A very Dunedin Skeptical History
Bronwyn Rideout - 20 November 2023
In honour of our upcoming conference, rather than giving a day-by-day recount of skeptical history, I pulled some Dunedin-specific events to share. While I wouldn’t say Dunedin is the strangest place in New Zealand (that crown is currently held by Canterbury), its denizens are certainly trying their damnedest to convince us all about how haunted they are.
February 3rd, 1970 - Robert Bakhuis was 19 years-old and training for his private pilot’s licence out of Otago’s Aero Clube when he disappeared. Friends of Bakhuis claimed that he had planned to ditch the plan in Fiordland and go bush. Taking three lifejackets, a flight helmet, and a Cessna 150 owned by the club with him, Bakhuis would disappear for two years and was presumed dead by his family. Since the plane held enough fuel to travel 400 km, there was initially a flurry of alleged sightings placed the Cessna over much of the North Island.
Strangely in July 1972, the day after Bakhuis’ mother dropped off his old aviation gear, Bakhuis returned and was arrested. It would emerge that at the time of his 1970 disappearance, Bakhuis had been out on bail and awaiting sentencing for car theft. Intending to commit suicide, he ditched the Cessna in Lake Duncan an survived the landing. Bakhuis then spent a further 5 weeks in the bush before running away to Australia; he was even able to make a brief visit to NZ without tipping off the authorities.
As for the Cessna, it was recovered from the bottom of Lake Duncan in 1972 and refurbished.
February 28th, 1881 - William Jackson Crawford was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He earned his bachelor’s and PhD from the University of Glasgow before moving to Belfast to lecture in mechanical engineering at Queen’s University. He was soon caught up in investigating psychokinetic phenomena within the Spiritualist community, of which he wrote multiple books. Of particular interest was his endorsement of 16-year-old Kathleen Goligher and her family, who made up the Goligher Circle, which elevated the family to a level of fame. Crawford committed suicide by cyanide poisoning on July 30th, 1920, age 39 and left a note citing mental collapse as the cause and maintaining his belief in spiritualism. Crawford’s experiments with Kathleen were derided and debunked posthumously and additional derision directed at the sexually subversive nature of Crawford’s interest in Kathleen.
Source | William Jackson Crawford
March 6th, 1989 - Saxon v Reeves, a court case between a psychic and a member of the NZ Skeptics, goes to trial at Dunedin High Court. Ms Saxon was a beneficiary who advertised their services as a psychic medium at a rate of $15 per 15 minutes. Mr Reeves, also a beneficiary, was then a member of the New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of CLaims of the Paranormal. Saxon had written to multiple organisations, including the Department of Social Welfare, Citizens Advice Bureau, and the police about Saxon’s actions.
Saxon sued Reeves for defamation and while Justice Williamson was not convinced that Saxon had psychic powers, the judge did state that there was nothing in Saxon’s evidence to suggest any doubt of insincerity to claim that she could receive communications from spirits and did not set out to deliberately deceive her clients. Reeves was characterised as an evasive witness and a gossip. Damages were initially set at $6000 dollars but reduced to $4500 on appeal as it was found that Saxon had failed to report her income.
March 12th, 2018 - Staff at the Regent Theatre in Dunedin find a tap that has been left on has flooded the building, and claim that this must have been the work of a ghost.
April 1st. 1883 - Dunedin journalist G. M. Reed pranks New Zealand (and the world) with claims that Noah’s Ark was discovered intact in a glacier on Mt. Ararat.
Source | From the (1887) booklet “Calamo Currente” by G.M. Reed
May 1st, 1882 - The Lyceum was opened by the Freethought Association in Dunedin.
Source | Freethought Lyceum in Dunedin. The building no longer stands.
May 5th, 2012 - Students at Cumberland College in Dunedin are scared by a sighting of a ghost called the “Grey Lady”. The situation allegedly calmed down once the University chaplain and the local kaumatua were brought in and a blessing performed on May 10th.
May 16th, 2019 - A single, mysterious, loud rumbling sound is heard by many off the coast of Otago. MetService confirmed that there was a single lightning strike about 50 km out to sea.
May 30th, 1911 - Andrew Carr MacKenzie, journalist, novelist, and leading parapsychologist, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He worked in Wellington as a journalist before moving to England in 1938. Carr joined the Society for Psychical Research and is known for his work on the Cheltenham hauntings and the Versailles and Kersey ‘time-slip’ episodes,
June 3rd, 2022 - While driving to Dunedin, Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer - the hosts of Counterspin (NZ’s conspiracy online TV show) - find out not once, but twice, that their chosen venue for their conspiracy event called Let’s Not Forget has cancelled on them.
June 22nd, 2018 - A mysterious object is seen flying in the background of footage captured by a camera at the Dunedin Royal Albatross Colony.
June 23rd, 2014 - Student Terence Huang photographs two blurry objects in the night sky, and claims that they are UFOs. Given the position of two very bright lights on the ground below the UFOs, the objects were likely just the lights hitting the clouds.
June 30th, 2012 - Ghost hunters from The Other Side Paranormal group visit the Globe Theatre in Dunedin and claim to have detected spirits.
July 12th, 2004 - A world record fire walk is attempted in Dunedin, and 28 people are injured.
August 21st, 1901 - Quack Barron Gardner is fined £25 and costs for fraudulently practising as a medical man. Gardner ran the Gardner Electric Medical Institute in Dunedin and advertised himself as a specialist of the genitourinary and nervous systems. Chiefly, he claimed to treat spermatorrhea.
August 25th, 1897 - Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, co-founder of Theosophy, arrives in Dunedin. He was in New Zealand for a long awaited tour.
September 8th, 1879 - The 12 people perish in a fire at Cafe Chantant in the Octagon, Dunedin. Their ghosts are said to now haunt the site.
September 30th, 2010 - Dr Lianne Parkin, of the University of Otago, and other Dunedin colleagues win an Ig Nobel prize for their discovery that those who wear socks outside of their shoes had less chance of falling on ice.
October 28th, 2009 - At 7:30pm, Skeptics meet in a pub for the first Skeptics in the Pub Dunedin event at the Duke of Wellington.
December 8th, 1942 - A fire breaks out in Ward 5 of Seacliff Asylum in Dunedin, killing 37 female patients and causing the site to be dubbed “the most haunted place in New Zealand”.
December 25th, 1995 - A Dunedin couple reports seeing a leopard or panther on State Highway 25.