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Apparitions · Roadside and bridge ghosts

Fisher's Ghost, Campbelltown

When
17 June 1826 date reconstructed from later accounts · first known record: 1832
Where
Fisher's Ghost Creek, Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia
Verdict
Legend

In a colonial legend, the murdered farmer Frederick Fisher sat on a fence rail one night and pointed to the spot where his body had been hidden.

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-34.07°, 150.82° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

Frederick Fisher, a Londoner transported to New South Wales for possessing forged banknotes, built up a farm at Campbelltown, south-west of Sydney. In 1825 he stabbed a carpenter, William Brooker, and was jailed for six months, leaving his affairs in the hands of his neighbour George Worrall, another former convict. On the evening of 17 June 1826 Fisher vanished. Worrall told people he had gone back to England and began selling his horse and belongings. In September the Sydney Gazette ran a notice about the suspicious disappearance, and in October, after bloodstains were found on a fence rail, Aboriginal trackers located a shallow grave by the creek behind Fisher's house. Worrall was convicted and hanged in early February 1827, confessing at the last moment while insisting the killing had been an accident. Legend adds one detail to the record: a farmer named John Farley is said to have seen Fisher's ghost one night, sitting on the fence rail by the creek and pointing to the place where the body lay. The stream is still called Fisher's Ghost Creek, and Campbelltown holds an annual festival in the ghost's honour.

Witnesses

John Farley, according to later versions of the story. The earliest known written version is the anonymous poem ‘The Sprite of the Creek’ in Hill's Life in New South Wales (1832); press reports of the 1827 trial say nothing about a ghost.

Explanations and hypotheses

The murder is well documented in court records and contemporary newspapers; the ghost is not. Reports of the trial in the Sydney Gazette in February 1827 do not mention it, and the body was found thanks to bloodstains and the skill of the trackers. The apparition first appears in print in an anonymous poem of 1832, and it became famous through John Lang, who wrote it up in Charles Dickens's Household Words in 1853. Historians have suggested that Farley may have invented the ghost to hide how he really knew where the body was, though this cannot be proven. Sources also disagree on details, down to the spelling of Worrall's name (Worrall, Worrell, Worral).

Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.

Sources

  1. Dictionary of Sydney – Rachel Franks, The Sprite of the Creek (2018)
  2. State Archives and Records NSW – Anthea Brown, A ghostly tale from the archives (2010)
  3. Campbelltown City Council – The Legend of Fisher's Ghost

More: Wikipedia (en)