Fright Night at the Quarantine Station in Manly

Last week I joined fund-raiser Natasha Cannon and her team to raise funds for the Children’s Cancer Institute as part of the ‘Dare the Boss’ campaign, and we had a really spooky evening at the QS in Manly. We were joined by film-maker Bianca Biasi and her team who are involved in recreating my novel Ghost Boy as a movie (which is set partly at the QS) and also a camera crew to record everything that happened! With us was also a medium – more on Christina later.  After dinner at the fabulous Boiler Restaurant, we met a guide who proceeded to walk us all around the considerable acreage that makes up the precinct of the QS. As we walked along, she told us many ghostly stories of spirits both benign but also malignant, as witness the matron in the hospital ward and the gravedigger in his cottage, close to the site where he plunged to his death in (probably) a drunken stupor. Judging from the reactions of the medium, they certainly made their presence felt that night! For myself, I found the experience quite benign (perhaps because all the spirits were focused on the medium!)  I thoroughly enjoyed the evening – even though I put my hand up for a double-dare: to be locked into the creepy shower block on my own for five minutes! I’ve been creeped out there before, in broad daylight, but that night I was fine.  Other double dares included Natasha spending five minutes on her own in the gravedigger’s cottage, and another member of the group ditto in the rather ghastly morgue!  Neither of them came out grey with fright – and neither did I because, as you see from the attached photo taken before we began, I was already grey to start off with!  Well done to Natasha and her team who are doing such a great job raising funds for the CCIA, and I’m looking forward to seeing the ghostly footage from the film crew!