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7/28/2019 Haunted Plantation...Cook Islands (1936)
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/haunted-plantationcook-islands-1936 1/5
Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954), Thursday 25 June 1936, page 63
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92344425
THE HAUNTED PLANTATION
CompleteStory
By Captain A* J. Carfax
ABOUT two thousand miles uorth
east of New Zealandlies
a smallgroup of islands known as the Cooks.
The seat of administration is Baro
tonga, a wocded, volcanic isle about
twenty miles square, peopled by brown
skinned folk who are close relations in
bjood and speech of the New Zealand
Maoris.
They are a wonderful race, with all
the amiable characteristics of South
Sea natives — excont where the 'white
shadow' of trading and exploitation
has fallen. Then they are quick to
assimilate European vices, and often
prove to be more cunning and un
trustworthy than the average.
The island is steeped in tradition.Nearly every point in Raratonga has a
history— generally of death, battle, or
sacred rites. The islanders are, superficially, happy-go-luclry people, wearinga smile much more readily than a
frown; nevertheless, one senses an
undercurrent of melancholy, a half
hifdsn sadness which is difficult to
define.
The Polynesians still believe in fcheir
old gods, even though they revel in
the' ceremonial and hymn-singing of
the various missionary societies. To
them the tupapako. a ghostly visitant,
can' be real
embroider their stories of uncannyhappenings so thickly that one cannot
be sure how much of them is true.
During the year 1927 I was living in
Auckland. New Zealand, and was con
sidering the purchase of a certain plantation in Rarotonga. During my In
vestigations I came on several letters
mentioning th'.t the estate was
'haunted,' greatly to the detriment ofits production, since no one was bold
enorgh to stay on the place and workit nroperiy.
I am not superstitious, however, and
am and
the idea of 'ghosts' merely amused me.
The place had certainly been neglectedfor yeprs, and the house had stood
empty for a considerable period — and
emuty houses, as everyone knows, have
a knac'* of bre?dine rMfflttlons lecrmrts
Fi'-al'y I decided to buy; the price
vr?.s low, and the nrosiects looked good.The fact th^.t. in addition to Delng'haunted,' the estate was supposed to
be unlucky did not weigh with me at all;
I had teen in so many tightish corners
during my lifetime th?t I had come todiscount luc': as a serious factor. To
day I am not so sure, for the signing
of that purchass-asTeement un
doubtedly marked the beginning of a
series of reverses, financial and otherwise, whioh have greatly changed the
aspect of things for me. But let me get
I landed in Rarotonga in October,1927. laden with a weird and wonderfuloutfit I took with me sufficient im
plements to subdue any wild growths*enough arms to frighten truculentnatives or belligerent ehosts; and all
sorts of other gesr including an upto-date tractor. Methinks the oldtimers must have smirked at my en
thusiasm and self-confident manner!When I mentioned that I had bougnc
the estate of A ?
some of them smiled,
while others looked grave; but everybody I met agresd that I was a fool tohave taken it. This unanimity puzzledma for. on the face of it, the placelooked an excellent proposition.
It was certainly a little unkempt,owing to long neglect, but hard work»wi'U wu' ancx irixat. W Hell X WttS
told, again and again, that the previous owners had all 'gene broke' andthat one had even shot himself, I was
not impressed; I felt confident I couldsucceed where my predecessors hadfailed.
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The estate itself was beautiful and
very conveniently laid out. The packing sheds were close to the beach, .chile
the house was situated on a slight rise
inland, across a taro swamp. Ssaward,the lagoon stretched to the main reef
a mile away. Around the homesteadand on the fiat land between the beachand the hilJs the tall palms were
planted in rc?ul?.r lines. Altogetherquite a little Paradise, I thought.
After inspecting the house i saw thatsome weeks must elans* before I shouldbe able to live in it, for it was verydirty and needed certain repairs. I
therefore had a thatched hut built onthe beach and shifted my kit into it.
Next I started gangs of 'boys' no
work, cleaning up the weeds, collecting
coconuts, making copra, plantingbananas, &c, and very soon I was
thoroughly enjoying the new life. Mydaily tasks on the estate were inter
spersed with riding, fishing, canoeing,and shooting — altogether a healthy di
versified, existence, colorful and absorbin?.
One day, in conversation with my
my intention of putting the house in
order and moving in; I was gettingtired of my cramped quarters in thenut He had spoken to me about thehouse on several occasions, always making it plain that the. place was hauntedand very unsafe to live in. Each timeI had laughed at his statements, butnow I was secretly surprised at hisvehemence in trying to persuade me
against carrying out my purpose, hese?med genuinely upset
'What is really wrong with theplace, Kakxno?' i demanded. 'Don'ttell me any more fairy-tales about thetupapako. but give me the truth. Whyshouldn't I live there?'
'Aue— no good!' he cried in terrorstricken accents. 'Too much ghost! Thespirits kill you.'
'The ghosts will kill me?' I echoed.'Rats! Listen to me, Kakino You findme six good men to paint and £x him
up. Tomorrow!'After a lot of argument the foreman
finallv agreed to get hold of some men;but then another obstacle presenteditsslf. No one in Titikaveka Settlement
would takeon
the Job! The nativeswe approached offered all sorts of
excuses. There were 'too many gho—j;''the house was unlucky;' 'the badspirits would get them.'
The firmness of their refusals andthe strength of their belief in the baleful inflrences attached to the housegreatlv impressed me. Seeking an ex
planation, z learnt something new, The
house, I was told, was accursed be
cause, in defiance of a native tabu, it
had been built on holy ground— partof an ancient marae, or sacrificial
of an ancient marae, or sacrificial
area. This had greatly angered the
spirits, who took their revenge on any
one rash enough to endeavor to live in
the place.
Well, I couldn't shift the house now,
and I wasn't responsible for its erect
tion on forbidden territory. Moreover,it was my property, bought with my
hard-earned money, and I was jolly
well going to live there, despite all the
hunted around tillI came across some
Palmerston islanders, who have a
strong strain of European blood in their
veins, and speak a queer patoisEnglish. They are a hard-bitten lot, and
readily agreed to do the work re
quired.
By this time the news of my inten
tions having circulated, it seemed that
the entire population of Rarotonga was
interested in persuading me to leave
the house alone. I received an as
tonishing amount of advice and criti
cism, but the opposition only mademe
more determined to renovate that
house, take up my residence there, and
at all this superstitious non
sense.
I roused the Polynesian 'boys' to
a positive frenzy of energy, which re
sulted in the place being painted and
rendered habitable inside a week. New
verandahs and a general clesn-up
worked miracles with the house itself,
and a pretty flower garden laid but
round the clearing gave charming vis
I had my goods and chattels car
ried in, stocked the larder, and tried
my 'prentice hand at arranging thefurniture. Then, with things more
or less ship-shape, I engaged two ser
vants gave a house warming party, and
laughed gaily at the gloomy warningsthat had been showered on me.
But I lauehed too soon!
Disquiet of mind, vague forebodings,
strange spells of melachonly-^th^ethings came to me so quietly, so subtly.
that I cannot remember when I first
realised their effects.'
And worse was
to follow.
Each evening, after work was over,
I used to sit alone on my verandah my
mosquito net protecting me from theassaults of insects. Sometimes I read;
sometimes I was content to watch the
moonbeams play hide-and-seek among
the palm fronds. The scene before
me was so beautiful as to be almost
K1UU Ui: Oil CbJ. u UUU ***\* T? c*0 uivmvww
comfort; I was living exactly as I
wanted to. I should have been utterly
happy; yet, after the first few days, I
realised that I wasn't.
At times I was too tired, after a
strenuous day of charging up and down
the lines on the tractor, or tramping
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the lines on the tractor, or tramping
round the bush, to do more than lounge
the evening away. This probably en
couraged a certain amount of intro
spection, which isn't always good for
one. At any rate, I gradually became
aware of a curious, mental discomfort,
a sense of dissatisfaction with my
progress, and something that almost
amounted to fear of the quietness all
around.
I was completely at a loss to account
for this state of affairs for I was not
at all the kind of fellow likely to
'imagine things,' and nothing whatr
ever had occurred to upset me. In
deed, for a house that was popularly
supposed to be brimming over with
evil influences, my new residence was
behaving exceedingly well.
Then, one evening while I was stand
ing on the verandah gazing idly out to
sea, I suddenly heard a scuffling foot
step behind me, es though someone
had turned sharply on their heels.
Rather startled; forthe sound was
quite close, I whipped round.
There was no one in sight!
Seizing my torch, I huntea ngnt
through the house and then quartered
the grounds, but could find no trace
of any intruder. I told myself it
must have been a rat, yet inwardly I
felt certain It wasn't.
Next morning, reaching for my rid
ing breeches in their accustomed place.
I found them gone. Gone also was
my gold watch and twenty-nine poundsfrom the table drawer.
?'So it was a human footstep after
all!' I
thoughtgrimly. 'There's a
thief about! Well, I knew how to
deal with that sort of happening!'In due course the police came along
and questioned everybody, but en
tirely without result.
That same night, lying awake in bed,
I heard slow footsteps cross the ver
andah and enter my room. They were
heavy and deliberate, and sounded
rather muffled, as though the intru
der wore soft shoes. When theyreached the foot of the bed I sat up
with a jerk and switched on my torch.
It took me several seconds to realise
there was no one there! In a cold
sweat, z kept the light focussed, andlistened while the mysterious steps re
ceded to the door.
I was undoubtedly badly scared, but
somehow I found courage to jumpout of bed and search the house. I
ranged round the stoeps, flashing the
torch beam everywhere I fancied a
man could be hidden. Not content
with that, I went through the lower
plantation, and finally hid beside the
road leading to the village, hoping to
catch any prowling native when he
decided to head for home. But noth
decided to head for home. But noth
ing happened, and nobody appeared.
Recounting these experiences next
morning to Harvey, a~ planter living
nearby, I found he was quite ready to
believe me. He merely, smiled, tellin«r?
me that exactly the same tiling hadj
happened to another European who
had once managed the estate.
'I thought it wouldn't be long be
fore tbe 'influence' started on you,' he
said thoughtfully. 'If you persist in
remaining, you'll go through the same
ordeal as ether people who have at
tempted to live in that house. You'll
hear mysterious footsteps, baby cries,
muttered scraps of conversations, and
you'll see a woman crossing the garden at dusk. Finally,' you will be ?
'
He stopped abruptly. 'I won't tell you
any mere,' he added, 'in case it
Ideas in your head.'
I begged him to explain himself, butno amount of questioning would loosen
his
tonguefurther.
'Ask Andy when he returns,1' was
the only reply I could elicit. And as
'Andy,' a schooner captain, was awayat sea, the reference was not of much
immediate use.
To cut a long story short, althoughall Harvey's prophecies were eventually fulfilled — witih thr- pxrpntirm nf
the vision of the woman— and al
though I was terrified at times. I
stuck stubbornly to the house, half
believing in some supernatural in
fluence, bnt nevertheless .clinging to
the hone that some human agency was
fit work.
This hope w?s strengthened by the
constant pilfering that went on, in
spite ofall I could do to stop
it.
Copra, bananas, clothes, fruit, cigar
ettes, sugar—all these things disap
peared at varying intervals; and al
though I continually changed the
labor gang and servants the robberies
continued.
During the period while I was ex
periencing these mysterious happeningsit struck me as odd that the servants
and 'boys' showed no f°ar of the house
by day, although they lost no time in
leaving it as soon as night fall. It was
very different with the dog I bought!'
The seven days he spent there were
a misery to me. He never rested; at
msne ne prowiea msmauy rouna wie
verandah, dropping with a loud thump
on the boards at different places, only
to start up whining, a moment or so
later, and recommence his wanderings.
in the end I had to send the poor brute
away.
I need hardlv say that my nerves
suffered under the strain. At nights
I lay awake, and. it is nossible that the
ordeal playpd tri'ks with my imagina
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ordeal playpd tri'ks with my imagina
tion. Be that as it mav, I heard in
turn, and reputedly all the noises de
scribed by Harvey — footsteps, babycries, muttered conversations. In day
cpIdVv and coolly, I
began to seek possible evnio nations,
but I never discovered anything.
Despite these distractions, the plan
tation work wenton
apace. I plantedsome thousands of bananas; I carefully
manured and tended my orange trees
and coconuts. But', «las, market prices
were dropping steadily! As my crops
came Into production, so something or
other happened to neutralise my profit.
?
I sm rather ahead of my story in
mentioning this, as these and other
set-backs were spread over a period of
three years. As time went on, how
ever it seemed as though the whole
universe was in a. conspiracy to rob
me of a livelihood and drive me from
My visitor of the heavy footsteps
was now so frequent a caller that he
no longer disturbed me; nor. indeed,
did the mysterious noises succeed hi
convincing me that the house should
be vacated. I grew, in fact, a little
'hard-boiled' over the matter. Baby
cries? Bah! A loose splinter of wood
somewhere, quivering in the wi«d. That
mutter of talk? Lab^r 'boys' at a
'bush-beer srhool' (illicit drinkingbout) in the neighborhood.
. The fontetens? Snme vagary of the
sea. poss'blv rosriw? un-ier the honey
combed reefer-rt. reverberating beneath
the house, AH these anneared sound
enou«rh. reasons 6ii'crfin'-il'y. but at
he«»rt I was not onvWea
One evening, while t.vnirig- a letter,
I bwatne a^are, bv tb°t sixth sense
which w« all possess.t*-pt somebody
was watching me from the back veran
dah.I got un casuallv enoueh, strolled
into my bp^room. and came ba'k to
the front w'th my pistol v*- my Rl*'»ve.
I riawdlefl there a morrent. and then
suddenly dashed across the room to the
window, where I was sure the watcher
lurked.
Quick as I was. he move^ even faster;
he went so raoidlv and silently that I
fancied I must have been mistaken
'Jove! Is this j»noth«yr ghost?' I
thought. Then, looking down, I saw a
line .of damo footprints leading across
I rhuckied wi^h relief. This tune It
was human trickery for certain! Yet
that nleht I was to experience the cli
max of mv eerie adventures: one -which
has left me floundering in conjecture
ever since.
Briefly, I was throttled within an inch
of death, wakin«r to find mv neck In an
iron srin. mv lun-?s nawfn? with the
lark of air, mv hortv st'flflv rMd— and
of mv
my own hands gripping my thighs. The
pressure increased until I must hate
fainted for a moment. Then I found:
myself sitting up groping for my torch
I imagined, until my neck began to
pain me. that it had been a fantasti
cally vivid nightmare.
I searched as usual, but there was
nothing amiss anywhere in the house.
Next morning, considerably shaken, I
sought out Harvey. He was sitting in,
his packing-shed, and stared at me
closely as I approached.
'So it has happened?' he remarked.'What do you mean?' I asked. 'How
do
'Look at your neck, man.'' he cried.
I did so, and the mirror disclosed
angry finger-marks, rapidly turningblack.
'Look here, Jimmy,' he went on
gravely. 'Take my advice and get outof that infernal house. If you don't, it
;
will drive you crazy. This strangling'business is what I couldn't tell you about
!
the other day; it has happened before,
I
to other occupants Pull the wretchedI
place down and build another housedown at the beach!'
We discussed the matter from variousangles, and when Harvey finally sug
gested that I might somehow have con
trived to strangle myself, I rememberedwhere my hands had been.
wcu coon secue cnec, i saia, ana
pulTed up the legs of my shorts. Boththighs were marked with livid printswhere my fingers had gripped in my ex
tremity.
Going back home, I fought the problem out. Should I leave? Common
sense said, 'Yes;' my inherent stub
bornness said, 'No.' 'No' had it atlast; I stayed on, determined not to be
driven away.
During the following month nothing
happened to disturb me; even the footsteps and kindred noises ceased. Was it
possible that some human being hadthrottled me; and, if so, was he respon-
!
sible for all the other annoyances? Was:
some skulking rascal trying to scare me
'
away so that the place might again be
robbed of its produce?The idea seemed plausible, yet I
doubted whether any of the local na
tives would dare to tackle me either bynight or day; they had too much respectfor my prowess as a boxer. Nevertheless, I slept very warily, with my loadedpistol ready to hand under the pillow.
One night, about five weeks after the
strangling episode, a slight noise
awakened me. Bright moonlight re
vealed every article in the room, andI
presently drew my gaze to the doorway,where I detected a vague shape in the
shadow of the wall. Grasping my re
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my re
volver, I quietly cocked it
'Who are you?' I bellowed, and as
the intruder started toward the doorwayI fired at his legs through the mos
quito netting, which immediately caughtfire.
'Aue!' groaned the unknown, swung
through the door, hurried across the
stoep, and crashed away through the
bushes just as I fired again. I scrambledout of bed, quickly extinguished the
burning net, and followed, only to find
that the intruder had completely disap
peared, leaving a few spots of blood as a
souvenir of his visit.
He was never found alive. Some weeks
after, however, when a certain man
irom an outlying island aiea of tuDercu
losis, he was found to have been suffer
ing from a neglected bullet wound in the
upper leg! This seemed suspicious, but
I could not trace any connection between
him and our villagers, nor could I find
that he had been in the vicinity of myplantation.
At this point my uncanny adventuresended, apparently for on amazing rea
son, which served to puzzle me still morethan ever, and still does.
Talking to an old chief one day aboutthe 'hauntings,' he confirmed the storythat my abode was accursed because it
wgs built on forbidden territory. He
added, however, that only the corner ofthe house stood on the marae, or holyground. He advised me to move my bedinto the other room; such an action
might appease the offended spirits. Idid so— and from that moment the eerie
experiences ended!
Though my supernatural troubles were
over, however, the more material ones
grew worse. My receipts dwindledsteadily, my pockets grew lighter andlighter. At last I was unable to standthe strain any longer, and left the estatea sadder and poorer planter still greatlypuj^led over the whole business.
I have never been able to solve theproblems presented by my experiences.
I. am told that the plantation re
mains a financial failure, and that thehouse is now left severely alone, shunnedby all. Haunted? Ghosts? Tricksters?
I wonder!