Is Old Melbourne Gaol haunted? Inside Ned Kelly’s death chamber

Australian Community Media, the publisher behind dozens of regional newspapers including The Canberra Times, released this two-minute piece in October 2023, in the run-up to Halloween. A reporter sets out to go “ghost hunting” at Old Melbourne Gaol, the bluestone prison on Russell Street that held prisoners from 1845 until it closed in 1924 and is now a museum.

Before the ghost hunting starts, she gives the essentials: 133 people were hanged at the gaol, among them the bushranger Ned Kelly, and she handles a cat o’ nine tails while describing the floggings once carried out there. The pair then step into the room they are told is the most haunted, in the women’s section, and check for the supposed signs of a ghost — a sudden chill, a push, technology failing. They feel nothing unusual: the room is “pretty toasty” and all their devices work fine.

The reporter’s deadpan result is a fair reflection of what the evidence usually amounts to in places like this: the sensations people report are subjective, and the usual “tests” for a ghost, such as cold spots or flat batteries, have ordinary explanations. The gaol’s operator, the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), seems to agree in spirit — its night tour is called, with a wink, “Ghosts! What Ghosts?”

The real weight of the place is in its history. As the law then required, the executed were buried in unmarked graves inside the walls, and a death mask was made of each for phrenological study; the masks are now among the museum’s exhibits. Ned Kelly was hanged there on November 11, 1880, at the age of 25. After the gaol closed in 1924, parts were absorbed into what became RMIT University, and the surviving cell block is now a museum run by the National Trust of Australia (Victoria).