LLOYD Rutledge was 38 and drunk when he missed the top step in Cooinda, the stately home he’d built in Port Fairy. 

He hit all of the other stairs on the way down, fatally breaking his neck. It was December 17, 1858.

On the day of his funeral, a summer storm crashed and sparked over the heads of the mourners. The horses carrying the coffin were spooked, dropping the late Mr Rutledge on the ground.

In the pouring rain, his friends picked up the coffin and carried it the remaining 300 yards, only to lose their grip lowering it into the grave, landing Mr Rutledge head first to rest in peace. Apparently, Mr Rutledge was none too pleased about this and is said to rise from the grave and return to Cooinda every December 17.

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UNFORTUNATELY it was not December 17 when Jade, our ghost-hunting assistant Brady, and I headed to the Port Fairy cemetery.

It’s said to be the spookiest in the state, perhaps due to the number of ghost stories connected to the town.

The cemetery was the focus of an investigation by Ghost Researchers International in 2007, which didn’t find any spectres, despite using some high-tech devices. The lack of ghosts then didn’t deter us as we headed there after dark for our first patrol.

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IN 1898, seventeen-year-old Claire Sturt Lydiard was in a small boat on the Moyne River, gathering watercress, when she lost her balance and fell overboard.

The fashions of the time were not renowned for their buoyancy and Claire sank to her death. Her body was retrieved and placed on a bed in a nearby house.

Claire’s ghost is sometimes seen at the foot of that bed and residents of the house have reported a glowing light floating in the room.

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WE reached the cemetery about 9.30pm and sat down, taking in the moonlight-bathed headstones. There were a lot of graves and our initial idea of finding the resting places of Mr Rutledge and Claire Lydiard seemed a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. We began wandering around the cemetery in the hopes of finding something interesting, but after an hour we hadn’t found anything of note, other than Jade being temporarily spooked by a fleeing rabbit of the living, corporeal variety. We returned to base.

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MANY of Port Fairy’s ghost tales were compiled by dedicated historian Pat Glover, who has since passed away. In his collection of stories, available from the Port Fairy Visitor Information Centre, he noted his own encounter with the unexplained that forced him to reconsider his scepticism. Mr Glover said one particular Port Fairy home he had lived in had left him with such a bad feeling he described it as ‘‘a malignant presence’’ that had him ever vigilant for ‘‘flying objects, so strong was the feeling of being in the house with a poltergeist’’.

Strangely, the malevolent vibe was only felt by male occupants of the house, who also succumbed to bad health despite being illness-free prior to moving in.

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WE returned for our second patrol after midnight, this time splitting up to cover more ground. After about half an hour of wandering and a light shower of rain, we regrouped in the centre of the cemetery.

Jade reported that he hadn’t seen anything but I said he had heard the sound of footsteps on the grass just a few graves away. ‘‘But it was probably a rabbit,’’ I said.

Brady was the most affected by being alone in the cemetery after midnight and said he’d gotten a weird vibe from the grave of Dick the Bushranger.

‘‘Maybe it was just his epitaph — ‘Did he deserve it?’ — that spooked me,’’ he said.

We headed to Dick’s grave and sat around it for a while but the feeling had passed.

As we left, ghostless once again, it occurred to us the cemetery hadn’t seemed spooky after all.

In fact, spending most of the night there had been quite a relaxing and calm experience. For some people this would not be the case, but maybe these are the people that see ghosts; possibly because they allow themselves to believe in the idea. 

Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen any yet. But there’s no harm in trying.

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