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Haunted: The Book of Australia's Ghosts
* Eyewitness Reports
* Eerie Encounters
* Uncanny Photographs
Countless Australians have experienced the awe - and shock - of a personal encounter with a ghost. In this unique book, John Pinkney chronicles many of the strangest and most profound of our nation's modern-day hauntings.
(From blurb on back cover)
* Eerie Encounters
* Uncanny Photographs
Countless Australians have experienced the awe - and shock - of a personal encounter with a ghost. In this unique book, John Pinkney chronicles many of the strangest and most profound of our nation's modern-day hauntings.
(From blurb on back cover)
333 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
John Pinkney
34 books46 followersJOHN PINKNEY is a bestselling Australian author, screenwriter and journalist.
*His newest ebook is the novel Grave Injustice: An Afterlife Odyssey.
This dark, pacy science fiction thriller draws on John's career-long research into the paranormal - and the strange phenomena that may occur beyond the barriers of death.
Over the years, he has spoken to numerous people who clinically died and were then resuscitated - returning to describe landscapes and events of breathtaking beauty. The testimonies of these returnees from the brink inspired John to write Grave Injustice.
The narrative extends far beyond NDEs (near-death experiences.) It's set in Sydney and tropical Queensland; describing human love, courage and sacrifice, both earthly and transcendental.
Ranged against the young lovers are a corporate cell of scientifically accomplished soul-thieves,who draw their ideas from Dante's nine circles of Hell.
Terrifyingly, the novel portrays brutal conflict between good and evil. And it's hard, for a host of reasons, to predict which will prevail.
John Pinkney's other ebooks include Haunted: the Ghosts that Share Our World...Australia's Strangest Mysteries #1 and #2...A Paranormal File: An Australian Investigator's Casebook...The Mary Celeste Syndrome...Alien Airships Over Old America...Thirst: an Inheritance of Evil...The Girl Who Touched Infinity...The Key and the Fountain.
John's original screenplay Thirst, directed by Rod Hardy and produced by Anthony I. Ginnane won Best Horror
Film prize at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. His 3-act drama, The Face in the Mirror, was co-awarded Best Stage Play in the General Motors/Elizabethan Theatre Trust competition.
He has written several hundred drama episodes for TV - and his paperbooks, including such titles as Great Australian Mysteries 1 & 2, Haunted, Unexplained and Unsolved have been numerously reprinted. His 3-volume Mazeworld series has appeared in USA and UK and in translation through Europe. His logic puzzle books Think!, Think Again! and Wordgames have also been published internationally.
For many years John was a prominent writer with Australia's Age newspaper, subsequently moving his column, Pinkney Place to Rupert Murdoch's national daily The Australian. Here he covered the century's most extraordinary UFO case: the disappearance without trace of young pilot Frederick Valentich, after radioing Flight Services that he was being 'orbited' by a gigantic craft. [full story and photographs are in A Paranormal File.]
John has had a lifelong interest in the unsolved and unexplained. His fascination with the unknown took its most practical form when, with lawyer-friend Peter Norris, he co-founded the organization known today as VUFORS - the Victorian UFO Research Society. John and Peter collaborated to host the weekly radio series The Truth Behind UFOs and Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Over the years John Pinkney's broadcasts and columns have attracted a large mail from listeners and readers describing their brushes with the bizarre. Readers of his books continue the input.
*His newest ebook is the novel Grave Injustice: An Afterlife Odyssey.
This dark, pacy science fiction thriller draws on John's career-long research into the paranormal - and the strange phenomena that may occur beyond the barriers of death.
Over the years, he has spoken to numerous people who clinically died and were then resuscitated - returning to describe landscapes and events of breathtaking beauty. The testimonies of these returnees from the brink inspired John to write Grave Injustice.
The narrative extends far beyond NDEs (near-death experiences.) It's set in Sydney and tropical Queensland; describing human love, courage and sacrifice, both earthly and transcendental.
Ranged against the young lovers are a corporate cell of scientifically accomplished soul-thieves,who draw their ideas from Dante's nine circles of Hell.
Terrifyingly, the novel portrays brutal conflict between good and evil. And it's hard, for a host of reasons, to predict which will prevail.
John Pinkney's other ebooks include Haunted: the Ghosts that Share Our World...Australia's Strangest Mysteries #1 and #2...A Paranormal File: An Australian Investigator's Casebook...The Mary Celeste Syndrome...Alien Airships Over Old America...Thirst: an Inheritance of Evil...The Girl Who Touched Infinity...The Key and the Fountain.
John's original screenplay Thirst, directed by Rod Hardy and produced by Anthony I. Ginnane won Best Horror
Film prize at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. His 3-act drama, The Face in the Mirror, was co-awarded Best Stage Play in the General Motors/Elizabethan Theatre Trust competition.
He has written several hundred drama episodes for TV - and his paperbooks, including such titles as Great Australian Mysteries 1 & 2, Haunted, Unexplained and Unsolved have been numerously reprinted. His 3-volume Mazeworld series has appeared in USA and UK and in translation through Europe. His logic puzzle books Think!, Think Again! and Wordgames have also been published internationally.
For many years John was a prominent writer with Australia's Age newspaper, subsequently moving his column, Pinkney Place to Rupert Murdoch's national daily The Australian. Here he covered the century's most extraordinary UFO case: the disappearance without trace of young pilot Frederick Valentich, after radioing Flight Services that he was being 'orbited' by a gigantic craft. [full story and photographs are in A Paranormal File.]
John has had a lifelong interest in the unsolved and unexplained. His fascination with the unknown took its most practical form when, with lawyer-friend Peter Norris, he co-founded the organization known today as VUFORS - the Victorian UFO Research Society. John and Peter collaborated to host the weekly radio series The Truth Behind UFOs and Do You Believe in Ghosts?
Over the years John Pinkney's broadcasts and columns have attracted a large mail from listeners and readers describing their brushes with the bizarre. Readers of his books continue the input.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 10, 2018
Bit boring and repetitive by the end. I would have preferred less stories but with more depth, instead of lots of tiny stories of a random place in rural Australia that had a haunting for 2 seconds in 1880.
November 14, 2015
Jon Pinkney is a ghost enthusiast, not an actual researcher. Because of this you can't feel completely assured that everything he says is true. It really depends on your own understanding of what ghosts would be capable of. Anyway, for the most part this book is quite entertaining, and also quite scary. There is a lot of repetition, however, and this tends to bog the book down. But some of the stories are great, like the mysterious storm of rocks which Stephen King unwittingly mimics in 'Carrie', and cursed aboriginal stones which riddle whoever takes them with sickness or death..
Thoughts After Second Reading
Pretty much the same thoughts as last time. There's nothing particularly outstanding about this book; it merely details numerous cases of reputed hauntings (in their various forms) throughout Australia. Many of them, if not most of them, are pretty run-of-the-mill incidents that you get to find annoyingly familiar. But there are admittedly some very creepy and downright intriguing stories in here as well. Especially if you are a believer in ghosts (which I am), then you will find yourself constantly wondering how such events as John Pinkney describes are not known worldwide by everyone. I particularly liked the unsettling legend surrounding the ill-omened Greek ship that was wrecked over the reefs off Western Australia. And I especially like the stories with darker implications beneath them, that strongly suggest that the old saying "It's only a ghost ... it can never hurt you" is to quite an extent, bullshit. By the way, I suppose I'll take back saying that Pinkney was only an enthusiast, unworthy of being called a "researcher". I don't known why I said that because Pinkney did a pretty damned good job overall.
Thoughts After Second Reading
Pretty much the same thoughts as last time. There's nothing particularly outstanding about this book; it merely details numerous cases of reputed hauntings (in their various forms) throughout Australia. Many of them, if not most of them, are pretty run-of-the-mill incidents that you get to find annoyingly familiar. But there are admittedly some very creepy and downright intriguing stories in here as well. Especially if you are a believer in ghosts (which I am), then you will find yourself constantly wondering how such events as John Pinkney describes are not known worldwide by everyone. I particularly liked the unsettling legend surrounding the ill-omened Greek ship that was wrecked over the reefs off Western Australia. And I especially like the stories with darker implications beneath them, that strongly suggest that the old saying "It's only a ghost ... it can never hurt you" is to quite an extent, bullshit. By the way, I suppose I'll take back saying that Pinkney was only an enthusiast, unworthy of being called a "researcher". I don't known why I said that because Pinkney did a pretty damned good job overall.
March 11, 2009
This is one book you don't want to read on your own at night... but it gave me lots of ideas to include some eerie scenes in my gothic novel! :)
October 8, 2025
Some good stories but as with many books such as this one with short recounts of events it does get quite repetitive at times. I would have personally preferred fewer stories with a bit more information for each one.
The photo pages were a mixture of interesting photos where it seems ghosts were captured on film and boring portraits that didn't seem worthy of inclusion.
The photo pages were a mixture of interesting photos where it seems ghosts were captured on film and boring portraits that didn't seem worthy of inclusion.
March 11, 2017
I love reading about true encounters of ghosts who I believe are trying to send us a message. I also like the history that you learn from the way John writes the stories from people he has spoken too and about the places that are haunted. It was a very interesting book to read.
August 16, 2016
Pinkney's book is a collection of ghost stories from around Australia (with an honourable mention to an Australian ghost in Britain). Some of the stories are drawn from written records (for example, the old tale of the ghost of Frederick Fisher). Many more are modern accounts provided to Mr Pinkney by members of the public. There are some old friends here, like the ghost of the baritone Federici, haunting Melbourne's Princess Theatre, and there are many that are more obscure (the phantoms of the Mornington Peninula freeway were new to me, despite growing up in that area).
The book is written in a good conversational style. You could imagine much of it being taken from a Sunday newspaper. Most of the stories have a well-worn quality, as if they'd been told and retold many times over cups of tea. If one were picky, the book could be criticised. Written and verbal accounts are treated completely uncritically, and there are multiple references to half-identified characters ("said to be the ghost of a nurse"; "thought to have been a soldier"). Criticising it this way, though, rather misses the point. This isn't meant to be a textual or historical analysis of the evidence for ghosts. Instead, it's a work of modern folklore - the sort that spins a good yarn even if it means stretching a few details here and there (I think it was Hayden White who said that there's nothing so human as the desire to tell stories). The subject matter itself is an example of a desire to talk about what links those who are dead with those who are still living, and to pass these tales on to people yet unborn.
I give this one four stars out of five. Read and enjoy!
The book is written in a good conversational style. You could imagine much of it being taken from a Sunday newspaper. Most of the stories have a well-worn quality, as if they'd been told and retold many times over cups of tea. If one were picky, the book could be criticised. Written and verbal accounts are treated completely uncritically, and there are multiple references to half-identified characters ("said to be the ghost of a nurse"; "thought to have been a soldier"). Criticising it this way, though, rather misses the point. This isn't meant to be a textual or historical analysis of the evidence for ghosts. Instead, it's a work of modern folklore - the sort that spins a good yarn even if it means stretching a few details here and there (I think it was Hayden White who said that there's nothing so human as the desire to tell stories). The subject matter itself is an example of a desire to talk about what links those who are dead with those who are still living, and to pass these tales on to people yet unborn.
I give this one four stars out of five. Read and enjoy!
May 1, 2015
A good book for all us Aussies who want to know more about the ghosts in our backyard. The author offers his insight into some of the cases in this book, and also includes some of his own experiences, which, in my opinion, made this book so much better by making us connect with the author more. The author also writes about similar cases around the world which is handy if you want to read about more cases that you haven't heard of before, which was the case with most of the stories written in this book. One of the best books to read in this genre of books and I recommend it to all.
September 17, 2014
Pretty good little book about hauntings and ghosts in Australia. Easy read, but almost too concise - I would have liked a little more follow up on some of the stories.
July 14, 2016
It's amazing and I wish there was a haunting the in traneit Vic Australia so that I could read it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews