A friend of Haunted Australia, Barry Sue – author of the Ghost of the Alkimos has requested several times over the year that I investigate the paranormal energy at his place of business in Midland.

WA Skin Divers is a prominent fixture in Midland,  Jack Sue had the first dive shop in Western Australia. But this building has an old history reaching back into the latter 19th century. Historical research shows the building was owned by a businessman but that the property was first leased as a coffee shop by a Miss S.C Rodgers in 1918. Below is a picture taken of the building in1926. The building now is owned by Jack Sue, it is now used as a Dive Shop and with its faded orange paint and with its neighbour being a well known Adult Entertainment Shop,  you really can’t miss it!

The girls at the Adult Entertainment business have complained for years to Barry that “screams and thumps” are quite often heard from his building at night. It unnerves the girls who work late at night as they are not sure if it is one of their own calling in distress. This happened frequently enough for them to mention it to Barry and ask him if he had been working late or up to any strange antics. Barry of course had locked the premises and gone home for the night – as he always does.

The history of the building is very interesting, Midland is a very old town and Barry’s building on Helena street is opposite the old historic railway line workshops . Towards the end of the 19th Century the massive wave of immigrants that came to Western Australia in search of gold had to be find new employment and means of survival once the alluvial gold had been worked out, these immigrants looked to agriculture to sustain them.

Towards this end, the government subdivided Large estates and wheat farming became the State’s main industry - expanding over thousands of square kilometres. Rail transport accompanied this expansion, creating a new role for the locomotives that had been brought to the State during the gold rushes.  From this time in History “Midland Junction” was born. Midland became the prime position for the new railway expansion as it was situated at the junction of railway lines servicing the northern, southern and eastern farmlands.

Perth Woman magazine had called Haunted Australia in the Month of April seeking clarification on ghosts, clairvoyants and all things spooky. Brissa, the journalist working for the magazine, expressed an interest in seeing some local active buildings, so I felt this was good time to catch up with Barry and fill Brissa in on the Alkimos legend as well as fulfilling Barry’s wish to have a clairvoyant come through his building and “tune in” to what the girls next door might have been feeling.

I arranged this with Barry and also decided to grill him a bit more about the building’s history and the odd activity reported to occur after hours.  Barry actually has bits of the Alkimos in this same building. Barry’s father and living legend Jack Sue had salvaged a doorknob from one of the cabins from when he had spent a night aboard the Alkimos. At the time Jack had intended to dispell the rumours and legends that the Alkimos was cursed or haunted.

The Alkimos is covered in other stories within this webpage and to get the full low-down on that see here But needless to say, the Alkimos was a spooky period of Australian history and while the ship has now deteriorated to the extent that only fragments of shipwreck and debris along the shore where she once beached herself remain, the legend - and some say the curse - live on. Jack certainly left that ship with a very different opinion to the one he boarded her with, he left totally convinced it was haunted and perhaps some of that legendary curse has rubbed off on him with his illnesses and the passing of Barry’s mother Pam.

Perhaps the connection with the presumed haunting activity in the Sue’s building is due to the Alkimos artifacts residing there and I wondered if it was only the girls from the Adult Establishment who had heard strange noises and screams.

Upon questioning Barry he told me about 2 strange incidents that had also occurred to him within the building.

One night while writing the Alkimos he got into “The zone” that writers often getting into where time seems to escape you. Barry said he was tapping furiously away at the computer in the early hours of the morning - sometime around 2am. Suddenly he was startled out of this “zone” by a “bucket of ice cold air being poured over my head from above”.  Barry told me that where the computer is situated is tucked under the staircase that leads to the top of the building and it felt like a cold draft had descended upon him from above. He said he suddenly realized, it was 2am, he was alone, writing a book about a cursed, haunted ship and something weird was going on! He didn’t stay around much longer to investigate but decided that it was time to get home. He remembers it being a strange and odd experience though

The second experience occurred during the day-light hours sometime later when he had nicked out briefly to the local chemist to fill a prescription. There is now only one way in and out to Barry’s building. The back of the building is now boarded up with no access and the top floor has no way out, unless you want to dive out a window. So Barry put up the “back in 5 mins” sign and locked the building up, his errand literally only took him 5 mins and he soon returned to the shop.

As he was unlocking the door to let himself back in he “saw a man run around the corner to the back room” Barry thought right mate Ill have you! He let himself in, locked the door behind him and picked up a spear gun to teach this intruder and probably thief a lesson he wouldn’t forget. He crept stealthily around the house and was a little perplexed to find the intruder he had just seen was nowhere to be found! There was absolutely no exit, but he had vanished. Barry thought the whole thing again was very odd.
Barry also recalled one day while he was in the shop a lovely lady entered the building and gave her name as Patricia Weston. She then told Barry that he had his cash till in her bedroom. Barry asked her what she meant and she told him that she had been born in this building and his till for his business is now in what used to be her bedroom

Barry laughed and asked her if she would like to go around the old building again and tell him the history of the place. Patricia explained that in 1926 her mother Mary Foster had run a Tea House from the property for the men employed at railway workshops of which the building is directly opposite.. She said the siren would blow for smoke break or lunch and 36 men would descend on the tea house for Mary’s lunch. They were served a 3 course meal on white damask tablecloths.
In 1930, Patricia’s sister Leah married Ernest Hutchinson and they took over the lease running the coffee Palace from 1932 until  the time they left on 17th March 1951. The Hutchinsons also had 6 -7 boarders during the time they had the lease, the boarders  were also supplied with a cooked breakfast and an evening meal and meals to take away with them if they were on the trains
Patricia recalled Mary and then her sister Leah ran a very tight business and had all the men fed, full and nourished before it was time to go back over the road to finish the day at the workshops.

Patricia said her mother loved her teahouse and was very happy during her time here. She then asked Barry if he had ever heard any strange noises and movements upstairs. Barry said he hadn’t but that the girls in the building next door who, were often there late at night, had mentioned strange noises coming from his building. Mary said she had heard them too after her mother had passed and she felt they were her mother still running her teahouse.
I was pleased to hear the history of the building and Barry also shared with me some photo’s of the premises that he had. I wondered though why screaming would be coming from a Tea House? It seemed something else might have happened here.

So armed with all this knowledge I called on Audra Keeble, a clairvoyant and co-owner of the Crystal Magick Shop here in Perth. I asked Audra if she was up for a ghost hunt and Audra said she love to and we arranged to meet Brissa at the building. 
I took along my EVP recording equipment and when we got to the building, we were delighted to find Jack Sue -  Barry’s dad - was also present this day and after a quick round of introductions for Audra Barry gave us free reign to wander at will and we decided to go upstairs first. I had told Audra nothing of what I knew, ultimately  it is better for her as she is tuning in to have no prior knowledge.

The stairs to the upper level of this building are as steep as I have ever climbed! They are very scary and I couldn’t imagine going up and down them all day with trays. All was explained later when we got to what used to be the kitchen and I saw the small food lift in the wall I realized the food went up and down in the lift and they didn’t use the stairs at all for food delivery from the kitchen, though this was only put in later when the building became a Chinese Restaurant. Mary’s teahouse was at the bottom of the building, the boarders situated in the 2nd storey.
At the top of the stairway Audra went left so I followed, she ultimately went into every room but ended back up in what I figured was the kitchen as it was not carpeted and the large oven and square food elevator were situated here, the elevator was an interesting contraption and I spent quite a bit of time looking at this strange piece of machinery in the wall.
Audra “tuned in” and said she liked it here in this room, I left my EVP recording equipment with her and made my way into the other rooms. The rooms all had very high ceilings, all the fixtures, power points and moldings were of a time since forgotten. The place oozed history and I wandered from room to room imagining it in it’s hey day bustling with hungry hard working men waiting for their lunch. Some of the rooms at the end of the corridor I felt must have been bedrooms as, compared to the large square rooms at the other end of the corridor next to the kitchen they were too small to been used as anything else and seemed to me to be the right size for boarders.  I felt one of the bedrooms had a lot of energy and decided to tune in as well. I am passionate about the paranormal, but don’t claim to be particularly psychic or gifted. We are all psychic to some degree and our gifts can be greatly enhanced with practice, but some of us have a natural talent. I’m not sure I would put myself in that category but I’ve had my moments.

I askedI closed my eyes, breathed and asked to see the room as it had been and I “saw” a very simple bedroom small steel bed placed against the wall and one chair within, a man then calmly told me he had died in this room of typhoid. My strongest contact comes through clairaudience so I was not able to “see” this man but felt intuitively he was standing behind me and I also felt he was just telling me, he was not stuck or in pain he was just a memory answering the question I had asked. Perhaps he had been the last man in the bedroom. I thanked the man and then could hear Audra walking around again at the other end of the building so I decided to check back in with her. I asked her if she was ok, she responded she was fine. Brissa, the journalist, was running late so I said to Audra to share what she had got while it was still fresh in her mind, so we went back downstairs with Barry and Jack and Jack’s carer, Lorraine.

Audra told me that she picked up straight away that there was “an old woman, very refined, Regal almost, very elegant, she owned the house, knew everyone’s business, she was a mum to everyone and she loved this building” I thought Bingo! Well done Audra and was about to share with her Barry’s story.

She then said “there are also a lot of other women, a lot of screaming, the women were young, this place was a brothel” I thought Oh dear! She continued that a young man was murdered, the man had a D name, perhaps David and a young boy, about 2 years old was also upstairs, she thought the boy was a product of one of the young prostitutes. Barry and I looked at each other and I told her I could verify the first part almost exactly but the second I’m not so sure of. I thought perhaps she was picking up on the activity next door, but she was adamant that no it was this building, very young women and lots of screaming. I mentioned to Barry what he had told me about the screaming that the girls next door had mentioned and I asked Audra if she felt the old regal woman was connected to the young, screaming prostitutes, she said no, they were different periods and history of the building.

At this point Jack Sue, who’s mind is sharper than anyone I know - but who  is wheelchair bound and finds it difficult to speak after a stroke - confirmed that this place was a brothel. Barry seemed surprised and asked Jack if he was sure, Jack was adamant that this building had also been a brothel, when he first took the building over in 1985 it had been a restaurant but at some stage it must have been a brothel as Jack Sue had to turn away quite a few potential customers who did not realize the premises was now a Dive Shop. So Audra seemed to have identified where the screaming had come from. At this point Brissa turned up and we shared all we had discussed with her for her article. I then asked Audra if she would be willing to hold the doorknob Jack had bought back from the Alkimos, Audra said no problem and she held the doorknob and tuned in and got….nothing! Of which I was secretly pleased. I was kinda reassured she at least would not be taking home the curse with her and that the only energy she had tuned in this time was that of the house and its former occupants.

At this point Brissa turned up and we shared all we had discussed with her for her article. I then asked Audra if she would be willing to hold the doorknob Jack had bought back from the Alkimos, Audra said no problem and she held the doorknob and tuned in and got….nothing! Of which I was secretly pleased. I was kinda reassured she at least would not be taking home the curse with her and that the only energy she had tuned in this time was that of the house and its former occupants.

All in all, we had a great day. There are still some tunnels underneath the building that we want to investigate. Under Barry’s building there is cellar that is filled in with sand and concreted. There is just enough space to get the door open and crawl in. There is rumours that secret tunnels were built all under Midland during WW1 to secret out unknown cargo to the railway, still another story I have heard is that these tunnels were built for the to dispose of the toxic chemicals from the railway workshops, they used to pour chemicals including arsenic into these tunnels.

When we checked in with Patricia, she told us that terrible, terrible smells came from what they thought was the cellar, so they had filled in the cellar with sand and concrete hoping the smell would stop but that it never did……we’re still investigating that one, watch this space……..

See John Ramses' casual investigation of WA Skin Divers building (Photos and Orb Video)