When a four-year-old Wagga boy revealed his friend was a ghost, it stirred memories of a long-forgotten tragedy.
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Frederick Bailey and his friend Colin Moiler were killed in a harrowing accident more than 70 years ago.
The young boys were blown to pieces when the gelignite sticks they were using as toys detonated.
The niece of Colin Moiler shared her father’s account of the day his brother was killed, following a Daily Advertiser-lead investigation into paranormal mysteries across Wagga.
It comes after four-year-old Nicholas Slinn returned from visiting his dad in hospital last year and announced a mysterious friend had followed him home.
Nicholas revealed the friend was a 14-year-old boy named Bailey, who had been naughty, got hurt and had died in hospital.
When asked to describe Bailey, Nicholas said the ghost had no hands.
Archived articles unveiled what appeared to be a link between Nicholas’ friend and Frederick “Mickey” Bailey, who was killed in 1944.
Wagga psychic Kerry Nelson confirmed the ghost was that of Frederick Bailey, who had been a mischievous, outgoing and active boy.
“That was true of both Fred and Colin … they were both mischievous, but in a good way,” Colin Moiler’s niece, Sharan Buerckner said.
“Colin was best mates with Fred and they were always getting up to different things, as young boys did in those days.”
She said her family still spoke of the tragedy, that not only rocked the lives her then 16-year-old father Noel, and his parents – it had rocked an entire community at war.
On Thursday, August 24, Colin’s mother, Martha Moiler, had threatened to throw his pencil-like toy (what would have been a gelignite plug) in the fire if he didn’t take it from their Fox Street home.
“My grandmother heard the explosion and raced out to find two beautiful young boys blown to bits,” Ms Buerckner said.
“Colin had no body from the waist down and Grandma was picking up bits and pieces of him in a bag.”
Ms Buerckner said the boys were so unrecognisable, they were almost placed in the wrong coffins.
“The only distinguishing feature was their skin,” she said.
“Colin was fair skinned and Fred was olive … my grandmother had to go to the funeral home to tell them apart.”
The boys were buried on the same day, with fellow school students forming a guard of honour.
As Colin’s father, William Moiler was fighting in New Guinea at the time, he was unable to attend the funeral and until he came home, he did not know which of his sons had died.
Ms Buerckner, who now lives in Queensland, said reading about a little boy, who had met a ghost from her family’s past had been spooky.