By Max Mandile
Mount Keira harbours dark secrets. I’ve often felt a sense of unease in the area… a sense of wonderment. Living so close to it, I would often hear strange noises echo from the mountain and would see weird things occur when summiting the mountain at night (once the sky even glowed orange, visible from my perch beneath the old Bert Flugelman sculpture. An unrelated story but I always enjoy mentioning it!). However, perhaps the most jarring experience I had up there was my encounter with what I refer to as The Ghost of Mount Keira.
I’d always believed in ghosts. I’ve found the idea of a spiritual world beyond ours fascinating and comforting. That being said, I never wished to actually see one much less speak to one as I did the day I first attempted to reach the top of the mountain.
The story begins with two friends and I deciding it was about time we gave Mount Keira our all and actually attempted to reach the summit. About half way up we stumbled upon an eerie “NO TRESPASSING” sign hung up on an old fence. I’d like to pretend we adhered to this sign and continued on our way but unfortunately curiosity got the best of us and we opted to at least give it a look. Beyond the fence, to our surprise, was an old, seemingly abandoned mine. We didn’t hang around long. Our often anxious friend decided the area was too eerie and we continued to climb the mountain.
Not far from the mine was a sign that declared the site abandoned during the 19th century…
Not 100 metres from here we reached a crossroad where we met a middle-aged man dressed in a full suit (including dress shoes) who had, we assumed, been climbing the mountain himself. Not sure which road to take, we asked the man for directions and he told us that the sun would be down soon and uni students often got lost in the bush after dark. Seeing that we were still obviously desperate to continue our journey, he decided to take us to a short cut he knew of.
On the way towards the short cut, the man introduced himself as ‘John.’ John was friendly enough, although somewhat reserved and not willing to talk much about his life or what he was doing in the bush himself. That was until the topic of the mine was raised. He laughed at its mention and told us that his father had worked there… in the mine that shut over 200 years ago!
We decided not to press him for information. Suddenly we were feeling very uneasy about this otherwise pleasant man. He took us to the shortcut and told us to continue following the path as he didn’t want us to become another group of young adults that he would have to come and find in the dead of night. He said this as if he’d been doing it all his life, looking for lost amateur mountain climbers.
I gave my hand for him to shake but he chose to ignore it and then he sent us along. Now, for context, we were on a very straight bit of path, but within seconds our new friend had disappeared. None of us saw him leave… conveniently we had all not been paying attention. I’m not saying John was a ghost necessarily… I’m just saying I can’t think of any other ideas that could explain who, or what, he was.
*This was originally published in the ‘Tertangala: Horror Issue’ (2023)