MORE GHOSTLY TALES...ESMERELDA OR Was it really the butler...?

The elegant nineteenth century mansion, Grosvenor (or Lanark as it was originally called) still graces Queens Road, Melbourne, although now a tizzed up shadow of its former glory, it forms nothing more than a facade to a large apartment complex.

Grosvenor - just after the Army moved out.

Built in 1887, Grosvenor was acquired by the Australian Army in 1942 for the princely sum of £25,000. Since that date it was used exclusively by the Army until it was finally sold in the late 1990s.

I was posted to Headquarters 4^th Brigade, the last unit to occupy Grosvenor, in the mid 1990s, as the Brigade’s first legal officer. I was assigned a small, chilly office in what would have been the servant’s quarters. It was a room that resolutely refused to warm up, even on the chilliest day and I would often find my computer switched on after I was sure I had switched it off. The more experienced members of staff would just shrug their shoulders and blame it on “Esmerelda”.

There had been stories of Esmerelda in circulation for many years before I came to Grosvenor. She was reputed to have been a parlour maid with whom the master of the house had a dalliance. The story was that the butler killed her and concealed her body in the swamp which is now Albert Park Lake but her restless, unrequited spirit returned to the house. A LTCOL Thomas wrote a brief history of the house and although sceptical to the point of scathing about the existence of a ghost, did find a report in the Police Gazette of 1890-1910 of the body of a female child being found in the swamp on 19 June 1900. An autopsy revealed she had been suffocated but there did not appear to be any link to the house.

The Servants Wing from the carpark

One crusty old warrant officer who was posted to the house from the early 70s to 90s was convinced of supernatural occurrences in the cellar and the area behind the bar of the officers’ mess (the old butler’s pantry). He would frequently hear footsteps emanating from this area. One evening around dusk, he and an officer were leaving for the day. The building was deserted and locked up. As they got into the car he looked up and saw the shadow of a girl holding a candle holder in one of the upstairs rooms of the servant’s annexe. 

Esmerelda’s presence would be felt in other ways. From the bathroom next to the billiard room the staff were irritated by the persistent sound of a dripping tap. On investigation the taps were found to be firmly turned off. Before and after the building was carpeted, the sound of footsteps crunching on sand would be heard about the building.

The "Pink" Bathroom

Before my time there had been at least two sightings of Esmerelda, one in the dining room and one in the “pink bathroom” (attached to the commander’s office which would have been the master bedroom to the house). Both witnesses described a “white lady”. In the 1980s a soldier checking the pink bathroom was unable to open the door which was never locked. Once inside, he retreated hastily when the cups and saucers stored on a bench inside the bathroom began rattling and dancing.

Which brings me to my own time at Grosvenor. I had a young captain working for me who was not a person with a vivid imagination by any stretch. One evening he came up to our office, whitefaced, and told me he had been in the officers’ mess doing up his bootlaces. He became aware of someone entering the Mess and looked up thinking it was one of the other officers. He saw a “grey-white” image of a woman which abruptly disappeared.

(The following photograph is of "The Officer's Mess" where there were many sightings of Esmerelda. I took these photos using an a fairly simple standard film camera - remember those? - not long after the Army had moved out and in this photograph only there is a mysterious white "blob" in the middle of the floor. Just behind the "blob" is the bar area where the Butler's Pantry was situated. You can see the room is heavily curtained. A trick of the light or an "orb"? You be the judge.)

When I mentioned this story to the regular army members of the staff, they were livid. How come he had seen Esmerelda and they hadn’t? Out the stories came.

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• One warrant officer told me he had been alone in the building and gone for a shower. When he came out he distinctly heard the sound of voices talking. He prowled the building and found the offices locked and silent.
• The Brigade RSM, a hard bitten English veteran, refused to spend a night in the building after hearing sounds of doors opening and closing and footsteps coming from the servant’s wing.
• A civilian guest, with psychic abilities, claimed on entering the building that she felt a distinct presence in the building. Undeterred she stayed for the Mess Dinner

F   Finally my own son claims to have met Esmerelda. I called in one day with him in tow. In the car going home he said he had seen a grey white blob that had passed through him and felt very cold. Now I am less inclined to believe a 10 year old with a vivid imagination but, at the time, he hadn’t heard the stories of Esmerelda. 

The "Billiard Room" 

Like Netherby (see THE LAST RESIDENT OF NETHERBY), Grosvenor lay empty for many years before the developers moved in. Much of the building was demolished, notably the servants wing where she seemed to have been most active. I wonder if her lonely spirit now lives in the glammed up modernity of the apartment complex?

Grosvenor today...any self respecting ghost would stay away!

Post script: Since writing the article on Netherby, the Sergeant I mentioned in that article got back in touch with me.  When I told him I was planning on putting up the companion piece on Grosvenor, he wrote: "I played a great prank on the the receptionist at Grosvenor who I knew quite well from my posting to 4 Bde (I was there for a short time before coming to Netherby). Terrified the life out of her,rang 4 Bde she answered and I pretended to be Albert, with a growly groaning voice looking for Esmerelda, told her that she was probably upstairs in the pink bathroom and I needed to speak with her. It took her a long time to forgive me and she would not venture into that bathroom for anything. Funny though I never felt Esmeralda's presence at Grosvenor, perhaps it was because I wasn't there long enough as we had recently moved there from Kensington and everything was still quite disorganised."

Me and my ghosts...Ms. Stuart is at home

I’ve always had a fascination with ghost stories which I suspect began with my mother’s tale of a ghostly encounter in a Youth Hostel in Wales. My mother is an extremely sensible woman and not one given to histrionics or flights of fancy. The story, as she tells it, is that she and a friend on a cycling tour of Wales in the early 1950s stayed the night in a converted castle that was now used as a Youth Hostel. She woke during the night to the sensation of a woman’s fingers brushing her cheek. She could clearly see a woman bending over her and as she watched the figure dissolved into the wall.


My own paranormal experiences have been far less impressive and really take the form of an emotional response to a place rather than ghostly figures. The most powerful occurred when I visited Warwick Castle in my early 20s and like all tourists went down to the "dungeon" below the castle. The feeling of misery was so overwhelming I felt as if I would suffocate. On subsequent visits to the castle nothing and nobody has been able to induce me to go down to those cells again.

Ms. Stuart and friend at Warwick Castle in 2005

I have, to my knowledge, worked in at least two haunted buildings. Both of them were former nineteenth century mansions and both had been used by the Australian Army for many, many years. The first, “Netherby” in Melbourne was the Headquarters of the 3rd Training Group during my time but had been, reputedly, used by ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligency Organisation) or its equivalent in the 1950s. There were stories of soundproofed cellars and secret tunnels but no evidence has ever been found of either, even during Netherby’s more recent conversion to a wing of a modern hotel. Nothing untoward happened to me in all the years I worked at Netherby but I did start to pick up the stories of “Albert” reputedly the lonely ghost of a Rumanian spy. After collecting quite a few eye witness reports of Albert's activities, it started me on a quest to track down more ghost stories from Army establishments. I figured soldiers made fairly reliable witnesses. 


The other haunted mansion is Grosvenor (close to Netherby) which served as Headquarters 4th Brigade when I first went there. Like Netherby it has long since been sold and is now a rather depressed facade to some particularly ghastly apartments. Grosvenor was far grander than Netherby and was reputedly haunted by “Esmerelda”, a young maid servant who had been found drowned in the swamp that is now Albert Park Lake. Esmerelda and I did have some firsthand contact and like Albert she is well chronicled.


I will save the stories of “Albert” and “Esmerelda” for later posts.


One of the more unnerving experiences occurred on a visit to Housesteads Roman fort on Hadrians Wall. No one has ever been able to give me a reasonable explanation of the mark ('the blur") that appears on this digital photograph. It's not present on the photographs taken just minutes before or after... so its not a smudge on the lens. The weather was fine so its not rain.  Frustratingly I can't even say I felt anything...like cold chills.  

The "blur" at Housesteads Roman Fort

Over the years, wherever an opportunity has presented, I have gone on ghost tours some hokey and some downright spooky. You will have found me trailing lantern bearing guides in York, New Orleans, Edinburgh, Port Arthur in Tasmania (now there is a spooky place!) and Sydney Quarantine Station to name a few. Books about ghosts abound on my bookshelves because behind every good ghost there is a potential fodder for a writer and in my September release...GATHER THE BONES, I pulled together a few of these stories and created my ghostly characters. 

Hunting for ghosts - Underground Vaults, Edinburgh

I have written at least two ghostly short stories and one these...THE PROMISE is freely available on my website. Both stories are in TOWER OF TALES. 













Next month in "At Home with Ms. Stuart":  I will share the sad tale of Albert, the ghost of Netherby. Watch this space.