Lochinvar House was built back in the late 1820's by Leslie Duguid who was granted a enormous amount of land in 1822. He was one of the first land owners in Newcastle too.
Leslie was a Scotsman and only 20 years old. What bought him all the way out here to the other side of the world?
As with many landowners at that time, Duguid was busy working in the big city and left the Estate to be handled by an overseer. This did not work well, especially with the prevalence of bushrangers in the area.
The property was robbed many times and Duguid eventually sold it in 1840 and it was subdivided.
James Forbes Beattie Esq, purchased the homestead and part of the property and it again changed hands in 1880 being sold to John Doyle who passed it on to his son James.
I wonder if any of them became the ghosts of this place?
Lochinvar House has hosted a number of sleepovers run by us over the last few years and, of course, whilst Covid had our lives on hold we had to wait for some time to get back here.
If you read the reviews for this place people have been pretty rough saying that the place is run down and shabby, but these places are a endless money pit and especially when you have to wait months for approval for any work to be done as everything has to be 'approved' by heritage and council people the owners wait and wait and wait and get tagged as lacking respect for the building by not getting things fixed.
I know that for ghost hunters places like this are perfection. We do not have the luxury of choice when it comes to haunted places like so many places in America and the UK for example. Here in Australia site owners still do not see the value of calling their houses haunted.
Anne and I arrived early just to enjoy the silence and people started to arrive pretty much on time - just after 4pm.
We had 14 people staying overnight with three extra volunteers.
We had some welcoming cheese and biscuits and settled down to some free time to just explore and get to know each other.
Then at 6.30pm Kristy bought pizza and we also had birthday cake for Anne.
After dinner we started our investigations with some experiments set up in most of the areas of the house.
We had vigils, Spirit Box sessions, cellar sessions with the Bionic Ear and EVP sessions. We finished the main sequences for the night with Ouija Boards, Table tipping and glass dowsing sessions - we worked together until midnight.
Then we left everyone to their own devices.
Some went to bed ( like me) and some stayed up all night long.
They had varying degrees of success - from chanelling on spirit box sessions to feeling presences in the house to feeling like they were being watched.
Anne actually saw a hand coming forward in the kitchen area as she was standing in the dining room. The hand was not attached to a body - or the body could not be seen.
We had a family member who had passed come though to someone from the group on the table tipping table.
It was a pretty cool night and I think everyone had a good time.
I had to get up early to go to work on Sunday morning but we woke to filter coffee, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns and toast.
Hard to leave the place after such a powerful night as people really got into the sensing of spirit. It's always a wonderful to watch the unfolding of people's abilities as they try communication for themselves.
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