It’s almost Halloween, so I thought it was the perfect time to share one of my favourite ghost stories — and it’s a true one.
This is the dressroom here at Kitten Vintage, and over the years, a few of us have seen… well, let’s just say, a visitor.
She’s not frightening — she’s a dressmaker. Calm, kind, and she’s been here longer than any of us.
Her name is Lillian Harper, and this is her story.
The dressroom is the quietest place in the shop.
The mirrors lean slightly forward as though listening; the lace sleeves wait on their hangers; and the old Adjustoform mannequin keeps her patient pose in the corner, pins long since gone but tiny rust marks still dotting her cloth skin.
She came from a house on the south side of Mackay — a weatherboard cottage that smelled of starch and eucalyptus, where the hum of a Singer machine was the heartbeat of every day. The lady who owned her was called Lillian Harper, a dressmaker through and through. She stitched debutante gowns, bridesmaids’ frocks, communion dresses — each one pinned with care and a whispered, ‘Hold still, love.’
They say she had a way of coaxing fabric into behaving. A dart here, a tuck there — a quiet magic of her own. And when she died, the mannequin was left behind in her sewing room, still wearing a half-finished linen shift that no one ever claimed.
Five people — over nine years — have seen her since the mannequin came to the shop. Always the same: a neat, older woman with a soft face and silver hair pinned just so, sitting in the chair by the mirror. Sometimes she folds her hands. Sometimes she seems to be measuring the air. Always calm. Always watching.
Sometimes, when the light is just right, the brass nameplate on one of the old Singer machines downstairs catches a flicker of gold — as though someone had just polished it. Those who’ve seen her say the sound they notice first isn’t footsteps at all, but a faint mechanical hum, steady and patient. We keep several 1950s Singers in the workshop, and I like to think one of them might have been hers.
She doesn’t cause any trouble. If anything, she’s protective — a caretaker spirit for fabric and form. Occasionally, a spool of thread is found unwound, or a pin cushion turned, but never in malice. Only, perhaps, in habit.
Sometimes I leave the chair as she liked it, angled just a little toward the mannequin. It seems polite. After all, they worked together for years.
And when the afternoon light slants through the dress-room window, turning everything to honey and dust motes, you could swear you see her there — head tilted, eyes half-closed, watching the hem fall just so.
So if you ever visit the shop and feel a little cool breeze here in the dressroom, don’t be alarmed.
That’ll just be Lillian, making sure every hem still hangs straight.
Thanks for listening — and happy almost Halloween from all of us at Kitten Vintage.
You can watch me red this story here.