Tales of ghost interactions have been a dime a dozen at the Inglewood Inn for more than a century.
But the venue’s publican, Trent Gibbins, always believed the spooky tales were nothing more than fiction until one night when the venue’s resident ghost sent him a unnerving message.
“I felt unwelcome,” he says.
“There have been a number of times when I’ve been here by myself and I felt a cold shiver, but this was different.”
That night about five years ago, Trent was closing up the heritage-listed pub and had just packed up downstairs before returning to the upstairs area, which was originally built in 1857.
When he walked to the top of the stairs, he found a heavy cast iron chandelier violently swinging above him. “It was swinging aggressively, no air-con was on, no one else was here, and every door and window was shut,” he says.
“My first thought was ‘right, what’s going on here?’ and I checked that everything was locked.”
There’s a female spirit at (the western) end of the hotel and she’s quite friendly,
then there’s Fred in the front bar – but he seems to have left
Trent was initially sceptical, but he took a video of the chandelier on his phone and sent it to his partner and fellow publican, Milly Howell, before beelining for the front door.
The encounter didn’t come as a surprise to Milly, who says stories of the sounds of moving furniture, ghostly apparitions and disembodied voices are commonly shared among the pub’s patrons and staff.
Decades earlier, patrons had determined the pub’s resident ghost was named “Wilhelmina” and even today, people return to the venue with tales about her.
“We have customers coming in who drank here in the ’80s, and they know Wilhelmina,” Milly says.
“Wilhelmina is not a common name that pops up all the time, so I did a bit of digging into her, and Wilhelmina Newman and her husband were managers at an unnamed pub in the Adelaide Hills where their son died.”
Milly admits some details of this story fall apart once you start following the official records; however, Wilhelmina remains the venue’s accepted name for its ghost.
The pub has an almost 170-year history – which includes brawls, bikies and banishments – and Wilhelmina’s demeanour fits the bill of many of the characters who have called the Inglewood Inn their local across the decades.
It was first opened in 1857 after English-born colonist and Adelaide-based publican Firmin Deacon identified an opportunity to establish a venue between Adelaide and Gumeracha.
He had the idea to cater to travellers making their way along the newly constructed north-eastern road – now known as North East Road.
By September 1858 – before the town of Inglewood existed – the inn received a trading license.
Without a town to name the inn after, folklore has it that Firmin offered his patrons five gallons of beer to come up with a name – and they eventually settled on Inglewood. By 1869, the town of Inglewood was officially on the books at the Post Office, taking its name from the inn.
For many decades the venue – which offered sleeping quarters to the west and a bar to the east – was the place to stop en route to Gumeracha or many other destinations in the northern Hills.
Today the pub still resembles the inn of the mid-1800s, although it has been given a touch of paint and a multi-level extension and the former sleeping quarters have been transformed into a restaurant.
Throughout its long history, Whilhelmina has not been the only uninvited guest to inhabit the inn.
Milly says that, until recently, a ghost called Fred haunted the front bar, wreaking havoc and often creating a mess overnight.
“Fred would move things like chairs, flip tables and you’d hear similar stories from the ’70s and ’80s about him,” she says.
“These stories have just carried through decades and decades and they’re always the same.
“It’s that there’s a female spirit at (the western) end of the hotel and she’s quite friendly, then there’s Fred in the front bar – but he seems to have left, thank God.”
Milly says Wilhelmina seems to dislike men, particularly Trent.
“I don’t want to do anything to make her feel like she’s not welcome, so I just leave her and Trent fighting with each other,” Milly says.
Trent says he believes Wilhelmina has been targeting him for half a decade now.
He says Wilhelmina recently tugged on his shirt – for the third time – while he closed the pub alone.
“It’s like you’ve just walked into a room where everyone’s been talking about you, and they go dead silent; you know, that sort of feeling,” Trent says.
One day at lunchtime, Trent was showing a middle-aged couple to their table in the former sleeping quarters when the woman began to appear anxious.
“They sat at one table, then asked me if I minded if they moved tables, so I said, ‘yeah, that’s fine,’ and they moved to another table, but they didn’t really like that table, so they moved to another table,” Trent says.
“The partner of the woman comes up to me and said, ‘sorry about this, she’s a medium, and she’s getting really uncomfortable vibes being in here’.
“Halfway through their drinks – they didn’t finish their drinks – she comes up and goes, ‘oh, we’re just going to pay and leave, because you’ve got a ghost in here, and it’s making me unhappy’.
“There’s a spirit of a woman here, and just so you know, she (absolutely) hates you.”
