Just imagine you are roaming around an empty paddock when you hear a mysterious sound, you turn around and come face-to-face with a … GHOST???!!! As scary as this may seem, some people have had very similar experiences. The Tinonee Ghost really does exist!
The Tinonee Ghost is a bright light that bounces around the fields of Tinonee. It was first reported in the newspapers in 1927.1 There have been many theories used to explain the light including pranksters, marsh gas, fire flies, glow worms, corpse candles, reflections of car headlights, and even UFOs.2 Some people believe them to be “Min Min lights – spirits of Aboriginal folklore that pre-dates European settlement”.3 You are probably thinking it could be anything but this light can travel 400 metres (quarter of a mile) in a matter of seconds.4
The lights were seen in the 1950s and 1970s but rarely since then.5 Mr Frank Saxby and some friends went to investigate the lights one night. While the boys who swam the Manning River over to Tinonee did not see the light, the base party on the Taree side could see the lights dancing everywhere.6
Whether there is a pattern to how often the Tinonee Ghost appears, we don’t know, but one thing is for sure, the Tinonee Ghost is real. So if I were you I wouldn’t be roaming around a field late at night anywhere near Tinonee!! Just kidding the ghost won’t return anytime soon…I think.
Authors: Madeline Osmond-Dreyer and Olivia Dawson, Year 5, Taree West Public School.
References:
1 Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, 22 April 1927; Daily Telegraph, 11 April 1927.
2 Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, 22 April 1927; Wingham Chronicle, ‘Where and what is the Tinonee Ghost?’, 31 October 2017.
3 Wingham Chronicle, ‘Where and what is the Tinonee Ghost?’, 31 October 2017.
4 Manning River Times, 2 July 1974.
5 Wingham Chronicle, ‘Where and what is the Tinonee Ghost?’, 31 October 2017; Manning River Times, 2 July 1974.
6 Manning River Times, 2 July 1974.
