ST JOHNS, KAPUNDA INVESTIGATION – 09.02.08

A quick history for those people out there who are unfamiliar with St Johns cemetery and reformatory here in South Australia. This area was actually known as Johnstown back in the 1850s and was an Irish farming community. A church was built up there with a house and Father Fallon moved in. He died there at the age of 40, as did the Father Ryan who followed him. Father Ryan died there at the very young age of 24. They were buried up at the church but later the bodies were relocated further down in the newer built cemetery.

In 1897 it was decided to convert the church and house into a reformatory for wayward girls and the Sisters of Joseph were asked to operate it. Problems were encountered from the very beginning, mainly due to the isolation of the reformatory and the fact that the girls were determined to escape at every opportunity.

There was also an insinuation that the girls were being improperly treated by the resident chaplain, Fr Martin. He was reported to be in poor health and at the time had a questionable state of mind. Finally in 1909 an 18 year old girl, Ruby Bland, died in hospital. The death certificate states that she died from complications from a gallstone operation, but rumours were rife that she had been pregnant and died in childbirth. Interestingly shortly after Ruby died, the reformatory was closed down. Rather then have any scandal, it was decided by Archbishop O'Reily to close the reformatory once and for all and the girls were moved out. It was finally demolished in 2002 with the excuse that because of vandalism, drug use and 'witchcraft' the ruins were deemed unsafe. Speculation arose that due to the airing of the documentary 'Kapunda – Most Haunted Town in Australia' it caused unwanted attention to the reformatory's chequered past, and so the church demolished it swiftly causing yet another historic site to be lost.

But what of the hauntings? Was there any truth to this documentary? Was the cemetery and reformatory site REALLY haunted? The reports we had were mainly centred around Ruby Bland. It was said that she still walked the cemetery and reformatory looking for her baby. Rumours were rife also of an angry Father Martin, who would patrol the reformatory and even push unsuspecting people around. And what of Sister Mary Mackillops letter that mentions that she had seen none of the ghosts yet. Was this to mean that rumours of haunting were happening long before St Johns became a reformatory?

We started investigating this area many years ago, and is probably one of our most active sites, next to the Old Adelaide Gaol. We have had our investigators witness fully formed enitites, orbs over headstones (with the naked eye), heard church bells, people walking on the gravel paths, and the list goes one.

For those that are interested, a more comprehensive overview of the history of our investigations will be found at our new website, which will be released soon. But for now we will just concentrate on last nights happenings.

We got to St John's before the sun went down, as two of our newer members had never seen this site. St John's is out in the middle of nowhere…literally. As the old Alien movie says, 'Out there, there's nobody to hear you scream!' There isn't a property for miles and it is down dirt tracks. So we just wanted to familiarise the new members before we lost the light. It was a new moon that night and it rapidly followed the sun down over the horizon, leaving us in total darkness….. just the way we like it lol.

We broke into 3 teams of 2 for the first shift. But this was very quiet with nothing unusual happening. There were some noises, but we tracked these down to a natural source. Brett's phone, which was fairly new, did suddenly display the numbers and time back to front when he first entered the cemetery, which was odd and something to keep his eye on in the future to see if it is a fault with the phone. It should be noted that it had not had a problem previously and has not been a problem since.

If anybody else knows of a known fault with these phones then please let us know.

We also had our TriField Meter sitting on one of the headstones. At one point in the night it started to activate and give off abnormal readings.

The second shift, left 2 teams down in the cemetery whilst Amy and myself drove up the hill to where the reformatory had once stood. And that is when the pace picked up!!

No sooner had we driven around the corner, Megan contacted us on the two-way to ask if we had shouted. 'Erm we are driving… and the windows are shut, so no not us' I replied. From the corner of the cemetery where we had driven, Megan described hearing loud female voices. It continued with them hearing childrens voices on and off after that. Meanwhile we pulled up at our spot and suddenly froze. I have spent many years investigating, and am used to wandering in the dark or sitting on my own in places, and it doesn't really faze me. However, for some reason, this spot was different. My heart was suddenly racing and I could hardly breathe. I am not gifted with clairvoyance, and I like to keep things on a more technical level, but this time, all I can say is it felt like I had somebody standing close to my window, and he wasn't happy. It was so strong, that I felt that I didn't want to turn and look at that window, or over my shoulder. I turned to Amy only to find that she looked uncomfortable too. Upon enquiring what was wrong, she confirmed that she was feeling exactly the same and couldn't look behind her. As we were discussing this, I watched what looked like a shadow of a man cross through the beam of my headlights, in front of the car. After taking a deep breath we both got out of the car and walked to the gate after all that is what we were there for. It was then we heard footsteps of something large coming towards us through the undergrowth. 'It's just the wind', I told myself, and repeated this several times in my head whilst at the same time noting how there wasn't any movement in the trees. The footsteps got so close we almost expected to see a man walk out of the trees towards us. The feeling that accompanied it was very uncomfortable. We decided to call in the rest of the team and concentrate our efforts up there. But by the time they arrived, the atomosphere had gone back to being fairly pleasant. We spent another 20 minutes there, and decided to call it a night.

Why were Amy and myself affected up there, when the first team Megan and Brett had felt comfortable earlier. Was it because we had no male team member with us? If Father Martin exists could he have been attracted to the car because we were females? Or was it all just our active imaginations. Sadly, I wasn't filming when the shadow crossed in front of the car, however, we had audio running all night, so hopefully it may have picked up the footsteps. Now comes the hard part of an investigation… the hours and hours of going through audio and video. We will post if we find anything further.

UPDATE:

After going through the audio tapes that were present in the car that night, we came across an evp that seems to be saying Sinners. It is a male voice and there was only Amy and myself in the car at the time. The voice can be heard in the introduction to PFI blog as the video there contains this recording.