Australia’s most haunted road: The ghost of Wakehurst Parkway

There have been many reports of people seeing a woman in a white dress appearing along a stretch of the Wakehurst Parkway. So who haunts this lonely road and why?

Wakehurst Parkway in the mid-1940s. Picture: Supplied

A young woman dressed in a white dress appears suddenly beside the road on the dark, long stretch of Wakehurst Parkway on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Even more frighteningly, some reports have been made of this ghostly apparition appearing in the back seat of a car at certain parts of the 16km road that links the suburbs of Seaforth and Narrabeen.

Many northern beaches residents refuse to drive this stretch of single-lane road, either during the day or at night, and it has been labelled Australia’s most haunted road.

But who haunts this lonely unlit road bordered by thick bush and why?

The most popular story is of a woman who has been named as Kelly Winter. Paranormal investigator Todd Fox, who has visited the site on several occasions, recently returned to see if he could pick up any ghostly evidence.

Wakehurst Parkway near Deep Creek Reserve.

“I’d heard rumours about Wakehurst Parkway for years but I didn’t actually dig into it until recently,” the lead investigator with Greater Sydney Paranormal Investigations said.

“I didn’t pick anything up, other than an obviously eerie feeling, but talking to some locals I was told the road is haunted by a lady called Kelly Winter.

“Several people have reported that she appears by the side of the road, most often near the Oxford Rd turn-off, and there have been reports of car electronics going haywire through parts of the road; window wipers going, the radio or lights coming on or off and gears that refuse to move.

“Her apparition by the side of the road is apparently intended to make drivers swerve and is tied to the fact this ghost was killed in a car accident near the spot where she appears.

“Other drivers have told stories that she has appeared in the back seat of their car. There is a story attached to this ghost, as there so often is with these things, that you have to tell her she is not wanted and she’ll disappear.”

Others have reported sightings of a woman dressed in olden day clothes or a nun’s uniform.

Filmmaker Bianca Biasi, who made a documentary on the case, believes the two women — Kelly and the nun — are one in the same.

Through her investigation, which involved interviewing around 100 people who claim to have experienced a ghostly encounter on Wakehurst Parkway, she believes the woman is not dressed as a nun but as a nurse, a uniform which in the early 1900s was similar to a nun’s habit.

Filmmaker Bianca Biasi made a documentary about the ghost of Wakehurst Parkway.

Furthermore, she believes the nurse worked at the old Quarantine Station at nearby Manly and was perhaps a local to the area. The Quarantine Station was a temporary home to thousands of immigrants from 1832 to 1984, and, sadly, many never left. Felled by disease and hardship, their remains were laid to rest in the Station’s graveyard and, some say, continue to haunt the site to this day.

Many who claim to have seen the Wakehurst apparition have told their story to local newspaper, The Manly Daily.

Stephen Dempsey was killed at Deep Creek Reserve in 1994.

“I saw a female on the opposite side of the road,” Brad North of Frenchs Forest said of his sighting in 2016.

“I slowed down and as I got closer I realised it was a ghostly white apparition of a female dressed in an old-style uniform.”

Susanne Hanke of Avalon told a frightening story of a closer encounter a friend of hers had in the 1970s.

“She explained there was a young girl dressed in white standing on the side of the road near Oxford Falls,” Hanke recalls.

“She picked her up and gave her a lift to the other end. A long conversation was held but, by the time the car had got to Narrabeen, she was gone. She only had vision of her in the rear-view mirror while under way but then she disappeared.”

While there have been dozens of reported sightings and encounters with the so-called ghost of Kelly Winter on Wakehurst Parkway, Fox said an eerie feeling at Deep Water Reserve, just off the Parkway, has a more likely origin.

Stephen Dempsey, 34, was killed at Deep Creek Reserve on August 2, 1994 by Richard Leonard who shot him with an arrow from a compound bow. Leonard initially hid the body at Deep Creek Reserve and returned later that night to dismember it.

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DEPRESSION PROJECT ‘FORGOTTEN’

Australia’s most haunted road has its origins in post-Depression Sydney when its construction was intended to be a form of employment relief.

Named after NSW governor Lord Wakehurst at the time it was conceived in 1939, much of the work was done in the early 1940s but was halted from March 1942 to March 1945 due to the war.

The first cars drove along it in March 1946. The extension to Seaforth was intended to ultimately become a main road into the city but this never eventuated.

Subsequent proposals to widen the flood-prone arterial road have been abandoned leading many locals to claim it is Sydney’s “forgotten road”.

AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED

If you take a drive down Clinton Rd in rural New Jersey, you’ll want to make sure you have a full tank of petrol.
The wooded 16km stretch is home to the notorious ghost boy who is said to appear in the water below the bridge near Clinton Reservoir and will throw a coin back if you throw one in. At the aptly-named Dead Man’s
Curve, it is said livestock on the road, both alive and dead, appear with the intention or luring drivers out of their cars. And the remains of Cross Castle, built in 1905 and burned down in 1919, have been the site of KKK meetings as well as satanic rituals.