[Part of an article called ‘In the Southern Alps’ – by our special reporter]
… Their news is the news of the whole line of road, and their newsmen are Tommy Pwer and his companions of the whip. Even at Springfield we had recieved “the latest intelligence” from the Bealey, and we knew that the good people there had been in a state of ghostly excitement.
It is an awful, unfathomable mystery, and the victim is the local police constable. Knocks are heard at his door, on the walls, floor, and ceilings, and no trace of the knocker is to be found. The constable, white as a sheet, loaded revolver in hand, and backed up by cautious sympathisers, has searched “in the house and round the house,” and the riddle has remained unsolved.
People say it is the ghost of a man who was drowned in the Waimakariri, and was “not buried to his liking.”
Lyttelton Times, 30th December 1880.