The Truth & Lies Of The So-Called 'Good Life Ghost'

The organisers of the underage Good Life Festival are enjoying a healthy amount of publicity after a photo appearing to show a ghost watching their recent event in Brisbane went viral at the weekend.

After the event released an official statement slugging the picture as legitimate — and even claiming that Brisbane Showgrounds had corroborated the story — the tale of young Lucy Jane McConnel, the daughter of then-RNA President J.H. McConnel who apparently fell to her death during a fireworks display at the grounds in 1908, has spread like wildfire around social channels online.

The full details of the story were brought forth by a commenter on Facebook:

There's a tiny problem with the whole thing, though — Lucy Jane McConnel seemingly never existed.

Like all good stories designed to chill, the narrative does contain a kernel of truth — namely, that J.H. McConnel — also known as James Henry McConnel, a member of a renowned Brisbane family whose predecessors were among the first European settlers in Queensland — was indeed the president of the National Agricultural & Industrial Association of Queensland in 1908, the year given as Lucy's date of death.

Born in Bulimba in 1850, James Henry was the eldest son of D.C. and Mary McConnel, and the second-generation owner of Qld family property Cressbrook. In adulthood, like his forebears, he was a prominent member of Brisbane society, gifting land for the establishment of the township of Toogoolawah, about 75km north-west of the city, in 1904, as well as for a church there in 1906. He spent years working with the Esk Dairying, Agriculture & Industry Association and founded the Toogoolawah Dairying, Agriculture & Industry Assocation in 1913 with his son, Edgar, passing away the following year.

But, aside from the factual existence and association of Mr J.H. McConnel with the Brisbane Showgrounds, this is where things start to fall apart for the ghost story.

Firstly, although McConnel and his wife had 10 children — Dorothea, Hugh, Kent, Edgar Cannon, Elspeth, Barbara, Katharine, Ursula, Judith and Kenneth — none of them were named Lucy. Additionally, neither the Brisbane Hospital Death Register (1899-1913) lists a Lucy Jane McConnel, nor does the Queensland Government Registry Of Births, Deaths & Marriages for the same period. Heck, no Lucy McConnel was even born in Queensland in the decade leading up to the alleged fall. (The Music has contacted the McConnel family for confirmation of these assertions.)

Adding to Lucy's conspicuous absence from any kind of governmental record is her notable omission among well-known urban legends about the Brisbane area; at the risk of straying into the macabre, it seems highly unlikely that an event as sensational as a little girl plunging to her death from atop a warehouse during a fireworks display at the Showgrounds would stay limited to whispered chatter among superstitious grounds-workers for a century after the fact. 

And that's even assuming that it even made it that far — according to one commenter who claims to work at the Showgrounds, "This story is rubbish. I work there, none of us are afraid of the sheds. We recently had ping pong in them. That teddy story is made up."

OK — so there's no record of a Lucy Jane McConnel, no scared Showgrounds workers living in fear of a ghost child, and no expected newspaper mention of a little girl or anyone else dying in spectacular fashion at the venue in 1908 or any other year (it's easier to find reports of incidents at both the Townsville and Toowoomba showgrounds, almost 90 years apart, than it is to uncover reports of a death at RNA). If the ghost wasn't a total fabrication, why would her entire back story need to be?

If you need a final nail in the coffin, perhaps you needn't look any further than the original commenter who drew everyone's attention to the ghost with a too-sharp-for-Facebook crop of the image — one Matt Loxton, a DJ and photographer with obvious ties to Good Life Festival, who some have suggested took the image in question (since he clearly has access to a higher-res version than what's online). Even disregarding the obvious perspective problems with how "Lucy" is set against the roof on which she's "standing", and the fact that she appears to be about six feet tall, we're gonna side with the sceptics on this one and chalk it up to a(n obviously successful) marketing ploy on the part of Good Life.

Which, y'know — well played, Good Life.