Luna Park Ghost Train fire: Mystery of the satanic figure
OF all the stories to come out of the 1979 Luna Park Ghost Train tragedy, this is the most bizarre. Damian Godson had his photo with a satanic looking figure moments before he was killed in the blaze.
IT is the eerie photo that has become synonymous with the tragedy of the Luna Park Ghost Train inferno that claimed the lives of seven people in 1979.
John and Jenny Godson were in Sydney for a much-needed family holiday with their two young boys and had a number of the city’s icons on their to-do list before heading back to the country.
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They’d ticked off Taronga Zoo and were making their way around Circular Quay when six-year-old Damien stopped for a photograph with a bizarre looking character.
Believed to be one of the many buskers that call the promenade home every day of the week, the man was dressed in an evil-looking satanic headress that appeared to be made from the hide of a dead animal.
The hollow black eyes that were cut into the mask were made even more ghoulish by the horns he wore on his head.
With his arm around Damien and the ferry terminal in the background, it would be the last photo ever taken of the young boy.
Just hours later he would be one of the seven victims of the deadly blaze that ripped through the Ghost Train.
When the flames were eventually put out, Damien was found by rescuers huddled in a corner of the tunnel with his dad and younger brother, their mother Jenny surviving after a last minute decision to get ice cream instead of join them on the ride.
Four other boys from Waverley College, who had been best friends for most of their lives, were also killed in the fire.
Ms Godson, who now goes by the name Poidevin, looks back on that creepy photo not with a sense of dread or fear, but as part of a larger take on the whole incident and how it eventually shaped her.
“I did question it and I have learned to have a truly open mind,” she said.
“I’m not a religious person but I just feel it was all meant to be.”
Ms Poidevin, whose recovery was helped with the arrival of a ‘miracle baby’ seven years after her family was killed, said all of it, including the mystery photo, is part of a larger story we don’t have a say in.
“There was nothing I could have done to avoid what happened that night and when you look at life like that and all these little strange things come into play,” she said.
“I just feel it was all meant to be. For me to walk out of Coney Island at 9.45pm and want an ice cream - I hardly ever ate ice cream - but I had this strange desire to have it and when I looked back on that it was totally bizarre.”
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