The other light is known as the Blairmore Ghost and is probably the most famous spook in the Burnett region. Legend has it that the light first appeared on Christmas Eve about eighty years ago, the day after a mailman met his death on Blairmore Station. When the unfortunate mailman was buried, rigor mortis had not set in and the local Aborigines believed he was still alive and would return as a debil debil. It seemed their prophecy came true when the mysterious light appeared.
Many people have seen the light since including Jim Matheson JP, former Government Stock Inspector and Brisbane City Councillor, who published details of his encounter with the Blairmore Ghost in 1957. It makes spine-chilling reading. Matheson was driving along the boundary road of Blairmore Station on a humid, stormy night when his car became bogged in a wide patch of mud. Unable to free the car, Matheson settled down in the back seat to sleep until morning.
Minutes later another car came along the road travelling fast and, before Matheson could give warning, ploughed into the mud up to its axles. The second car contained a commercial traveller and his wife. The three chatted for a while then returned to their cars to sleep.
Matheson was just dozing off when he heard pitiful cries of ‘Help! Help! Help!’ He scrambled out of his car and listened. The cries seemed to be coming from the middle of a nearby paddock. Matheson hastily pulled on his boots and set off in the direction of the cries, which were still coming at brief intervals. Before he had gone ten paces Matheson recalls there was ‘half a stone’ of sticky black mud clinging to each of his boots but he struggled on. Then he saw the flickering light. It wasn’t any shape you could put a name to: it swirled and changed, swelled and shrank, like a formless, luminous blob of jelly.
When Matheson moved towards the light it began to dribble towards him like a fat, phosphorescent slug. The cries for help grew louder and seemed, Matheson recalled with lingering horror, to be all around him and inside him, coming not from his throat but through the pores of his skin. The terrified man couldn’t move any further; he couldn’t think. He felt as though he was in the grip of some deadly struggle and that something dead was robbing him of his own life force.
Then, mercifully, another sound intruded on his consciousness- the sound of the commercial traveller’s wife screaming. Instinct to go to the aid of a woman in distress made Matheson turn and run back to the cars. He believes his life was saved at that moment.
The three quickly gathered some sticks, paper and petrol and started a fire, then huddled in its cheerful light all night, listening to the distant cries of ‘Help! Help!’ drifting towards them on the wind. As dawn approached the sound faded and finally could be heard no more.
Jim Matheson searched the paddock in daylight but could find nothing remarkable. Later he related his experience to a local cattleman. ‘You were lucky,’ the cattleman said. ‘A stockman once heard the ghost crying for help and went to it. He was dead when they found him and his face was not a pretty sight. Some people believe his spirit took the original ghost’s place and that the stockman has been trying to catch another victim ever since. It could have been you out there tonight, Jim, crying for help.’
Kanacki