizened by my travels.
MARCUS PARKS
Wizened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've met and learned and grown in many ways. And I don't always need to talk about a 12 year old's bloody pussy.
ED LARSON
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't have to, I didn't have to do that.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I don't...
ED LARSON
Seems like just a menarche ago you were a decent person.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, Jo. I've said before that it's an alternative show. This is alternative comedy.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So to test the theory that Minnie was behind all this, she was taken from the family home for a night and 70 people surrounded the house. No stones-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love the experiment.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the experiment is like get her the fuck out of here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) Arrest her! We're gonna go out there and watch for the rocks!
ED LARSON
Man, TV must suck in Australia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
This is 1921.
ED LARSON
Oh okay. Everyone's just doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. This is awesome.
ED LARSON
Yeah, they don't even have radio probably.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, no, no, no. No stones were thrown and no noises were heard on the night Minnie was gone. But just as soon as Minnie returned the next day, a stone passed through her bedroom window and landed on her bed. That was followed by 30 more stones that showered the house as police frantically swung the searchlight around to spot the larrikin behind it all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(giggling) That's gotta be frightening at this point.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're the police, you can't do anything about these ghost larrikins. You are stuck. You're just watching, you're like (Australian accent) these children gotta be somewhere out there. Why they're all afraid of the children?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't know if they're afraid of the children. I think they just want to catch the children. I think it's a game. It's like a cat and mouse thing.
ED LARSON
I'm terrified of children personally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Because they can just do whatever you want to them and you can't beat them up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing. You can't do anything and it's a scam, dude.
ED LARSON
Yeah, it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those kids know. They know that they can do whatever they want. They can kick you in the nuts. They go (Australian accent) oh he's a pedophile!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) oh he's a pedophile! And then everybody's going to jail.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Five 16 year olds, there's nothing scarier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Nothing in this world scarier. But that's the thing is that we keep talking about how kind of cute Australia... And we did Snowtown like three months ago.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was not cute.
MARCUS PARKS
That was horrific.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's not cute.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Katherine Knight, not cute.
MARCUS PARKS
Not cute in any way. But to further test the theory, the searchlight was left off one night and it was found that the stones would follow Minnie throughout the house. Instead of focusing on what was going on outside, they focused on what was going on inside. When Minnie entered a room, the walls outside of that room would be bombarded with stones. And when she walked to the next, the stones would follow her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See I know it's not that but every time they're talking about the stones falling around, I just see Charlie Watts just fucking smoking a cigarette with a 12 year old girl in my head.
MARCUS PARKS
Come on, this isn't the recording of Exile on Main Street. Let's not get fucking crazy here. Now by week two, a skeptic named Dr. Harris decided that he was gonna drive out to Guyra and expose this whole story as a hoax. So he and a group of his friends, fellow skeptics all-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah right.
MARCUS PARKS
Surrounded the house all night and at times hung around inside the house and watched the Bowens sleep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) Go to sleep. Go to sleep!
ED LARSON
I'm so skeptical of you! Sleep now!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can tell your eyeballs aren't moving inside of your little skulls. That's how I know you're dreaming.
MARCUS PARKS
Harris kept a close eye on Minnie in particular the whole night. And when no stones were thrown, he declared his mission a success and he promptly left, saying that he had somehow quote "chloroformed the spook".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Chloroform The Spook is actually my favorite REM album. Thank you. Henryzebrowski.com.
MARCUS PARKS
Now again, in another difference between American and Australian hauntings, and this is a bit of a surprise, I've never heard of an American story in which someone bought a gun to protect themselves from a ghost. But that's what happened in Guyra.
ED LARSON
That's because they already had the gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was in the house.
MARCUS PARKS
They didn't need to go buy one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's in your house, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This is my ghost gun, this is my dog gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my cop gun, this is my wife gun.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my me gun. (kiss) You're the last one I'll ever use.
MARCUS PARKS
Well two weeks after Minnie was chased by that mysterious man, a neighbor got herself so worked up that she bought a revolver and kept the loaded weapon on a shelf where her two young children could easily reach it. I think she wanted it to be like an easy reach as well but when your five year old could reach it...
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it sounds like that was what she wanted. She's like in case you need the gun, here's the gun, you can use it anytime. The bullets are in it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Only shoot ghosts.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. She's like (Australian accent) all right, mummy. Which is like the worst thing the larrikins need is to get armed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then all of a sudden he's gonna take the gun, he's gonna give it to the larrikins and now they got a gun.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah, he just needs to shoot his sister in the face.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But she lived!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
ED LARSON
Yay!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's not gonna be a model anytime soon but she lived.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as the mother went, she became ill soon afterward which is attributed to a bad case of the nerves. As far as William Bowen went, he developed a habit of running outside and firing his gun in the air several times whenever the stone throwing or the knocking started, presumably to chase away the larrikins but it never once worked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I feel like if you're shooting guns at a larrikin, they're gonna stop with the fun and games.
MARCUS PARKS
But he's always shooting in the air.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And look, there's no tittering.
ED LARSON
Then the bullets are gonna come back down on their house and they're gonna think it's a stone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think a larrikin at some point wants the credit? Like they wanna be known! I think a larrikin is not going to just-
ED LARSON
Nah.
MARCUS PARKS
No. I feel like a larrikin does it for the love of the game.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah. They take it to the grave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess so. But then a larrikin eventually becomes an adult.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at one point it did seem like someone came up with a solution even if it was temporary. This is the weirdest part of the story. One day a small dark man that no one in the area knew suddenly appeared on the Bowen farm and told everyone to gather all the stones that had been thrown in a big pile and burn them. And everyone present excitedly followed the small dark man's instructions-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, man.
MARCUS PARKS
And while it did work for a bit, the stone throwing resumed a couple of days later.
ED LARSON
Can you burn rocks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you can-
MARCUS PARKS
I think you just make them hot.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you can put them in a fire.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But I don't think you can.
ED LARSON
Nothing happens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They get real hot.
ED LARSON
Yeah, then you wait and a couple days go by, you grab the stones, you start throwing them at the house again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's what happens when larrikins grow up. That's what this guy is!
MARCUS PARKS
Now the Guyra ghost certainly attracted skeptics but it also brought in its fair share of spiritualists. The one who seemed to make some headway was a spiritualist named Ben Davy who was also a member of madame Helena Blavatsky's theosophical society.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the point of a spiritualist is that they're supposed to have the ability to communicate with the dead. So after a conversation with each member of the Bowen family, Ben Davy thought that Mrs. Bowen had provided the most promising lead. Davy discovered that Mrs Bowen's daughter from a previous marriage, 21 year old May Hodder, had died the previous January from a congenital heart defect, leaving behind an infant son named Clifford who was now 18 months old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You never hear of an infant named Clifford anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
You really don't. Yeah, like Cliff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I haven't seen a Clifford. I haven't seen a Rodney in so long.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Rodneys are great but they're all larrikins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, all Rodneys are larrikins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A 6 year old Rodney is gonna hold you at knifepoint.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah. Stay away from my daughter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's gonna carjack you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Name's Rodney, yeah, I'm 9!
ED LARSON
Clifford, the great Martin Short film.
MARCUS PARKS
Highly underrated, incredible Martin Short film.
ED LARSON
Total larrikin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely a larrikin.
MARCUS PARKS
Biggest larrikin in the world!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, you know who was a horrible larrikin was that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Some of the worst larrikins society's ever seen. That's how we gotta start labeling them.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the connection here was that the 12 year old Minnie had been charged with taking care of little Clifford after May Hodder had died, which some believe aggravated her already charged pubescent psychic energy. Furthermore if you'll remember, the Hodder family had experienced activity the first week as well and had moved in with the Bowens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh shit, that's right. Yeah. So it's all just connecting back to each other.
MARCUS PARKS
Now looking at the skeptic side here because I'm not big on spiritualists-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they were mostly full of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the idea of spiritual technology... We did a thing a long time ago in spiritual technology, which is they worked on but-
MARCUS PARKS
Well but that's a whole different fucking, that's a whole different thing. I mean spiritual technology... I guess I did use those rods.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The dowsing rods.
MARCUS PARKS
The dowsing rods which is a form of-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tarot and ouija boards.
MARCUS PARKS
All that shit, sure. But I don't believe in the 'is there somebody here who had someone who died whose name starts with a B'.
ED LARSON
Yeah. They're just gonna ask questions until they find the answer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, exactly.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those guys are always not... That's not real.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
That being said, as a skeptic, a band of skeptics, I don't like them either.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Biggest assholes on earth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. I'm skeptical of a skeptic that has friends.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I'm skeptic of a skeptic who belongs to a skeptic society.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that sounds like you're a non-believer church in a way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well it could be that when the Hodders moved in, they introduced the idea that the ghost may be that of May Hodder. And Mrs. Bowen was led to this conclusion by the spiritualist because that's just what spiritualists do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they create a narrative.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They believe that this makes sense. But when it comes down to it, I actually just read a really interesting article from 1972 called 'Are Poltergeists Living or Are They Dead?' And a lot of their work really just shows it's extremely different than a quote unquote "intelligent haunting" or residual haunting. It's something else entirely which I still think is human-based.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well that's the thing is that spiritualists tend to create scenarios that are a little too good to be true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And they give temporary relief at best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's what it is, it's emotional closure is what they're trying to give you.
ED LARSON
Yeah, they're trying to give it. But it's also you're trying to bypass like processing grief and it don't work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You don't wanna be sad.
MARCUS PARKS
You feel better for like three or four days and then you feel fucking horrible again.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And they have no life skills and gotta make money somehow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the goal. Once I become a pet psychic, that was what I've always wanted to do. Set up a little pet psychic shop and be like this cat is racist. Ma'am, you're gonna have to get rid of this cat. You're gonna have to euthanize him. He just said heil Hitler. I know it sounded like a meow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now on the night that the spiritualist was supposed to make contact, 50 people were guarding the Bowen house. So there's a big crowd. As the Bowen family gathered indoors, a heavy knock was heard that sounded like it came from the outside. But strangely, the crowd guarding the house said that it sounded as if the heavy knock came from the inside.
ED LARSON
They're in on it!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
No, no, no. That was inside! It was inside!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Goddamn larrikins.
MARCUS PARKS
After the knock though, the spiritualist told Minnie that if another knock happened, she should call out and ask if it was her half sister. Ever the cynical goth girl, Minnie flatly said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I can't speak to my sister, she's dead."
MARCUS PARKS
Nevertheless the spiritualist asked again. And when another knock came, Minnie almost sarcastically put her hands up in the air and said"
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"If that's you, May, speak to me."
MARCUS PARKS
Moments later though the hard-shelled Minnie began to cry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
She said that May had spoken directly into her mind with a message for their mother. May wanted Mrs. Bowen to know that she was perfectly happy where she was and that she was watching and guarding them all. And after that the knocks supposedly disappeared. Temporary relief. The stones however went nowhere, nor did the visitors who were curious as to what was happening in this small town halfway between Brisbane and Sydney. On April 18th, an American sugar plantation owner out of Samoa named Harry Jay Moors, a friend of writer Arthur Conan Doyle, he arrived in Guyra and demanded full access to the Bowen house for several nights so he could do his own investigation to satisfy his curiosity about the paranormal.
ED LARSON
Such a fucking shitty American thing to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right, I'm here now, all right! I know how to do this.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll show you fuckers how to do this shit. I'm gonna fucking treat you just like I treat all the people on my plantation. You're not gonna like it but it's gonna happen. Once he arrived, he and his assistants had portions of the Bowens roof removed so they could keep watch on all the activities within the house from above.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck this place!
ED LARSON
Get rid of the roof.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get rid of the kitchen. All right? I'm shitting in the living room.
MARCUS PARKS
They also set up an elaborate system of traps to detect hoaxers. But none of our sources outline what those elaborate traps were.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would dig a hole, put a blanket over it. Can of paint, tie it to the top of the stairs so that can go down there. You put the hot clamp on the doorknob.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what I think is that I would think that larrikins, I think larrikins love apples.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
MARCUS PARKS
And what you do is you put an apple out next to a tree. But when the larrikin grabs the apple, there's a crossbow right next to it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Shoots him in the head.
MARCUS PARKS
Shoots him in the head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
You'd be a great larrikin killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Larrikin killer.
MARCUS PARKS
I think I was born to be a larrikin killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man. We gotta go out there, man. Can we do it? Can we do that? Are there still larrikins?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And are there tours that we can join in on? Larrikin killings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. Do you have a larrikin that needs culling? We're on our way.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though he had everything set up to disprove the haunting, several walnut-sized stones were thrown and landed inside and outside the house that night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like a walnut-sized stone is even hard to find.
ED LARSON
That's a normal size I think.
MARCUS PARKS
I got a couple of walnut-sized stones in my house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you passed those two years ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the American stayed for four days and declared that after his quote "ceaseless vigil", there was no other conclusion to be made other than that this was a true paranormal event.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Enjoy your new outside-inside home. I'll be off. Here's a bag of sugar. Enjoy yourself. All right. Oh you're gonna wanna... Wait, I have an umbrella. Because there's no roof anymore.
ED LARSON
You know what they say, that umbrellas inside are unlucky. Well your whole life's unlucky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not an umbrella if there's no roof. It's a roof.
MARCUS PARKS
Now eventually the authorities in Sydney were for some reason bothered enough about this story where they sent a constable named Hardy 500 kilometers north to prove that this whole thing was a hoax.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This would actually happen quite a bit throughout all of these Australian stories. There's always some cop that gets a bee in their bonnet. It happens a lot and they're like we gotta go suss this out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very fun.
ED LARSON
It's because they got nothing to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Constable Hardy was the man Sydney chose to prove that this whole thing was a hoax. And when he took a position outside the Bowen cottage, he claimed to see Minnie throw several stones at the house. Hardy then confronted her and he claimed that she said that she had been the one throwing stones all along.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I call bullshit.
MARCUS PARKS
But she had been careful to not be seen by anyone. In Hardy's world, only an expert cop could have caught Minnie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's 12.
MARCUS PARKS
And he spread the story that the mystery was over. But weirdly the same constable outright admitted that he had pressured Minnie into confessing, much like the hypnotist had pressured the girls in the Enfield Poltergeist case into supposedly confessing to being behind their haunting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) You'd be amazed what a 12 year old commits their lives to when you bash their head in with a mop.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey, you get an adult in the room with a 12 year old girl and they just like... A cop at that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. You're working her? Oh yeah, work the body and then you get in the head and you're playing Slipknot all night. She can't sleep. Kids love sleep.
ED LARSON
They play live in Australia.
MARCUS PARKS
What Minnie had supposedly admitted to was that her method of creating the knocks was leaning out of her window and knocking on the outside of the house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But dozens of people heard knocks when Minnie was in their presence and did not have her arm hanging out of a window. In response to Hardy's admission, the Sydney Morning Herald released an angry statement listing all the things that have been seen by over 80 people, then accused the constable of fabricating a confession in an attempt to put an end to the story to please his superiors. In fact several of Constable Hardy's men who went to Guyra with him, they reported that they'd heard the knocks and seen the stones themselves and couldn't prove where they came from. Strangely though, as the story spread across Australia and all the way to the UK, so-called copycat hauntings began popping up. The most impressive was focused around an 11 year old boy named Gordon Parker in Hornsea, England, in which kitchenware flew off the shelves, cheese quote "walked from its dish to the floor"-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
And bread jumped on its own accord into the coal scuffle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Leave my food alone, ghost.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's all food centric.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's weird. It's like Weird Al wrote a possession story.
MARCUS PARKS
(singing) My... Nevermind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard. It's extremely hard.
ED LARSON
He's a very talented man.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean that's the thing, I was gonna say (singing) my possession! But that's the thing is that's just a play on My Bologna.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The word that he already did.
MARCUS PARKS
He already did and it's just a...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck me.
ED LARSON
You don't have a knack for it.
MARCUS PARKS
Very fucking good.
ED LARSON
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a pun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eddietunes.com.
MARCUS PARKS
Witnesses in Hornsea also heard bomb-like explosions, they saw a copy of 'Alice in Wonderland' dance in the air across the room, and they witnessed candles and ladders dance as though they were members of a Russian ballet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very British.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very British.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With the candles and ladders.
MARCUS PARKS
Apparently this one was investigated by Charles Fort himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Of the Fortean Times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
He thought that this was a legitimate phenomenon. But back in Guyra, the haunting was wearing on the Bowen family. So Minnie was sent to stay with her grandmother 40 miles away. And for a few days all poltergeist activity ceased. From what it's seen though, the poltergeist just had to take a little time to catch up to Minnie, almost as if it had to walk. Because within a few days the poltergeist had found her and the stone throwing and the knocks continued at her grandma's house. Some of the knocks shook the walls hard enough that tchotchkes fell from the cupboards. And later a neighbor slammed his full weight into the wall on the other side of the cupboard but could not create enough force to even rattle anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This fucking guy.
ED LARSON
(Australian accent) Okay, here's what I'm gonna do! I'mma run into the walls! And see if any tchotchkes fall down! All right. One, two, three!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) Tony, we don't need this.
ED LARSON
(Australian accent) I'mma try again!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) No, Tony. Please, for the love of god. Stop it, all right? Tony, oh my god Tony.
ED LARSON
(Australian accent) I'm hurt! I'm hurt! Oh no! All right, one more try.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) No, Tony! For the love of god, you have to come back to work! You're a scientist! They need you at the lab.
ED LARSON
(Australian accent) One!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unbelievable. Again, these are ghost bros.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they really are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) I'll be I can do it.
MARCUS PARKS
But what was most strange about all this is that the activity at Minnie's grandmother's house stopped on May 11th and Minnie was sent home a few days later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
The poltergeist didn't follow Minnie back and it was all fucking over. It just ended.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as what happened to Minnie Bowen, she gained a reputation as a strange, dark-eyed, haunted person, much like Janet Hodgson from the Enfield Poltergeist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was also shattered by what fucking happened to her.
MARCUS PARKS
But Minnie Bowen, she lived until 1989 when she was tragically run over and decapitated by a car.
ED LARSON
Jesus!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn! Like Jayne Mansfield.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, just like Jayne Mansfield. Now as far as... How many chihuahuas were in the car?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I don't know, I don't think they got to Australia.
ED LARSON
I'm blown away by that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I love this.
ED LARSON
So what, was she in her 80s?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude. Look, she actually was very mysterious. And I'm looking at pictures from the newspaper at the time because they have her father is there... Man, he's got a big hat.
MARCUS PARKS
And he's also posing with his gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He's proud.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as what actually happened in Guyra, it's often been argued that it was just some sort of local vendetta against the Bowen family, that it was larrikins. But there is no narrative, evidence, or history that would make this plausible. No one had a problem with the Bowens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My only thing with groups of larrikins is that I just feel like they'd leave traces behind.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like candy bar wrappers, skateboard wheels.
ED LARSON
Fish heads.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Fish heads. I was gonna say fish heads. Why do I think about them with a bunch of weird fish skeletons?
ED LARSON
I just go to Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well another possible explanation was that Minnie, a 12 year old raising her recently dead half sister's 18 month old son, she was just angry and she put on the two month long poltergeist show as a way to regain control over her life and have someone else take care of the baby for a while. But I mean this is just way too coordinated and way too insane for one 12 year old girl to pull off without 80 people noticing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like the same thing with the Enfield Poltergeist. It's very similar in that way where it's just too coordinated. It's too sophisticated a scam for a child to do.
MARCUS PARKS
And every time that the girls tried faking something-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was obvious.
MARCUS PARKS
In Enfield, they were caught immediately. It was just so obvious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But the problem is, like we'll see with the next episode too, is how often these people show up to catch what is an essentially uncatchable phenomena.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or they are desperate to prove it's real, so they fake it-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When the experts show up to get them to pay attention to it and then the whole thing is busted.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup. But tellingly in the weeks, months, and years following the Guyra ghost story, quite a few people tried recreating the kind of poltergeist activity that centered around Minnie by throwing stones at people's houses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) I'll do it myself! It's the same thing! All you gotta do is run as fast as you can! Tony! Tony, we don't need anymore proof that it can happen.
ED LARSON
(Australian accent) One!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Australian accent) Tony, you're broken beyond repair.
MARCUS PARKS
Most were caught and fined. One young man in Brisbane got away with it for weeks before he was caught. But to give you an idea of how much this story caught the imagination of the Australian people, an arsonist in Sydney, 500 kilometers away, set seven fires in one day and several more in the days following. And both the public and police were quick to blame the Guyra ghost. I don't know why.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just think they're just like it wasn't me!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In a fun coda to this story though, a crew of filmmakers visited Guyra and made a silent movie about the event in 1921 while the haunting was still very active. No copies of the movie survived and it's only known to exist because a promotional poster was found in the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. The film was actually a comedy, directed and starring an actor named John Cosgrove who was described as fat, jolly, and rubicund.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Do you know rubicund?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Rubicund means fat and jolly.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it means ruddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Red.
MARCUS PARKS
Like both of you are quite rubicund.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are you saying?
ED LARSON
That we could have starred in this movie.
MARCUS PARKS
You have red faces.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm pink.
MARCUS PARKS
You are more pink. Ed, you're more rubicund.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're sunburned.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I'm red now.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the character that this guy played, it was named Sherlock Doyle, he was based off of the sugar plantation owner.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The American who figured it all out.
MARCUS PARKS
But it seems like Cosgrove was one of the only actual actors in the movie. The rest of the cast was mostly made up of the actual members of the Bowen family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's so funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Including the deeply haunted Minnie, who, along with the locals, all played themselves. Cosgrove actually asked William Bowen if he could film him throwing a stone but Minnie's father refused. He rightly believed that if people saw him throwing a stone, they would assume that the whole thing had been a hoax and that was the last thing he wanted. And that is where we will pick back up next week for more stories of Australian poltergeists, including the story of not a haunted brothel but a haunted sex worker. And of course the full story of the haunting at Humpty Doo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, we're gonna be spending a lot of time at the Doo.
ED LARSON
You are so excited about Humpty Doo.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he just like the name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
ED LARSON
You've been talking about it for like a month and a half.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Humpty Doo is fun, man. Well because it's funny because we reached out. I'mma talk about this next episode.
ED LARSON
Yeah, keep it in the Humpty Doo episode.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna keep it for the Humpty Doo episode. But I think that there's something sinister afoot in Humpty Doo and it's not just the larrikin they have for president.
ED LARSON
Whoa. Humpty Doo has their own president?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It's a child with a giant lollipop and a length of chain used to beat people with. But he's won the popular boat nine times since he was four.
MARCUS PARKS
I think Australia did have a prime minister once who drowned and like nobody gave a shit. They just like replaced him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't they have one now? There's guy that drinks a lot, right?
ED LARSON
Well he's prime minister.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is he friendly? Is he a guy who drinks big beers?
MARCUS PARKS
I know nothing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean? Jo? Do you know what I mean?
ED LARSON
She doesn't know, she lives in New Zealand!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Australian prime minister-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, she lives in New Zealand. They have an awesome president.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they do.
MARCUS PARKS
Prime minister, prime minister. Right? She's great. Is she still in power?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Nope?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. They have a new larrikin that's now in charge. It's an 11 year old. They've got a spiked hat, it's got two roller skates with guns on them.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sorry, we're American. We've been very distracted for many years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's been a lot going on. Well thank you, Marcus, good work.
MARCUS PARKS
No, thank you, Henry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Eddie, thank you.
ED LARSON
Whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Go and check out our Patreon, patreon.com/lastpodcastontheleft to see video episodes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of this.
MARCUS PARKS
Of this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are filming this as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you can see our grimy, jetlagged faces. You can go look at it on the Patreon. And we got twitch.tv/lpntv. We're not there.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I will say apparently they are organizing something.
ED LARSON
Yeah, they're doing a little thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Holden is organizing a thing, he's calling it LPN Fun House. It's gonna be on August 13th. It's specifically for us not being there. So the daddies are away.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the larrikins will play. So they are down there. So there's gonna be a show August 13th on the LPN TV Twitch stream that's gonna be very unique and maybe difficult.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And I'm excited for it. All right?
MARCUS PARKS
Let's look forward to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lastpodcastontheleft.com. Buy tickets, we're in Australia. Right now we're in New Zealand but by the time this comes out we will be done with our show in New Zealand. So just know we are in Australia, come and check us out.
ED LARSON
Come see us. Perth, there's still tickets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Humpty Doo!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Sydney and Melbourne and all kinds of places.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really good work.
ED LARSON
And Brisbane.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
ED LARSON
And Adelaide.
MARCUS PARKS
And Adelaide. I love Adelaide.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do.
MARCUS PARKS
Adelaide's a great fucking town.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well hail Satan, we'll see you soon.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
ED LARSON
Hail larrikins.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Fucking every single one of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just want to be around them.
MARCUS PARKS
I guarantee our next fucking show there's just gonna be a bunch of fucking horrible children throwing rocks at us.
ED LARSON
Kids throwing rocks and shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kids with fucking spinny hats and evil freckled grins.