Romanticism and Ghosts

 Apart from the general excitement that is felt by one as they roam the world in search of paranormal happenings, one, in this case, is inextricably excited if there is some sort of romantic context involving the spirits of these persons before their mostly untimely deaths. It is thus safe to say that romantic deaths and afterlives are more appealing than regular deaths, in some scenarios.

Take for example, and for inspiration of this essay, the romantic dilemma between two in a town close to Melbourne, hundreds of years ago. A maid had fallen in love with the heir to Salisian Manor. She was from Kismet Park, not too far from his Manor. During the night times, they met near Salisian Bridge for alleged courtship, undetected by possible onlookers. Some time after, the young man was to be married. He insisted on marrying the maid, his true love, instead. Once his family found out, they refused to let him ever see her again. Due to this separation, the young heir had allegedly killed himself.

For a while, the maid did not know of her true love’s fate. Every night, she continued to wait for him at the bridge, but with no sign of him and with the knowledge of what had happened to him, she too killed herself. The legend has it that late at night, one can see the maid’s apparition wandering around Salisian Bridge, in search of her lost love.

Knowing of the bridge alone would hardly provoke one in travelling to it, unless they were interested in crossing every bridge around the world as part of some personal goal or challenge or dare or bucket-list checklist achievement. However, when one is notified of the alleged courtship and horrid Romeo and Juliet-esque love story about a wealthy young heir who had fallen in love with a maid and had killed himself after his family’s refusal, to which the news of that had resulted in the maid’s suicide too, and the add the fact that this all had happened at that particular bridge and late at night there have been reports of the viewing of the apparition of the lustful maid, then one’s interest would most likely heighten and force one to visit that place immediately, whether or not they are equipped with adequate paranormal spirit detecting devices.

One must wonder, though, after trailing this love story on the internet and finding nothing else other than a badly written synopsis as such with the word ‘heir’ misspelt as ‘air’ indicating that every site which has this synopsis had just copied it from the original site and had passed it on, so to speak, whether this story is true or not. It would be rather exciting if it were a true story because of the romanticism involved, thus indeed making the trip to this bridge an extremely awesome endeavour. However, one would say that if it was not true, one can pretend it was and have an equally awesome time at the bridge imagining the two in courtship amidst the gum trees and dry Australian shrub.

In the event that it is true, however, who told this story to the person with bad spelling skills? Was it a possible onlooker who allowed this unfortunate couple a few minutes a night to feed their courtship, and could this onlooker have grown old and told a grandson/daughter about this love story? Maybe this grandson/granddaughter had grown a liking to this story and had become the anonymous source, spreading bad grammar on the internet? Perhaps. Even so, the story itself is interesting, and it is upsetting that the bridge no longer exists due to no apparent reason – the only information as to the whereabouts of this bridge is that it was allegedly recently demolished. Its location is where the Sunbury Road from Melbourne crosses Jackson’s Creek, before the divided road is reached.

This historic site is now replaced with a mere Apex Park and an electric barbecue. One wonders what is more saddening – the replacing of this beautiful monument which had a romantic context or the romantic context itself. It is said that now the maid’s apparition is seen nightly, cooking some food in preparation of the possible arrival of her true love’s apparition.