On 17 June 1826, Campbelltown settler and farmer Frederick George Fisher vanished. His neighbour, George Worrall, claimed Fisher had “returned to England,” but soon began selling Fisher’s livestock, wearing his clothes, and managing his lands as though Fisher were gone forever.
By September 1826, sinister clues emerged. Two boys discovered blood saturated into the rails of Fisher’s fence, a single tooth lodged in the wood, and a clump of Fisher’s hair — gruesome tokens of something foul. That very month, the local magistrate’s papers record John Farley staggering into the Campbelltown Inn — records show this was possibly the Harrow Inn (then on Queen Street, opposite Lithgow Street) — trembling as he claimed Fisher’s apparition had perched upon a fence by the creek, arm outstretched, pointing toward the distant paddocks where the body would later be found.
In November, following more suspicious behavior from Worrall and public outcry, authorities brought in Gilbert, an Aboriginal tracker from Liverpool. Gilbert was asked to search the marshy edges near Fisher’s Ghost Creek. He paused, tasting water from a stagnant puddle, and declared: “white fellow’s fat here” — a colonial record note meaning he smelled or sensed human decomposition.
The investigation uncovered more: Fisher’s bank account records showing charges made in his name by Worrall; statements from neighbors testifying Worrall had been wearing Fisher’s coat and riding his horse. These were recorded in the Trial of George Worrall transcripts.
When the earth was turned, Fisher’s body was exhumed from a shallow, hastily dug grave by the creek — his throat cut, corpse decomposing already. The stench of rot, the flies, the slack skin — all horrifying evidence presented at trial.
With overwhelming testimony, including from Gilbert and from the boys who found the blood & hair, George Worrall was tried in Sydney in early 1827, convicted of murder, and hanged on 5 February 1827.
Even official court documents — witness depositions, coroner’s reports — record these gruesome details: the fence, the bloody hair, the decomposition, the confession. But what still chills: the ghost’s role. It was the ghost on the fence — unanswered, spectral, but pointing — guiding the searchers, sealing the fate of the guilty.
