The fastest way home from DD’s place is via a road called the Wakehurst Parkway.
It’s very bushy and uninhabited and I drive along it at least twice a week, often around 9.30pm.
But I had to take a detour last night and go the long way. Not because of traffic or roadwork or storm damage … the youngest’s English assignment was to blame.
She’s been tasked with writing an 800 short story and has been hassling me to help her come up with an idea. Helping the youngest with her homework is a thankless task as she invariably dismisses all my suggestions and I get huffy.
But, as I was driving down the Wakehurst Parkway last Friday to take her new surfboard for its first twirl at Bilgola Beach, inspiration struck.
I remembered that the Wakehurst Parkway is supposed to be haunted. According to Nine News it’s “Australia’s most haunted road”.
Awesome idea for a short story, I thought.
So I looked up the details to refresh my memory.
Filmmaker Bianca Biasi reckons she’s spoken to around 100 people who claim to have seen a ghost called ‘Kelly’ on the Wakehurst Parkway.
One girl and her mum were driving along late at night when they saw something in the middle of the road.
It looked like a bright light at first. When they got closer they saw it was a woman. As they swerved it was as if they went straight through her. When they looked back the bright light was gone.
Cab driver Hla Oo also shared a chilling account of an experience he had in 2010, when he saw the silhouette of thin young woman sitting on the rear seat of his car.
“She was in a kind of white gown and head-dress like a Christian nun,” he recalled. “I couldn’t really see her face clearly, just the shape and her deep green eyes, yes the sad green eyes, but she was definitely real and sitting there and staring back at me at that precise moment. I slammed the brake hard.”
He claimed on a separate night, he picked up a female passenger he had driven before who asked to be taken to the same spot as where the apparition appeared.
Hla later discovered the female passenger had died a few weeks earlier.
Other drivers have described picking up a blood-covered girl on the Parkway and taking her to hospital, only for her to suddenly disappear.
Some have recounted car electricals such as windscreen wipers going haywire along the route, or simply feeling like they’d driven into an eerie ‘twilight zone’.
One man reported hearing a girl scream “Help me! Help me” from the bushes when he stopped on the road.
I immediately regretted refreshing my memory.
But the youngest thought it was awesome and has used it to write a surfer girl ghost tale.
I told my sister about the ghosts while we were having breakfast on Sunday morning and gave her actual goosebumps.
Last night I cooked DD dinner and couldn’t bring myself to drive home the usual way.
I’m fairly sure I don’t believe in ghosts, but it was all a bit too fresh. DD pointed out that neither he nor I have ever seen anything untoward on the road. Though there is an annoying spot where my mobile phone coverage always drops out when I’m talking to my mum. I’m blaming it on Optus rather than ghouls though.
Still, I went the long way. I wasn’t in the mood for company.
Song of the day: Ghostbusters
housegoeshome 
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