According to the Atlas of Living Australia, an online resource with information on Australian animals, fungi, and plants, the ghost mushroom was first documented scientifically in 1844. Like many other mushrooms, ghost mushrooms have had a winding taxonomic history, leading to their current name bestowed upon them by American mycologist Orson K. Miller Jr. (O.K.Mill) in 1994 (2).
One of the early settlers in Western Australia recounted stories about a "large, luminous glowing mushroom, and reported that several Aboriginal people when they saw it, cried out Chinga!, their name for spirit, and seemed much afraid of it."
Like other cultures worldwide, knowledge of the Aboriginal people has survived through oral histories relayed across the generations; it was only in the 19th century that this sacred wisdom became part of the written record. And while there isn’t always enough information to make a concrete mushroom identification, there is information suggesting that ghost mushrooms may have held a place of importance among Aboriginal people.
