THE GHOST OF GIBBET HILL

Have you ever felt the hair on your neck rise as you drive by Gibbet Hill? If so, you are one of the many who have. And if you have driven the Midlands Highway by night, perhaps you are one of the few who have seen a figure walking on the road ... yes, ON the road. Right in the path of your car. A figure, which ignores the sound of your urgent horn. Too late you brake. For an instant you catch sight of a blank, expressionless face in the glare of the lights. Then you pass over it, or through it, or both. Or has it passed over or through YOU?

If such has been your experience, you were probably on that part of the highway just north of Perth, a place which came to be known as Gibbet Hill because of the convicted criminals who were left to hang there. And the apparition you saw was probably the ghost of an escaped prisoner named Mackay.

The year was 1837, in the days of J.E. Cox's mail coach. The road between Hobart and Launceston was rough and the going was slow. Not only did the coach carry the royal mail, it also carried passengers ... sometimes wealthy ones. That is why escaped convict Mackay lay in ambush. He had been told that wealthy Henry Reed (landlord of the Cornwall Hotel, Launceston) would ride the coach that day.

But, for whatever reason (or, as some would say, 'as Fate would have it'), Reed had arranged for James Wilson to make the journey in his place. As the mail coach toiled up Gibbet Hill, Mackay sprang from his hiding place, stopped the coach, and shot the man he thought was Reed. Enraged at discovering his mistake, Mackay then clubbed the wounded Wilson to death. Eventually, Mackay was apprehended, tried, and found guilty. Because of the callousness of his crime, he was sentenced to be hanged in chains and gibbeted at the scene of the murder.

It was Henry Reed who played a major role in releasing Mackay's decaying body from its bonds. In the autumn of the same year, Reed was travelling the Midlands Highway, and, passing Gibbet Hill, he was horrified by the gruesome spectacle of Mackay's remains. He fell to his knees, praying to God for the sinner's soul ... and when he returned to Launceston, he persuaded the authorities to remove the gruesome sight.

So, Mackay's body was finally put to rest ... but was his soul? Or is the ghost of Gibbet Hill the ghost of Wilson, still haunting the spot where he was clubbed? Or is it Reed's spirit, still tormented by the sight of the convict's putrid body? Or do Mackay, Wilson, and Reed, all three, still re-enact those anguished moments?

(Dennis Hodgkinson)

OATLANDS GHOST

To come....