More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

The Matron at the York Hostel

You know what, even after what I've been through, I'm still pretty skeptical. I don't have much choice but to believe in spirits or ghosts, I've seen, heard, felt and had my life uprooted by a close encounter with one. I just have a lot of trouble believing most other people when they tell me ghost stories.

After the event I'm about to relate, I had post traumatic stress disorder which made my life a living hell for 4 years. I spent years of my young adult life introverted, afraid and unable to deal with people. I wasn't the only person who was affected by this haunting, either, I'm lucky that my scars were only mental ones, others were not so fortunate. Almost 20 years later, It's still a personal struggle to even write this down.

It began with the news our school camp was to be held at the York Hostel, about 110km (65 miles) out of the state capital Perth, Western Australia. There were 31 kids in my outdoor Ed. class, only 16 went to the camp. The kids who weren't allowed to go had parents who had heard the stories about the place and were not letting their kids any closer to that place than they were already, let alone spend two nights there.

Our family had only moved to Perth 3 years before, when my stepdad got out of the Air Force so we hadn't heard the stories about it being the source of some of the most frightening ghost stories you'll ever hear, so of course I got my note signed and I was heading to camp.

I remember some of the kids talking about the place we were going for camp being haunted. I scoffed at that then. Just kids scaring each other is what I thought.

The trip out was a typical school bus ride. Heaps of chips, Cola, lollies and shouting. It was hot, too as it was close to the end of the year, the Southern summer. The further we went from the coast, the hotter and drier it got.

York W.A. is pretty small. Being from the thriving metropolis that is Perth, the idea of a town in the middle of the bush, literally, from anywhere in the place, you had a view of the countryside, was pretty strange.

The camp was at this old stone and wood building with a bit added on the side, and two other buildings. There were two big dogs that the owner locked up out in the yard of the smaller house, it was where he lived. The building looked pretty interesting, mainly because it was so old looking, like something out of pioneer times. It didn't look scary or haunted. There wasn't any gloom hanging over the place. Basically, it was shade.

We went up on the veranda because it was mid morning and getting pretty hot. The owner opened up the doors and led us in to a side area that had all camp beds set out in it. Him and the teachers talked for a while and they came back over and said we were only allowed in this room, the big open room with the stairs, the kitchen area and that was it. We weren't allowed in any of the other buildings and we weren't allowed upstairs, at all. Mr Martin, our outdoor Ed. teacher said if anyone was seen anywhere near the stairs they'd be sent home from the camp and suspended from school.

We only had half an hour from when we got there 'til when we had to go for the afternoon activities. We got our bags laid out by our beds, made up our beds and went to lunch on the veranda before jumping onto the bus and going to where they'd set up an endurance course with rope climbs, flying foxes, barricades to climb over and a cross country run between them all. It was pretty cool fun, kind of like a big playground. We did the course as a group first and then pretty much got the run of the place. Most of the kids went for the flying fox but I just went running around the bush track, over rough terrain, jumping onto logs and running up little rock outcrops and jumping down the other side. I was a bit nuts as a kid like that, full of energy and happy with my own company most of the time, or my brother after school.

That afternoon, running like a mad thing around the bush, free from my parents, away from my home and my friends, was my last happy memory for quite a while. If we had've got on the bus and just gone home, I'd have grown up a totaly different person. But no we went back to the York Hostel to stay the night oblivious to what had happened there time and time again over the years.