Sydney’s notorious Wakehurst Parkway is a main road near Frenchs Forest, about 26 kilometres from Sydney’s CBD.
It cuts through the huge Garigal National Park and passes by Deep Creek Reserve, a spot known for its dark history of gruesome murders and body dumping.
Wakehurst Parkway is renowned for its countless fatal crashes, and is considered one of the most dangerous roads in New South Wales. Once the sun sets, it becomes eerily dark.
Locals are known to actively avoid Wakehurst Parkway, opting for a longer but better lit route.
People report feeling shivers creep down their spines as they drive alone at night. Of headlights failing. Of cars unexpectedly breaking down, before they find they have no phone reception. And of a woman named Kelly.
A few members of the Mamamia team investigated Manly’s Quarantine Station, said to be one of the most haunted spots in New South Wales. Here’s what happened…
There have been reports of people driving down the highway, before noticing a silhouette of a young woman wearing white, standing in the middle of the road. Appearances are almost always said to occur after midnight. Some drivers have reported passing straight through her.
According to a Reddit thread, Kelly has appeared in the backseat of people’s cars, just before the lights at Oxford Falls. The urban legend goes, that unless she is ordered to get out, she will take control of the car.
And then there is the nun.
A man by the name of Hla Oo shared his experience in a blog post titled “Dark Parkway.”
Listen: Ghost stories from a death nurse. Post continues below.
Stopped at the lights, late on a Friday night, Oo describes, “You know that feeling you always get whenever someone suddenly opens the back door and gets inside the cab…”
It was, of course, “totally impossible,” he says, as there was no one at all on the road. But as he drove, he got the distinct sense that there was someone sitting in the back seat.
Oo instinctively checked his revision mirror, and writes, “what I saw shocked me as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight.
“There was a grey silhouette of a thin young woman in the mirror, apparently sitting on the middle of the rear seat and sort of staring straight back at me,” he writes.
“She was in a kind of white gown and head-dress like a Christian nun. I couldn’t really see her face clearly, just the shape of her face and her deep green eyes, yes the sad green eyes, but she was definitely real and sitting there and staring back at me at that precise moment. I slammed the brake hard.”
The taxi veered off to the left, and came to a sudden stop in front of an exposed gum tree. When he turned to look into the mirror again, the woman was gone.
A few months later, Oo says he picked up a group of teenagers one night, who specifically requested to drive down Wakehurst Parkway.
When Oo asked the reason for the detour, one passenger replied that he wanted to show his friends “how scary the dark Parkway is at night… I’d been telling them we could even see a ghost or two,” he laughed.
As they chatted, one of the girls in the backseat said, “Maybe that nun will hitch a ride with us.”
That was the first Oo had ever heard of a nun on Wakehurst Parkway, and he hadn’t told anyone about his own experience.
He asked what the story was.
"A visiting nun from Scotland was run over at the intersection where the church is, about 30-40 years ago," his passenger responded. "You know, there was another church well before the Christian City Church. She’s been hitchhiking the passing cars since.”
The legends of Kelly and the nun have remained consistent over decades. There are additional stories of a horse and cart travelling along the road, and another of a ghostly body laying limp on the side of the road, before abruptly disappearing.
The stories have become so pervasive that a film crew decided to investigate. The documentary, The Parkway Hauntings, is yet to be released, but filming was said to be so harrowing that a number of crew members became physically ill, with some vomiting, while on set.
Co-director Bianca Biasi, a self proclaimed sceptic, says the entire experience was "terrifying" and she is now absolutely convinced that the area is haunted.
"I don't ever want to go back... I won't drive the Parkway again" Biasi told The Daily Telegraph.
The crew enlisted the help of a psychic who assists police with murder cases, in order to determine whether or not the site was haunted. The film doesn't yet have a release date.
We cannot know for sure if there is any truth to the urban legends that surround Wakehurst Parkway.
But if any Sydneysiders are in the mood for a drive in the dark, we'd love to hear your stories.
Do you have any ghost stories?
Top Comments
I did a ghost tour through pentridge d divison recently. I never believed in ghosts as such prior to this and never expected to see or feel anything. At one point I was standing beside a cell door that I later found out belonged to an infamous murderer known as the blackout strangler (an American soldier who strangled women during the blackouts in ww2). I had felt a breeze and a little short of breath. Apparently this is common I found out later at this cell. I took loads of photos but never felt anything else or saw anything odd. When I got home I was looking through my photos and I saw what looked like a couple of people on the second level of the cell block, in the middle, looking down at us (the group). Just watching. It was clear. I lightened the images (I captured 3 and the figures were visible in all 3 and after not there in image 4) and it was very obvious. I believe in ghosts now, and from what I made out it looked like the ghost could have been a guard (which made sense as guards have been seen on level 3 before). Freaky!
hahahahaha..... NO