An Invercargill ghost caught in photo?

Busting out the ghost theories

By SAM McKNIGHT – The Southland Times
An Invercargill man has taken a photograph that could be proof of the afterlife, or it could be a cloud – who knows?

The ghostly apparition in a windowA magnified portion of the ghostly image

Andrew Watters travelled to St Bathans, near Alexandra, with his partner Kim Ward during the weekend in search of the spirits that reputedly haunt its buildings.
“I’d always been nagging my Kim to go and have a look at the Vulcan Hotel and its supposed ghost, hoping we would find something.”
That search turned up short.
“I had a beer at the pub and got goosebumps but I think it was just the excitement.”
The pair took plenty of photos and didn’t think they had anything until a friend spotted a shape with an uncanny resemblance to a woman in the window at the post office, he said.
“It’s freaked me out a bit. The shape is very close to a human figure.”
The photograph did not make him any more or less sceptical about the existence of ghosts but it was bizarre, Mr Watters said.
Vulcan Hotel leasee Jude Cavanagh said it was the first she had heard of a ghost sighting at the post office.
“It’s a very spirited town, so who knows?”
The post office, which was managed by the Department of Conservation since the 1950s, had been vacant for about a year, at least in the bodily sense, she said.
“It all adds to the legend of the place.”
The department’s Alexandra community relations programme manager Amanda Ware said she had no knowledge of any phantom presence at the post office.
The building, opened in 1909, was a category two historic place and had been vacant for about a year, she said.
The interior largely remained unchanged from its days as a working port office and the second floor, where the mysterious shape was seen, was the postmaster’s living quarters, Ms Ware said.
“Maybe it was him coming back for a visit.”
She would tread carefully the next time she stopped by, she said.

2 Comments

  1. Jack

    We stayed in Homestead Villa Motel, Invercargill in 2012, where I saw apparition of woman in our room. She appeared for some 10 or 15 seconds. She appeared to be a Pacific Islander or a Maori, black hair with pony tail. It wasn’t a ghostly or blurred image at all. Yeah, for the first time ever. Room 30. LOL. Fantastic service in that motel.

  2. Anonymous

    {Although this is a completely different place} At the Invercargill Movie Theater, when I was seven. I got lost for some dam reason after going to the bathroom and I happened to walk into this theater, lights were on, no film and this one girl, by herself? { might not be a spirit who knows I was only seven} but… she was around my age at the time, white hair, couldn’t see her face, she was in a raincoat and she had a doll or a teddy beside her. I walked in there and walked back out after still being lost I happen to get back in there again and she still there. I didn’t say anything and… I kind of regret it!

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