Terrifying True Urban Legends: Australia
A ghost ship. The Button Man. A shark that threw up a major clue to a murder. Today we're talking about Australian urban legends and the terrifying truth behind them.
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SOURCES
https://pocketoz.com.au/ships/shipwreck-alkimos.html
https://thestoly.com/2021/10/background-story-of-ss-alkimos-the-haunted-ship-in-perth/
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/mysterious-stories-blog/australian-button-man
https://www.reddit.com/r/creepyencounters/comments/p2r7ji/let_me_tell_you_about_the_button_man/
Shark Arm Mystery: million to one murder case by Antony M Brown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t12LxaNmImk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuZTj1_DrFE
https://tattersallsclub.com.au/history-heritage/#popmake-3330
TRANSCRIPT
Picture yourself standing on a beach in Perth, Australia. Grassy sand dunes behind you, and infinite turquoise water in front. Waves break in the far distance, but so far out that the water near the shore remains relatively still, most of the ripples that make it to your toes come from the small boats jetting around. It’s quite lovely.
You look out into the distance to watch the waves break, when you see something in the water. A chunk of metal sticking out, covered in seagulls. It’s about 400 meters away and small, so it’s hard to even see its features. Is it an old Buoy? Is it some trash that washed out to sea?
That’s when you hear some children giggling behind you. “I can see it! The ghost ship!” they whisper, pushing each other reluctantly closer to the ocean. Ghost ship? You look back out at the hunk of metal. about 1 and a half meters of it is above the water, and it looks like it’s 3 meters long. if you squint you can see that it’s a bunch of different metal pieces all fitted together, kind of steampunk looking. You can kind of see how the kids think this is the top of a ship
But what you may not know is that, the kids are more right than they think. Beneath the ripples of this western Australian beach is a ship, the SS Alkimos, and one that gained notoriety for being haunted.
The story starts in 1943, when the SS Alkimos first set sail. Legend says that before it ever took off, two mechanics were accidentally sealed inside the ship’s hull, their ghosts forever haunting the boat.
The ship started in Baltimore, Maryland where it was built and then made its way over to the Mediterranean for the next 18 months where it was in the midst of the worst part of world war 2, constantly being attacked by German planes and U Boats. Despite the onslaught of missiles and air strikes, it survived. But the danger didnt end there. At one point, the ship beached itself on an uncharted reef, but by some miracle, it released itself the next day and continued on its journey.
During its use, sailors frequently complained of paranormal activity on the ship. Doors that closed on their own, sounds of screaming when no one was around. A stream of footsteps following you down the hall, only to see that no one was behind you.
then, in 1944, tragedy struck on the boat, when a young woman was shot and killed. The official story said that enemy fire had taken the life of a 28 year old canadian radio operator who was on board, Ms. Maude Steane. Few knew the real story. That another passenger on the ship, a Norwegian gunnery officer had shot Maude and then turned the gun on itself.
Eventually when the incident was being investigated, police had trouble figuring out what really happened. The incident report said the tragedy happened in Naples on August 14th, 1944, but the ship’s log showed that it was about 500 kilometers away from naples on that date. The report also stated that Maude joined the crew in New York in May of that year, but the ship’s log said they didn’t arrive in New York until June 8th. Was this a careless mistake by a war vessel known for taking meticulous notes, or part of a cover up of what really happened?
According to those upon the ship, those that knew the true story of what happened to Maude, the hauntings only got worse after this. The ship would have unexplainable mechanical errors, and there was a constant feeling of someone watching the crew. Members reported seeing the shadowy apparition of an old man in rubber boots wearing a sailor coat. To try to add some levity to the situation, they jokingly called him Henry. This continued, they said, for the next 18 years.
The journey of the SS Alkimos ended in 1964, when it was off of the shores of Perth awaiting repairs. With no one on board, the ship became untethered from a tug boat and beached itself. It was eventually moved out and anchored at the reefs, but it broke free again and floated into the Eglinton Rocks
There, a crew was ordered to stay aboard the ship, but fires kept breaking out making it inhospitable. It was as if the ship was on a suicide mission, flinging itself out to sea and setting ablaze, almost like a viking funeral.
In 1969, one last crew went out to see if they could salvage anything from the ship, but they could not stay aboard very long because they swore it was haunted. Their tools kept moving around on their own, they heard footsteps following them, they heard people in the kitchen and could smell food cooking, only to see no one was there. Crew members were quitting their job because they couldn’t handle the hauntings. The boat caught fire yet again, and the crew was driven off the ship for good.
The SS. Alkimos sat in place for decades, slowly disintegrating in the salt water. Now, all that’s left is the top of the ship, the small, oval shape you can see out in the distance. Other legends have surrounded the ship as it was consumed by the sea. Years after the ship was abandoned, some fishermen swore there was a man living on the boat. He was described as was a hermit in rubber boots and a sailorscoat in the windows of the ship, but when it was inspected, there was no one there. Was that Henry?
There was also the case of Herbert Voight, the long distance swimmer who drowned near the wreck in 1969. Some claimed that his skull washed up on shore directly in front of the wreckage, and that he was most likely killed by the ghost ship. And there was Ted Snider, a member of the US navy who was inspecting the site to see how many explosives it would take to blow up the ship’s remains. On his flight to another inspection site, his plane went down killing everyone on board. Some say it’s a coincidence. Others say it’s a curse.
Today, the last bit of the ship still sits out in the waters of the Indian ocean, waiting to be fully dissolved by salt water and rust, still wreaking mayhem, at least according to the locals.
This is just one of the many urban legends in Australia that has a strange and dark kernel of truth to it. And in today’s episode, I want to dive into a few other Australian Urban legends and see if we can get to the real story underneath. And as always, listener discretion is advised.
Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
I am so excited for today's episode. Like I said, last year,the city that listened to the show the most was Sydney , Australia. But on top of that, of our top 10 cities for listeners, Australia made up 3 of them. So Melbourne and Brisbane, I see you two as well.
My episode last year of Urban legends that ended up being true was one of my favorite episodes to make of the entire year. I love stories that blend legend and fact, and it’s a scary reminder that the urban legends we heard growing up may have been more true than we’d like to admit. So think back to the monster that lived in the woods behind your elementary school, or the neighbor who hid a dark secret in their attic. Those may not just have been rumors.
And as I was reading more about the folklore and myth of Australia, I kept coming back to these urban legends that I’m going to share with you today.
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Ok were going to take a quick break, and when we get back, i want to tell you about something that lives deep inside the forests of the australian high country.
In March of 2020 Russell Hill told his wife that he was going camping for 10 days in the remote high country of southern Australia. This was true. But what he didn’t tell her was he was making a pit stop first.
As this is happening, in a different neighborhood of Melbourne, Carol Clay tells her family she’s also going on a 10 day camping trip, and she expects to be back by March 28th or 29th. As she packs, Russell Hill pulls up in his white Toyota Land Cruiser down the block. she meets him making sure no one sees . The couple, both in their 70’s now, had been in a secret relationship for 15 years. This was set to be one of the many clandestine vacations they had taken together.
But by the end of March, the couple didn't return to their respective homes. And their loved ones call the police to report them missing. What if they got lost or injured on their trip?
A 26 year old cattle herder in the area, Lachlan Culican (locklan culickan) aided in the search for the couple when he heard that the last place they were known to be was near his home. Russell, an amateur radio enthusiast, called some of his friends over the radio to let them know where he was before he went missing. That was the last confirmed location anyone had on the couple.
Now, the Victorian High Country where they went missing is also referred to as the Victorian Alps. It’s a dense forest, or bush as people in Australia call it, that sprawls out over rolling hills and cliff sides. Though the lazy rivers and cascading waterfalls make it one of the prettiest places on earth, it’s also one of the most dangerous and even the most seasoned hikers get stuck or lost inside.
Lachlan was out walking the bush when he came upon something he was not expecting. It was Carol and Russell’s campsite, in about the same area he expected to find it. Only it was burned to the ground. Deck chairs, tents, coolers all had been burnt to near ash in a blazing fire. But something was missing, Carol and Russell.
Police immediately get involved and start looking for the missing duo, but as they ask the community for help they realize that this case might be harder to solve than they realized. Were the two murdered, or was this all a cover up so they could run away together?
It might be something else, locals said. See, for decades there had been rumors of something strange and possibly evil lurking in the high country. Something the locals had grown to call The Button Man.
The Button man has been described as a reclusive older man who inhabits the bush. He’s around 70 years old, though he moves like someone much younger. He has short, grey hair and wears a dark jacket.
His name comes from the buttons that he makes out of deer antlers. Local legend says he’s always seen holding a knife and a deer antler, whittling the bones down into buttons for his coats. He also uses deer antlers as earring placeholders in the holes in his ears, adding to his bizarre appearance.
According to those that have run into him, he ranges from pleasant to annoyed to downright terrifying. Sometimes he’ll ask hikers if they want to see his button collection or his array of axes. Other times he’ll grill them as to why they’re in his area. Though he asks questions of others, he never answers any about himself, adding to his mystery. Almost everyone who has seen him, has said that he has a strange, 1000 meter stare. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking.
And though few have seen him in the bush of the high country , many know his name. And that’s because he tends to come up when talking about the onslaught of recent disappearances in the area he’s known to inhabit.
For instance, just a few months before Russell Hill and Carole Clay went missing, another man disappeared in the bush. 39 Year old Niels Becker was an experienced hiker in terrific shape who vanished in the middle of the day while on a hike. He had supposedly traversed the area before and was stocked with supplies he would need. And yet he vanished two days into the trek.
The strangest part in Becker’s disappearance, was it’s believed the last sighting of him was by the Button Man. Police received a call from someone they believed to be the Button man, who said he saw Becker by his property. That is the furthest into his hike authorities were able to place him.
50 year old David Predeaux went missing in the area while hunting deer. 72 year old Conrad Whitlock went missing in the area after he inexplicably jumped in his car at 3am and headed into the high country. In his car that was abandoned on the side of the road was his Jacket, phone and wallet. But no Conrad. The legend being spread amongst many in Australia is that this is all the doing of the Button Man.
And people swear they know where the Button man lives because It’s the last good place to get radio reception in the bush before you’re cut off from all communication to the outside world.
It’s scary to hear about people disappearing near his property, but it’s even scarier to read about people's personal interactions with the Button Man.
Like 2 years ago, when a man named Ben took to the internet to describe his experience with the Button Man,
He wrote that he and his girlfriend Jess had been 4 wheel driving to a remote part of the high country for a camping trip, when they found a nice spot amongst some eucalyptus trees to set up camp. That night, They made dinner and got into their tent early to go to sleep
But in the middle of the night, Ben woke to a loud sound outside of his tent. It was the kind of loud noise that pulled him from his sleep, so he wasn’t even sure if he had really heard it. He listened outside of his tent for more sounds, maybe it was an animal that knocked something off of their picnic table. Just silence.
There it was again. It was definitely the sound of something rummaging around on their table. He chalked it up to an animal and fell back asleep.
The next morning, he woke up before Jess and went out to grab some food. There was a loaf of bread they had brought sitting on the table, one that Ben thought he had packed away the night before. as he got closer, he could see that it had been opened, and one piece had a big bite taken out of it. It didn’t look like an animal bite, it looked human
He burst into the tent, waking Jess up. Did you eat some bread in the middle of the night? He asked her. What? No… she replied.
The two of them got out of the tent and started looking around the camp site to see what else had been eaten or messed with but they didn’t find anything. They did, however, find human footprints around their car, as if someone had been trying to get in. It sent shivers down their spine.
But they somehow were able to talk themselves out of it. The bite in the bread was maybe an aimal.. A really, really big possum. And the footprints were probably there before they got here. This was such a nice camping spot, it made sense someone else would have used it. Plus, if anything went down. Ben had his rifle in the car.
That day, the two split up for a bit, and Ben went to check out an old homestead that had been built about 100 years ago by settlers who ran cattle in the area. Apparently, there’s an old unsolved multiple murder associated with the house and so he wanted to check it out. As he was heading back to camp, he saw Jess speedwalking towards him, clearly terrified.
She had just been down by the river washing pots and pans when she noticed that on the other side of the river there was an older gentleman, about 70, watching her from deep in the bush. He had tattered clothes, and when she looked up and their eyes met, he turned around and disappeared back into the bush.
Together, they jumped in the car and decided to drive to the camp site located across the river to see if Jess could ID the man. That way, Ben would be able to get a sense if he was really a threat or not.
that proved to be fruitless. When they went over, they weren’t able to locate him.
Back at their camp, they made dinner in near silence, both spooked by what had happened. Ben even took the rifle out of his car and set it next to their table while they cooked. As they finished prepping their food, Jess said she needed to use the restroom and asked that he come with her. It was starting to get dark quickly, and as they both looked out into the forrest filling with shadows from twilight, they knew she shouldn't go in there alone.
together they set off into the bush to find where they had set up their portable toilet, keeping an eye out around them as they did, making sure to check for faces camouflaged in the trees, and snapping their heads around at any small sound they heard.
Jess used the restroom quickly and they started rushing back to the site, safe for now. As they approached though, Ben could see movement through the forest near their campsite. It was….a man…hovering around the rifle he had just taken out of their car.
Jess reached over and grabbed his arm, giving him a “that’s the guy” squeeze.
The intruder was holding a deer antler that he had carved down, and had two other antler pieces in his ears, as well as buttons made from animal bones on his old tattered coat.
He proceeded to ask them if they’d been hunting, looking over at their rifle. He had seen them come in last night and noticed their fire, so he wanted to come over and see what was going on, there weren’t enough deer to hunt, he said, giving an intimidating glance
Ben stood in front of Jess, just in case anything went down. He tried to relax his breathing as he assured the man they hadn’t been hunting. But they were going to go to bed now if he could please leave them alone.
The man looked at them suspiciously for a moment, agreed, and then headed off towards the woods, no light or anything to guide him through the dark.
Once he was out of their eyesight, they immediately packed up and headed home. According to ben, on the drive back, Jess noticed that her memory card was missing from her camera. What the heck.
It wasn’t until they got home and told their family about what they witnessed that they even heard the words “Button Man”. A friend’s dad told them that was most likely who they encountered. He told them about the other disappearances in the area, and how some of them were deer hunters who he suspected were killed by the Button Man for hunting on his property.
There are comments on the story of other people who reported run ins with the button man. One camper said that he and his friends never believed the Button Man rumors, so one night when they were camping they jokingly left food out for him, as if he was santa clause or something. They even included a note that read “We love you, button man” That night, as they were alone in their tent in their abandoned campsite, no one else around, they heard someone grab the food, open the note, and chuckle. They never got a good look at him though.
Some say that the Button man is strange but harmless. He’s just an older man who wants to live off the grid. Because he doesn’t conform to society's standards people assume he’s a serial killer.
Ultimately, a 56 year old man named Greg Lyn was charged with the murder of Russell Hill and Carol Clay. It’s believed the couple was flying a drone in the area that annoyed Lyn, and he killed the two during an altercation. He proceeded to destroy the crime scene over the coming months, and wasn’t questioned by police until a year and a half after the murder took place.
So it seems like it wasn’t the button man after all who was responsible for the secret lovers disappearance. But that hasn’t stopped locals from talking about him, sometimes going so far as camping deep in the high country to see if they can catch a glimpse of this mythological man for themselves.
Maybe you’re familiar with the next urban legend that comes out of Sydney, Australia. The legend goes that back in the great depression, an aquarium in Sydney had a tiger shark on display, and one day, in front of a crowd of families, the shark became ill. The contents of the sharks stomach were horrifying to the crowd, not just because of how gross the whole thing was, but because it revealed a clue to a horrible crime that had happened.
The contents of what was in the shark's stomach sometimes changes with each retelling, but there is truth to this story, and it’s stranger than any urban legend you’ve heard about it.
The story starts in Sydney, Australia in 1935 at Coogee Beach (said like it’s spelled). At the time, Australia was still battered from the great depression and reeling from an infamous unsolved murder case from the year before, the Pyjama girl murder, where the body of a young woman in silk pajamas was found badly burned with a bullet through her neck in New South Wales.
To boost morale, Bert Hobson, owner of the Coogee Aquarium, wanted to open a special exhibit for families to enjoy. He was going to catch a real live Tiger Shark and keep it in his aquarium, something many people had never seen up close before.
So he and his son went out and caught a 14 foot, or four meter long Tiger shark, which weighed nearly a ton, or 907 kilograms. It was brought to shore and then transferred to a small tank inside the aquarium, where it became a hot button exhibit.
But while families loved seeing the wild creature brought from the depths of the ocean to their neighborhood, the shark was not enjoying its life in captivity. It would swim in delirious circles, sometimes hitting the walls and sinking to the bottom of the tank, only to wake up in a daze and keep swimming.
One day, however, the shark appeared to be sicker than usual. Young children and parents gathered around the tank to watch as it started convulsing, eventually regurgitating what had been its last meal in the sea.
Observers were subjected to its gruesome contents which included a rat, a bird, and, believe it or not, a human arm with rope tied around the wrist.
I can only imagine the terror, knowing that you just spent a whole paycheck in depression era economy to traumatize your kids at the aquarium.
It was assumed, initially, that the arm had been severed in a shark attack. But how do you make sense of the rope on its arm?
A team was brought in to investigate, when they noticed that the rope was tied in a common sailor’s knot. So this person must have been a sailor that went overboard and was consumed by a shark. It would make sense, shark attacks had been up in the area, it seemed that the waters near the shore were just teeming with them.
But that’s not what the top part of the arm indicated. The wound was too clean and straight, not jagged like shark bite victims they had seen. No, this arm had been intentionally severed from the person it was attached to.
Now the investigation was serious, they needed to figure out who this person was. And mind you, it was the 1930’s so most of what they had to go off of was their own observations. They noticed that the arm still had a tattoo visible on it, two boxers fighting.
Soon, a weekly tabloid called Truth ran a story saying that the severed arm had a tattoo of two boxers in fighting stance, and that catches the attention of a man reading the paper. His brother had a tattoo similar to what they were describing also on his left arm. He had not heard from or seen him in three weeks, but that was typical. His brother was the type of guy to get involved with some business deals it was best to not know much about. Sometimes these business endeavors would take him away for weeks. The man had quickly learned it was best to not ask his brother too many questions nor get the police involved when he hadn’t heard from him in too long. But now, he figured this was enough reason to phone the police.
The next day, he went down to the station to look at a photo of the tattoo. Yes, that’s my brother, he said. He had never seen a tattoo like that on anyone else. He told them his brother was a man named Jim Smith.
And this is where the story took a turn for the police. Because what started as maybe a case of a sailor going overboard, was now turning into a full blown police investigation into Sydney’s seedy underbelly….
Jim Smith was a lot of things. A former boxer. A beloved member of his community, sometimes a police informant, and also a criminal.
He was originally born in England, but moved to Australia in his 20’s to become a boxer. The only thing was, he wasn’t a very good boxer, so he started bouncing around from job to job, trying to find something else that would stick. He started working as a bouncer a men’s clubs to support his wife and child, landing at a place called Tattersalls.
There’s actually a tattersalls still open today in Brisbane. At the time, It was a membership club where wealthy men could meet, but at night, when the ties were loosened and the whisky pours a little stronger, it turned into an underground gambling den.
The whos who of Sydney society could be found there, but with any illegal activity that makes a lot of money, it’s also where criminals would gather. Jim Smith met all kinds of people working the door there late at night. But one of the last people he would meet, was a man by the name of Reginald Holmes.
Holmes also was a lot of things. A father, a church goer, an insurance fraudster. A sometimes heroin smuggler. It just depended on what time of day you found him, really.
But one night, Holmes approached Smith with a real estate scam idea. He was going to borrow money from his bank and loan it to Smith who he would call the real estate developer of a property Holmes owned. Smith would use some of the money to pay contractors to develop real estate on Holmes property, juuuust enough to show him he was good for it. And then he’d have them do a ton of work building on the property, saying he’d pay them later. Eventually, he’d just never pay the vendors and would declare bankruptcy, which didn’t matter because he didn’t have any money. Holmes, who bore no liability, would then get the development super cheap because he already owned the land.
This scam only lasted so long, word quickly spread that the men were up to no good, and soon no one would work with them. But Smith liked having the extra money, so he started Blackmailing Holmes. Pay me or I’ll talk.
So Holmes kept hiring Smith for jobs to keep him quiet, but their next scam was even less successful.
Holmes wanted Smith to set fire to his yacht so he could collect the insurance money. The only thing is, when Smith smashed a hole in the boat and climbed in, another boat saw what happened. They phoned it into police, who were able to pull the plug on the insurance fraud. They already thought the yacht was being used to run drugs, and this was just further proof it was up to no good.
But the police didn’t start with Holmes. They asked around and found that the last person that Jim Smith was seen with, was a man by the name of Patrick Brady. The two were seen playing cards in a local hotel.
Brady was a well known forger in the area, discovering his talents during the war when he realized he could mimic the signatures of those above him with incredible accuracy.
The police figured out that Brady had been renting a beachside cottage nearby at the time of the murder. So they figured that he had killed Smith in the cottage before driving his chopped up body out into the ocean on a boat.
But as the police started asking those in the area for more information on Brady’s moves around the day of the murder, they learned something else. A taxi driver told one of the cops that he had brought Brady to the home of Reginald Holmes around the time of the murder.
Cops were able to arrest Brady on unrelated forging charges, but he wouldnt say anything about Jim Smith when asked. So the police went in hard on interrogating his wife until she had a mental break down. It was only then that Brady talked, admitting to colluding with Holmes.
But when Holmes went to be questioned, it seemed he knew the police were coming. And let me ask you. What would you do if you had done a bunch of scams, maybe killed someone, and now the cops were walking to your door. because he immediately bolted out of his house and jumped into a speedboat waiting for him in the harbor. He got a decent head start on the police who had to scramble to get their boat, and the chase around the harbor lasted hours, even drawing a crowd on the beach. This is not a great plan mind you, its kind of hard to lose the cops when youre on a boat.
It finally culminated when Holmes realized that going around in circles trying to out run the cops was not going to get him anywhere. And in a moment of desperation, he pulled out his pistol, held it to his head, and turned to the crowd with a cryptic message
“Jimmy Smith is dead and there is only another left… If you leave me until tonight, I will finish him.”
and with that, he fired a shot.
Only, he missed. The bullet grazed past his temple, stunning him. The force shot him back into the water, and the shock of the icy harbor woke him back up. He was scooped up by police and brought down to the station.
Once Holmes started talking, he started TALKING. He had no trouble blaming the murder on everyone but himself. He said that Brady was the one that killed smith and dismembered him, but it was to blackmail Holmes into paying him money. Brady brought Smith’s arm over to his house as if to say, pay me or this could happen to you. But who knows if that was the truth. If there’s one thing I know to be true about these men from the research I’ve done. It’s that they’re all liars.
But facts don’t lie. And on the morning of June 12th, 1935, the coroner’s inquest was set to start, and that was hopefully going to bring to light more answers as to what really happened. Holmes was due in court that day, but when the police arrived at his door, he was found slumped over in his car, three gunshot wounds to his chest.
Brady was still brought to court, but without Holmes testimony, there was hardly any case. There was no physical body, meaning, it was possible that Jim Smith was alive. The defense also made sure to emphasize that Brady was a short king, standing at just 5’4”. There was no way he could overpower Smith who was a boxer.
At the end of the day, Brady was let go, all charges were dropped, and the case of how Jim Smith’s left arm wound up in the belly of a shark remains unknown.
But what I want to know, is who killed Holmes, because it seems like he had gotten into his car to drive to court that morning when he died. Was it his own attempt on his life that was finally successful, or did Brady have someone silence him? Three shots to the chest is an unusual thing to do to yourself. Police ultimately figured that his life insurance policy wouldn’t be paid out if he had taken his own life, so he hired a hit on himself. They called it his last case of insurance fraud.
Pat Brady became somewhat of an urban legend himself after the case. He claimed that all his life, people around him would point at him and whisper to their friends “That’s pat brady”. And before he died he claimed “The shark arm case will never be forgotten. It will be remembered after I’m dead.” That might be the only true statement he ever uttered.
This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn moore. Sound design and mix by peachtree sound. Special thanks to travis dunlap, grayson jernigan,the team at wme, and ben jaffe. And special thanks to our new patreons, you will be thanked in our monthly newsletter. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heart starts pounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.