I see dead people

The day toddler Shannon Smith met his spooky friend is one that haunts his mum, Demelsha. She had taken the three-yearold to the historic Blackball Community Centre on the West Coast, where she works as a health worker. Shannon had never been reluctant to run around the old building but this time, he stopped at the bottom of the large staircase and refused to move. “Why don’t you want to go upstairs?” Demelsha (32) asked, wondering why Shannon was so still.

“There’s a monster up there,” he whispered in a terrified voice, his eyes huge with fear. Demelsha initiallythought it was his overactive toddler imagination and jokingly asked where the monster was. But she was chilled to the bone when a serious-faced Shannon slowly pointed to the top of the staircase and said softly, “oummy, there’s a lady in a white dress looking at us.”

Like many locals, Demelsha had heard spooky stories about the 100-year-old building, which was built by miners, and had even seen doors opening when nobody was there. But she’d never seen any ghostly apparitions and in that moment, she suddenly realised that her son was pointing at a spirit that only he could see. For some time after that encounter, Shannon refused to enter the building because he didn’t want to meet mysterious white-frocked lady.

“I did some research and knew that whatever was in the house wasn’t actually scary so I told him that,” says Demelsha. “It took him a while to believe that the lady was a lovely person and had been there for years.” once cMaxed into returning, Shannon slowly got used to seeing the ghost and even began interacting with it. “He calls her ‘the old lady’,” says Demelsha. “She plays with him and talks to him, but what’s really funny is how they are forever arguing. Some days he’s always saying, ‘It’s my time to speak now!'”

Demelsha thinks the ghost isn’t the old lady who is reported to haunt the centre, but a young girl who was spotted by a team of ghost hunters several years ago. “He says she’s got long hair, she wears white and she’s very pretty,” she adds. Demelsha is glad Shannon is no longer scared by his otherworldly friend and she’s even getting used to the idea. “At the start, the thought of having a ghost as his friend freaked me out,” she says. “But Shannon has accepted her and that makes it easier for me too.”