Rumoured ghost haunts radio host at historic restaurant
A rumoured resident ghost at a Mackay restaurant has made an appearance once again with debate building about whether it is actually haunted.
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A rumoured resident ghost at a Mackay restaurant has made an appearance once again with debate building about whether Church on Palmer is actually haunted.
Triple M's Jay Shipston and Dave Peters were at dinner with their bosses last week when the spirit many believe to be a ghost appeared.
As Jay explained, he was sitting with his back to the restaurant facing his breakfast show co-host who was mid-mouthful of beer when something whispered in his ear.
"Dave was set up on a chair with his back against the wall," Jay said.
"They were laughing and carrying on and I turned my head to the left and it sounded like a bloke to my right had whispered something in my ear.
"I looked back at Dave and it wasn't him because he had a mouthful of beer and the glass to his face.
"It freaked me out."
He later that night plucked up the courage to Google ghostly sightings at the historic venue, and what he found chilled him further.
A figure - which Dave reckoned looked like a woman in a hoodie - was caught on camera in a photo taken at a wedding in the early 2000s.
It was posted to the Church on Palmer Facebook page in 2015, with the smokey silhouette figure beside two men presumably guests at the wedding.
Church on Palmer owner Diane Grech told the Jay and Dave Breakfast Show she had encountered the spirit over the years she and husband Stephen had owned the restaurant.
"I have experienced it myself," Mrs Grech said.
"I've heard my name being called. I thought it was a staff member and I asked her what did she want, and it wasn't her.
"It was like somebody was calling my name."
She told the breakfast show the photo was legitimate and was taken about 15 years ago.
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"I think it's just one person," she said.
"I've seen like a figure of a person when I've turned around quickly near the front door - I've actually seen a figure there."
Jay's research found the Church on Palmer was used as a makeshift morgue after a cyclone hit in 1918.
It is not the first nor only experience the radio duo has had with ghosts.
"When I was a kid, my grandparents used to own a place in Balmain in Sydney, a working class area for so many years before it was gentrified, and there was a ghost in their house" Dave said.
"An old lady in their house used to be cheeky, like pick things up, and I remember her vividly.
"She glided through one wall to the base of the bed, turned around, smiled at me as if to say everything is OK.
"I'm kind of glad I wasn't 15 or 16 going through puberty."
There was also the literally chilling experience at Mackay's old town hall.
"We'd do a ghost tour many years ago and there were two rooms that were stone cold," Dave said.
"One was the disabled toilets at the back and the really cold front room there which apparently was a makeshift morgue after the 1918 cyclone."
Jay's encounter sent him packing after a spirit of some kind kept moving photos inside the East Gordon St unit he once called home.
"I lived there by myself and I kept hearing noises and one night I woke up - I had a stack of photobooks on the floor," he said.
"The photos were all over the floor so I picked them up and put them away, and it happened again.
"I ended up getting a psychic in and she said there was a ghost or spirit attached to that unit and they couldn't understand why someone else's photos were in that unit.
"I ended up moving out two months later."
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It was only then Jay was told someone had died in one of the units years earlier.
"I said to Dave, that one did freak me out," he said.
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