Jane Deans' Ghostly Visit to Riccarton House

Nora Knight, or Norna, as she preferred to be called, was resting in the bedroom here, the one the guides now call the 'teenagers bedroom.' It's also known as the most haunted. This was the day after her son, Alister Austen Deans, was born, on December 1, 1915. He would later be known as Austen.

A nanny was quietly working nearby when she noticed someone had come into the room. She looked up and saw an elderly woman, small and fragile, dressed in black. This woman had deep-set blue eyes. The nanny watched as she walked over to the bassinet where baby Austen was sleeping and peered in. Without a word or even a glance, the woman then turned and left the room.

Later, the nanny asked others in the house about the visitor, but everyone was puzzled. No guests had been there that day. When the nanny described what she saw, the family immediately recognized the description: she had perfectly described Jane Deans. Jane Deans was Austen’s great-grandmother, and she had been dead for four years at that point.

This was the last birth to happen in this house. The baby's father, Alister, was the sixth son of John Deans II and Catherine Edith, born in 1890. He would enroll in World War I the next year and was killed in action in Belgium on October 4, 1917, never meeting his second son, David McIlraith Austen Deans, who was born that same year.

Austen grew up with a great love for Riccarton House and even considered buying it at one point. He expressed sadness in 'The Press' about the demolition of some of the remaining Riccarton Farm buildings due to earthquake damage, remembering playing in them as a child. He was the last Deans to be born here.