AS Jade and I sat down at the dining table in an average West Warrnambool home, Natalie explained there had always been a ‘‘negative energy’’ in the house.

‘‘We’ve lived here 10 years and it’s never been a happy house,’’ Natalie said.

‘‘We’d only been here three months before my husband died of cancer so there was a lot of unhappiness. I can feel my husband in my room. I can sense his presence. I’ve lost things and searched high and low for them (and) I know this sounds weird but I’ve said to Guy, ‘help me find my keys’, and then I’ll walk automatically to where they wouldn’t ordinarily be and they’re there. I go to a clairvoyant and he’s said (my husband’s) watching over me.’’

It was an incident that her eldest son Zak, 14, experienced a fortnight ago that made her call us.

‘‘I was sitting in my room,’’ Zak said, ‘‘and... out of nowhere I heard this deep breathing. It sounded like an old man, like a 70-year-old who’s been smoking all his life. I thought maybe it was my grandpa. He has emphysema and I thought he might have died.’’

Natalie said some of her Aboriginal friends felt uncomfortable in the house because there were ‘‘too many murrups (spirits)’’.

She said she had tried many things to ward off bad spirits (but not her husband’s presence) — crystals, numerology, astrology, feng shui, and pendulums.

‘‘I ask the pendulums questions and the answer depends on which way (it) goes.’’ She grabbed a pendulum — a small round stone on a chain — and held it out.

‘‘Ask it a question.’’

I froze, unsure what to ask ‘‘Is there another presence in this house?’’

The pendulum slowly began to swing sideways.

‘‘That’s a ‘yes’,’’ she said. 

As Jade and I left, we were unsure what to do. We had no evidence of spirits, but that wasn’t important — Natalie believed they were and they were unnerving her.

‘‘Is there anything we can do to help her?’’ Jade said.

‘‘What about we get a priest to do an exorcism on her house and drive out the evil spirits?’’ I suggested.

We both agreed that was a bit full on, but then I had a brainwave.

A few days later we were headed to Natalie’s again, but this time we stopped off to pick up Rob Lowe, an Aboriginal elder I knew. 

We’d asked Mr Lowe if he would perform a smoking ceremony on the house to drive out any bad murrups.

Natalie welcomed the idea and Mr Lowe agreed. 

Carrying his supplies, Mr Lowe explained on the way there were two different rituals he could perform, each one passed down through generations for millennia.

The first one aimed at driving bad spirits out. The downside, Mr Lowe said, was it might also drive out the spirit of Natalie’s husband. There was also a risk of someone becoming possessed by a bad spirit, as it might try to enter a host rather than flee.

‘‘That happened to me once, about 10 or 15 years ago,’’ he said.

‘‘I didn’t feel like I was in control of my own body. I had to go out to the Framlingham cemetery and do a smoking ceremony on myself.’’

The second ritual involved burning some special ingredients that would calm the bad spirits down until they disappeared over time.

Jade and I looked at each other.

‘‘Let’s go with the second one,’’ we agreed.

At Natalie’ house, Mr Lowe talked Natalie through the process, pulling out the ingredients for the smoking ceremony as he spoke — paperbark, eucalyptus leaves, some stringy bark, and something he called muckup (also known as blackboy weed).

‘‘The muckup gives off a calming odour, it makes the spirit aware you’re not afraid of him,’’ he said.

He said he’d been able to sense spirits since he was five. Natalie asked him if he could sense any spirits in the house, but Mr Lowe shook his head.

‘‘I’m not into white spirits, but I can always tell if there’s an Aboriginal spirit around.’’

He set up a block of wood with symbolic markings on it in the hallway and started a little fire in a depression carved into the block.

Straight away, the smoke detector went off. Oops. We eventually disconnected it and started again.

Strangely, the smoke refused to drift into Zak’s room, despite all the windows being closed.

‘‘The spirits might be controlling the fire,’’ Mr Lowe said. He picked up the smoking block and carried it into Zak’s room to ensure the smoke got in there.

He then passed the block to Zak. ‘‘Let the smoke drift over you,’’ Mr Lowe told him.

Zak stood there, eyes closed, the aromatic smoke wafting over him. The block was then passed to his mum.

As the small fire burnt out, Mr Lowe said there no guarantees it worked. Natalie didn’t mind — she was appreciative of the effort and seemed relieved.

As we drove Mr Lowe home, he said he’d lost count of how many smoking ceremonies he’d done for people. 

Spiritualism and belief in ghosts is surprisingly common, and whether we believed or not, the important thing was we’d given Natalie some peace of mind.

Sometimes, that’s more important than finding hard evidence that ghosts exist.

★★★★★

END NOTE: This story was originally published in The Standard in 2008.