We had only been in the cafe 10 minutes before Kalyra was begging to go to the toilet.
The Bright Delight bloggers were all meeting for breakfast in Food Wine Friends Café before starting on our Scavenger Hunt through the town.
I hadn’t had a chance to instagram anything yet from this small, cozy café.
We walked in the toilet and I saw my first instagram photo.
A sign above the sink talking about the kickstart effects of coffee. The kickstart was exactly what I was craving at that time.
I lined up the photo, snapped and then looked twice at what appeared on my screen.
Bottom left corner
My heart beat picked up a little.
What the hell was that?
In the corner of the photo appeared a teenage girl. Her black hair stretched below the shoulders of an old-fashioned white collared shirt and her eyes told stories of horror.
I looked at the sign I just photographed. There was no small girl on the sign.
Thinking it had to be a reflection of a photo behind me, I turned and scanned the walls. Absolutely nothing. Nothing on the walls and nothing that could make the haunted girl appear.
I took another photo to check.
A larger version of the girl appeared in the top right corner.
Hello friend again! You’ve moved
Holy shit. She’d moved and was playing with me. My blood turned to ice, the sweat increased on my brow and I felt like I was going to thrown up.
“Quick Kalyra, can you hurry please darling? It’s time to go out and have breakfast.”
I almost yanked her off the toilet and dragged her outside.
I tried to gather calm so as to not alert everyone else sitting at the table that a ghost was residing in the bathroom.
“Craig,’ I pulled him aside, he saw my panic.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Look at this.” I showed him the two photos and explained what happened.
“Are you sure there aren’t any pictures in there of her?”
“No nothing. I’m telling you there’s a ghost in there.”
He went in the bathroom and confirmed there was nothing in there that could have holographed the girl.
He quietly spoke to the owner of the café, who started to get a little freaked out. Just down the road was the haunted Oriental hotel and previous owners of the building his cafe was in had mentioned hearing footsteps all the time.
He asked Craig if I had downloaded a ghost template and put it over the photo.
“No. Why would she do that? We’ve no time to play games like that.”
I could barely concentrate on my food, nor on the scavenger hunt.
The girls eyes kept following me around, begging me to help her.
In the car on the way home , I turned to solver of all riddles, Google:
Ghosts in Bright, Victoria
Haunted places in Bright Victoria
Mysterious deaths in Bright, Victoria,
Disappearing young girls in Bright, Victoria
Nothing appeared, except a whole bunch of Google adwords.
The stories of what happened to her kept surfacing in my imagination, murdered by a crazed traveller passing by, falling off the balcony while sleep walking, deciding to end her life as she looked in her reflection and hated what she saw.
Why did she appear to me? Did it have something to do with the chakra rebalancing I had only days before? Had that opened up the ability for me to see ghosts?
My arms pricked with goosebumps. What if she had followed me out of the bathroom and was with us in the car going back to Woy Woy? What if I now became the person who saw dead people?
I don’t want to see dead people. I don’t want to solve ghost mysteries. I just want to be a travel blogger.
I decided that as soon as we arrived home I would see my chakra healer. I’ll show her the photos and demand to know why I had suddenly become a ghost whisperer.
I picked up my phone and looked at the photos again, the blood chilling.
I scrolled through and paid attention.
There were four photos of the coffee sign. I use the Camera 360 app and it always leaves two photos. One from the camera, and the version with a filter over it.
A filter.
Hang on, but I didn’t use a filter, I just took the photo.
I remembered what the owner had said about templates. I checked the two versions. One had the ghost on it the other didn’t.
“Oh no, hang on Craig.”
“What?”
“Oh no. How embarrassing. Let me just check. I think it could have been a filter.”
I delved inside the app and saw a little filter called Ghosts. I had never noticed it before. I pulled up another photo and turned the filter on. My haunted friend appeared.
Somehow it had been accidentally switched on as I took the photo in the bathroom.
Yes. Idiot of the year goes to me!
My ghost friend had followed me home after all.
The Food Wine Friends Cafe
I feel so bad for the owners of the cafe I freaked out.
There are no ghosts in Food Wine Friends, so the ghost busting story of the year for me has disappeared, but there is however really delicious food.
Smashed avocado- YUM!
Kalyra’s hungry face
The kids playing together
It’s a small café and providore with a homely atmosphere. There were plenty of toys to occupy the kids while we enjoyed a breaky of bircher muesli; smashed avocado, feta and roasted seeds; and cinnamon toast with ice cream.
The coffee was so good I had two cups. Maybe that was also to help me get a grip on the panic my ghostie friend had put me in.
At least now I know what it really feels like to see a ghost.
Have you ever seen a real ghost before?
or
have you ever done anything as idiotic as this before?
Disclaimer: We visited Bright as guests of Bright Delight
More posts about Bright:
- Things to do in Bright, Victoria
- Bright, Victoria – a Beautiful Alpine Town
- Bright, Victoria – Memories via Instagram
- Who Said Wineries Aren’t for Children? Introducing Feathertop Winery in Bright, Victoria
