Real Life Ghost Stories✔

The Devil's Hearse

This spooky tale of warning came from a fellow I worked with in the press shop of a large auto manufacturer in South Australia for a few months many years ago. He was a very straight forward, upfront and honest bloke – blue collar, quit school too soon, somewhat amoral but true blue and definitely not one to talk crap or make stuff up.

Anyway I got to know him over time and I found he was a very interesting and intelligent fellow. One day the subject of supernatural phenomena came up and he started relaying to me a couple of experiences he had had involving actual apparitions. It was obvious to me that he was one of those people who can see spiritual entities at times. I have known a few people with what I would tentatively call this “third eye” ability and need absolutely no further evidence or testimony to convince me this phenomena is real. Exactly what it is of course is another matter.

Sorry back to the story.

He started telling me how one summer night a few years prior to then, him and some friends (most in their late teens/early twenties at the time) were out cruising in their hotted up cars and found themselves in the very dark car park of Morialta Falls, a popular place to make out and get up to mischief at night – Morialta Falls is like a shady natural cleft in the Adelaide Hills featuring steep gullies and a spectacular waterfall, walking tracks and large weathered rocks, particularly at the base of the waterfall.

They all noticed when entering the carpark that another car was parked a small ways off but thought nothing of it. Like I said, it was a popular place to “park”. It was not apparent if anyone was in the car as no one could be seen and there were no lights or music or motion emanating from it at all. Just the cool dark silence of the night.

They began getting out of their cars, two or three cars from memory, drinking “sodas” and talking and laughing and all that jazz when all of a sudden everyone went silent. A distinct sense of foreboding fell upon everyone simultaneously, followed by a sudden drop in temperature and the appearance from nowhere of a mysterious mist seeming to flow out of the darkness. They were frozen in place with terror as a large dark form silently emerged from the mist – an early 1900’s black, horse-drawn hearse except with no horses. It glided silently through their midst while they stared in disbelief.

It was then a scream or yell from someone in the group shattered the spell they were under and like a flash everyone was scrambling back into their cars, doors slamming, engines starting, radios blaring back into life, pale, shaken and invariably disturbed.

But that, in my opinion was not the truly scary part of the story.

It was late the next day, the experience fading from mind when the guy who told me this story was watching the news. There on the screen was a picture showing the car they had seen the previous night much more distinguishable and ordinary in the early bleak morning light but this time surrounded by crime scene tape. Apparently the owner of the car was an 18 year old guy who had just broken up with his girlfriend and had driven there the night before in a state of deep emotional and psychological trauma. Unable to come to terms with his loss he had decided to take his life by throwing himself from the highest part of the waterfall hundreds of feet down onto the hard rocks below.

A sad and preventable, macabre, and gory tragedy.

I will never forget this story as long as I live. To me it suggests that death is not the end and suicide is a dangerous way to go at best. For after the physical death there may be a second death where the devil’s hearse collects you before any human constructed hearse can.