Two ghosts haunt the same stretch of Australia's Central Coast.

For fifty years, drivers on Wilfred Barrett Drive have reported picking up a young woman in white who vanishes from their back seat near Norah Head Cemetery. The legend says she was murdered by five men in the 1970s, and that all five died mysteriously afterward. It's one of Australia's most famous ghost stories.

A second ghost seems to be from an earlier period, a time when shipwrecks were common along these treacherous shores.

There is also real tragedy at Jenny Dixon Beach. In 1950, two sisters, Grace and Kathleen Holmes were brutally murdered near Tuggerah Lakes. Their graves went unmarked for 64 years. Their killer was never found. And while a ghost became famous, the real victims were forgotten.

This is the story of how urban legend intertwines with actual horror. How shipwreck folklore mergew with a fabricated murder. And how the wrong victims ended up being remembered.

The truth at Jenny Dixon Beach is stranger and sadder than any ghost story.

Sources:

Newcastle Herald - (February 2024) - https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/8523178/ghostly-hitchhiker-of-wilfred-barrett-drive/

Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings (1981)

Jenny Dixon Beach - Full Movie - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDNxQlkgcXo

Goss, Michale. The evidence for phantom hitch-hikers (1984)

True Hauntings Podcast - Episode 25 (April 28, 2021) https://open.spotify.com/episode/10iNaJBCTwzMrV2EMWFRPO

Casefile True Crime Podcast - Case 32 - https://casefilepodcast.com/case-32-grace-kathleen-holmes/

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