Country file · Oceania

Haunted places in Australia

What are the most haunted places in Australia? The best-known are Port Arthur Historic Site, Monte Cristo Homestead, Q Station (North Head Quarantine Station) and Old Melbourne Gaol, among 15 on file.

Australia’s ghost lore is, above all, a story of the colonial era. Between 1788 and 1868 Britain transported more than 160,000 convicts to the Australian colonies – estimates range from about 162,000 to 166,000 – and the gaols, barracks and punishment stations they built – Port Arthur in Tasmania, Fremantle Prison in Western Australia, the Old Melbourne Gaol – are now heritage sites where lantern-lit night tours tell of floggings, hangings and the “separate system” of hooded silence. The gold rushes of the 1850s added another layer: boom towns such as Beechworth, Ballarat and Ararat built grand asylums, gaols and hotels that outlived their prosperity and filled up with stories.

15 hauntings
12 recorded sightings
1 news story

Haunted places in Australia

Apparition · 1870

The ghost lore of Australia

The best-known cases are rooted in real records. Fisher’s Ghost, the tale of a murdered ex-convict pointing out his own grave at Campbelltown in 1826, has been in print since 1832. The baritone Federici died on stage at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre in 1888; Francis Cluney died in the engine room of the Adelaide Arcade in 1887. Asylums such as Beechworth and Aradale, and the quarantine station at Sydney’s North Head, are a reminder that many of the “ghosts” were patients, migrants and children – and some heritage custodians, like Brisbane’s Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society, have pushed back hard against ghost stories that distort that history.

These are settler stories. For more than 60,000 years Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have held their own knowledge of country, the dead and the spirit world; those are living traditions belonging to their communities, not tourist ghost lore, and many of the sites on this page stand on land whose traditional owners still care for it. Today’s ghost hunters head for Tasmania’s convict sites, Sydney’s Rocks, the Victorian goldfields and South Australia’s Kapunda, and nearly every major heritage gaol in the country runs a night tour.

Ghost-hunting hotspots

The Rocks, Sydney
The colony’s oldest quarter, once a district of sly-grog shops, sailors’ pubs and plague scares, now walked nightly by several ghost-tour companies starting near Cadman’s Cottage.
Hobart Penitentiary, Tasmania
The National Trust’s “Unshackled” night tours lead through the convict chapel, courtrooms and gallows site, where 32 people were executed between 1857 and 1946.
Victorian goldfields
Ballarat, Maldon and Dunolly are full of 1850s and 1860s hotels – Craig’s Royal, the Kangaroo Hotel, the old Criterion – each with a former owner said to linger.
Kapunda, South Australia
An old copper-mining town promoted as “the most haunted town in Australia” since a 2001 Channel 9 documentary series of that name.
Old Adelaide Gaol
South Australia’s first gaol, whose night-tour stories include Elizabeth Woolcock, the only woman hanged in the state, and its first governor, W. B. Ashton, said to have died in his office.
Geelong Gaol and Black Rock House, Victoria
A convict-built gaol open for ghost and paranormal tours, and an 1856 bayside house whose Friends group tells of more than a dozen resident spirits.

Timeline

January 2010
Ghost Hunters International visits Monte Cristo Homestead
The American TV series films an investigation at the homestead, bringing it to an international audience.
2013
Sold to local owners Beechworth Lunatic Asylum (Mayday Hills)
After the university campus closes, the complex is sold to two Beechworth businessmen. Day history tours, night ghost tours and paranormal investigations follow.
2013
Haunting: Australia investigates Adelaide Arcade
A TV paranormal team spends a night in the arcade, recording what it calls voices and cold spots; the episode airs internationally.
2015
A hostel in the women’s prison Fremantle Prison
YHA opens a hostel in the former Women’s Prison. Guests soon report a presence in one shower block, the converted cell where Martha Rendell was held.
2015
Haunting Australia films at Aradale Aradale Asylum and J Ward
The paranormal TV series features the asylum, cementing its national reputation and drawing criticism for its use of “madwoman” imagery.
2015
Ghost hunts banned Boggo Road Gaol
After objections from relatives of people who died in custody and from the historical society, the Queensland Government bans ghost hunts at the heritage prison.
23 July 2018
“The past is a ghost story” Beechworth Lunatic Asylum (Mayday Hills)
Overland publishes Ellen Muller’s essay on the Beechworth and Ararat tours, questioning whether ghost tours reinforce stigma against people with mental illness.
March 2021
A family on the ghost tour Q Station (North Head Quarantine Station)
The Manly Observer sends a writer and her family on the tour and an overnight stay; she reports a chill in the showers, while her husband and daughter stay unconvinced.
March 2022
Closed again Boggo Road Gaol
All tours pause while surrounding redevelopment, including Cross River Rail, goes ahead.
October 2023
Footsteps above a tour Old Melbourne Gaol
Guide Janet Watson Kruse, by her own account no great believer, describes a group hearing steps on the walkway overhead with no one in sight.
January 2025
Closed for good Monte Cristo Homestead
After Olive Ryan’s death in November 2024, the homestead announces it will never reopen to the public. It is listed for sale that November.
26 August 2025
Guiding manager opens the ghost “vault” Port Arthur Historic Site
On ABC Hobart, Jake Bradshaw says about 20,000 people take the ghost tour each year. He describes the archive of visitor accounts and admits he is still “on the fence” himself.