The Ghost of the Mad Cow Townsville QLD

[KANACKI]

Whats this a Ghost of a Mad Cow you Cry! How silly has blind old Kanacki gone off his rocker?

Well not quite as there is not actually a ghost of a Mad Cow but of an alleged haunting of a popular 20 something nightspot call the Mad Cow Tavern on Flinders street Townsville. You can see pictures posted below. Yet unknown to the patrons of this historic pub that reinvented itself into an iconic night spot that the building is haunted by a former publican.

So the alleged moaning heard upstairs is not the mooing of the legendary mad cow but perhaps moaning of the suicide that took place up there many years ago. What was its story if we dug deeper into the story?

to be continued.....

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

In the Advertiser dated Friday 27th of April 1894 Tells of suicide of the Publican hotel Townsville. His name was James Brown and he left a wife and 8 children.

Today the hotel is called the Mad Cow tavern. Over the years there has been reports of presence of Jame Brown who shot himself in the head with a rife.

Some guests reported a semi transparent apparition in the room upstairs that was once a bedroom where this tragedy occurred.

But was it James  Brown the publican that haunted the hotel?

To be continued...

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

While the death of Jame Brown was a sad tragedy itself at the the then called commercial hotel now called the Mad Cow. Researching deeper into this story it appears the ghost was long seen before James Brown Suicide in  1894

The globe newspaper dated Saturday 9th of January 1886 reported 2 men sharing a bedroom saw a strange apparition of a man at the foot of both of their single beds of a man who was hanging.....

That is a good 8 years before the suicide Of James Brown.

The details of this ghost sighting was reported in the newspaper posted below.

To be continued...

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

Is this the case of two separate ghosts haunting the same pub?

Or  has the first one dissolved away over time and the second haunting has taken over... On the funny side one could imagine two ghosts fighting one another saying get lost this is my haunted pub. But perhaps some places given under some conditions can recycle past emotional energies from past traumatic events?

If that is so then perhaps each ghost it not aware of each others presence thus being a possible answer to cases of multiple haunting at the same site?

Hmm food for fought?

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

One could imagine what they think if these alleged ghosts can see the patrons of today?

Or perhaps they cannot see us?

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

Here is an up date of the newspaper story Headless came across in more detail.

Published by The Areas' Express Booyoolee, SA, Fri 5 Feb 1886 reported the following.

A TOWNSVILLE GHOST

The prosaic and ordinarily extremely natural life of Townsville has lately been intruded upon by a visitant of peculiar tendencies. This unwelcome being, bearing all the outward semblance of a man, clothed in nothing but a common shirt, having about him no shimmering, gauze-like robes indicative of service in the celestial orchestra, selects the very early hours of the morning to fool around respectable men's bed-posts, and to strike terror into their hearts through their scarcely open eyes by representing a suicide.

Gentle reader, this is a statement of fact, vouched for by two unimpeachable witnesses resident in Townsville, and lodgers in a certain house of public accommodation, in the now haunted room of which a man " shuffled off his mortal coil " either at his own sweet will, or by the hand of one of his fellow-men. We are responsible only for an unvarnished recital of the circumstances under which the apparition has been twice seen within the past three weeks.

To be continued......

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

To believers in spiritualism we have no doubt the succeeding particulars will have considerable interest, and will prove a problem hard of solution, whilst for the sceptics there will be matter for laughter and ridicule.

Therefore, let the smile be smothered, and the jeer restrained, and the refutation of the possibility of spirits visiting the earth be deferred until we harrow up the blood, lay an icy finger on the heart strings, and make " each particular hair stand on end " on the heads of our readers, by recounting the thrilling particulars we have gleaned of the Townsville ghost :

The night was far spent, and the balmy breezes from Ross Creek were wafted like an angel's benediction to the end and centre of Flinders-street, and far away up into the star-spangled heights of Castle hill. It was broad moonlight, and the lambent rays of the Queen of Night stole softly in through the half-opened window of a room wherein two men reclined on single iron bedsteads, nicely curtained, and possessing all the other appurtenances which go to make up what is commonly known as "a bed."

To be continued......

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

Sleepless and cogitative, one of the men decided to relieve the monotony of the solitude caused by the slumber of his room-mate, by smoking a fragrant manilla. This he did, the while he thought  of " England, home, and beauty," the " Friendship of dear old pals," " Gentle Annie." "The little old log cabin in the lane.” The cigar having burnt unpleasantly near his mouth, he looked door-wards to throw the stump out, when his startled gaze was riveted by the form of a man's figure at the foot of his bed.

The trunk was covered by a shirt, and the legs dangled significantly ; the nape of the neck could be seen just below the calico-covering of the bed, and oh,, horror, a rope seemed to pass round the neck and over the brass nob at the top of the corner-post, the face and head being hidden by the calico, but apparently hanging over the other or outer side of the bed, and a clear case of strangulation being vividly present to the man's frighted mind. The mind of the man in bed we mean — not the other one, suspended at the foot of it.

To be continued......

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

The live and now thoroughly awake man rubbed his eyes, and looked towards the other bed to make sure that his mate was not playing a lark on him. But no ! all was correct in that quarter — the sleeper being " all secure," and snoring in a most angelic manner. This state of things was exasperating, unbearable, and the victim of spiritualism was about to spring from his bed, and discover whether his eyesight was deceiving him, when the hanging object vanished — where there had been a tangible form there was now nothing but thin air, and the almost equally thin iron-bars at top of the bed-stead.

What was it ? Where had it gone or how had it come ?

The startled man did not know, nor do we. Suffice it to say, the man swears he saw it, and he is like Brutus, "an honorable man," and certainly would not lie to gain an enviable notoriety. However, he kept the secret of the night locked closely in his own heart until about a fortnight afterwards, when his mate let fall some remarks which gave force to his belief that he had not been mistaken is seeing what he believed to be a supernatural object.

To be continued.......

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

Now for the mate's story : —  On a certain morning he said to his friend, " You must have been tight when you came in last night."

To this, No. 1 (let us call him) said " I was not ; I have drunk nothing but ' soft stuff' for a month past."

No 2 : “ Then what were you up to, playing gymnastics at the foot of my bed!"

No. 1 : "I didn't go near the foot of your bed ; I came in about eleven, and I turned in at once."

No. 2 : " Well, I'll swear some man was at the foot of my bed with his head over the top, and his legs hanging down."

Here was a strange corroboration of the apparition seen by No. 1. The two men at once compared notes, and the result was they both averred having seen identically the same thing at the foot of each of their beds, even to the rope round the ghastly figure's neck. Both men are thoroughly trustworthy and could certainly hope for nothing but ridicule, if they had concocted such a strange story ; for people in the present generation are not given to believing anything very particular about the movements of departed spirits.

To be continued.......

Kanacki

[KANACKI]

Both the men who say they saw the ghost were sober, they are not imaginative men — nor are they given to romancing. Neither one would back the other, for mere sport, in stating so consecutively all about a "vision of the night." We leave the mystery with our readers, let them solve it. The foregoing is a record of fact, not a string of fiction. Men pass and repasts the house every day where the strange scene was enacted. Every time we peregrinate in that direction we look up longingly to a certain window in hopes of seeing the midnight prowler from the spirit-world. He must be a restless sort of fellow, or else he would not come scaring decent men when they want to sleep and when he ought to be putting in his time in some profitable occupation. If men who depart from this life have nothing better to do than to mouch back again and startle honest men, we don't see much advantage in dying at all, especially by means of suicide.

Skeptical reader, " you may take our tale with a little salt, but it needs none nevertheless. " Can you explain it ?

If you can, and when you do, " make a note on it. “

Kanacki