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The Abela family from Victoria tell their experience of sharing their home with ghosts!
Jason Abela, 35, knew that the two-storey, four-bedroom family home in the outer Melbourne suburb of Sunshine had a supernatural reputation when he purchased it, but he maintained a healthy scepticism.
“A few neighbours warned me it was haunted but it didn’t faze me,” says Jason, a knockabout bloke who has never indulged “nonsense” supernatural talk.
The derelict place was overgrown with weeds and stuffed full of the previous owner’s odd possessions, including a makeshift bomb shelter in the back garden but builder Jason was sure he could transform the derelict property into his dream home.
Soon though, a series of off occurrences has led Jason, his fiancee Stella Samsakopoulos, 36, and two step-kids Lisa, 9, and Steve, 6, to reluctantly believe that they’re sharing their home with spirits.
On a balmy night last December, Jason was doing some paperwork with a mate when the men heard Steve’s cries. “He was screaming ‘Daddy, Daddy!” recalls Jason.
The men ran into the room to find Steve “elevated off the bed, with his legs crossed, looking into the corner, a metre off the mattress”, he says.
Related: I died twice, now I speak to ghosts
Just a month prior, Stella said that she’d similarly rushed into his room when she heard him yelling.
“He was lying down, and he got up, like possessed… he was just staring at me,” says Stella.
“Someone was standing behind you!” he told Stella when he came around, eyes wide with concern.
Levitating children would be enough to send most running for the hills, but Jason won’t turn his back on the dream family home he’s spent 11 years trying to build.
The day after he bought the house, Jason found a gravestone in the backyard, belonging to a woman called Daisy Kershaw.
According to Josette Farga, 50, a neighbour of 31 years, she lived at the house with husband Ernest and their two sons. When the Kershaws went on holiday one year, Daisy died suddenly in a head-on collision.
Left: Jason with the headstone he found in the backyard. Right:the Abela family in their spooky dwelling.
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Not wanting to unnerve anyone, Jason picked up the gravestone and put it in a cupboard.
Since then, the family has experienced times when every door has been violently and repeatedly banging open and shut, despite no sign of a draught.
Jason often hears the doorbell ring, yet no matter how fast he runs to open it, there’ll be no one on the doorstep or nearby. Stella’s often heard sounds of things being moved around and fast footsteps coming from the attic, as if someone’s running. But by the time she gets upstairs there’s no sign of anyone.
Paranormal investigators Sarah Chumacero, 32, and Martin Simpson, 31, volunteered to visit the house to test for ghosts. They arrived with an array of scientific equipment, including devices to measure changes in energy and temperature. “We found most of the activity upstairs,” says Sarah, who recorded a dramatic temperature rise in the attic of 38.9 degrees above the rest of the house. “I’ve never seen the equipment do that before.”
Watch our investigators measuring supernatural activity below.
Read about all of the other spooky occurrences that the Abela family have experienced, only in Woman’s Day, on sale 10th November.
Experienced something you can’t explain? Write to [email protected] and tell us about it.
