The Ghost of Riccarton House

Austen Deans, the award-winning artist and mountaineer, was the center of a ghostly event here at Riccarton House that people still can't really explain.

On December 1, 1915, this house was filled with the cries of a newborn baby. The house was 59 years old then, and these walls had seen many births, but this one would be the last. The baby's father, Alexander Deans, or Alister as the family called him, was the sixth son of John Deans II and Catherine Edith. He was born in 1890. Even with the threat of war, Alister held his firstborn.

The baby was named Alister Austen Deans, but he'd grow up to be known as Austen. His mother, Nora Knight, who preferred to be called Norna, grew up in the neighboring estate of Racecourse Hill. She and Alister had married earlier that year.

It was the next day that got the Deans family talking. In what house guides now call "the teenagers bedroom," and "the most haunted," Norna was asleep in bed, regaining her energy. Baby Austen was next to her in a bassinet. The Nanny was working nearby when she noticed someone enter the room. She saw an elderly woman with deep-set blue eyes, small and fragile, dressed in black. The woman walked up to the bassinet and peered in at the baby. The Nanny just watched as the woman turned away without a word or a glance and left the room.

When the Nanny later asked the rest of the house about the visitor, she was met with puzzled looks. There had been no guests that day. When the Nanny described what she saw, the family said she had perfectly described Jane Deans. It seems Great Granny Deans wasn't going to miss seeing the new addition, even though she had been dead for four years.

Austen grew up with a great love for Riccarton House. He even felt guilty that it surpassed his own family farm, Morven, in his affections. At one point, he considered buying Riccarton himself. Shortly before his death, he expressed sadness in "The Press" about the upcoming demolition of some Riccarton Farm buildings due to earthquake damage. These buildings are now part of Christchurch Boys High. He remembered playing in those old buildings with his cousins. He was the last Deans to be born at Riccarton.

Austen's father, Alister, enlisted for World War I the next year and was killed in action at Passchendaele, Belgium, on October 4, 1917. He never met his second son, David McIlraith Austen Deans, who was born that same year.