It’s always around Halloween that scary tales of ghosts and ghouls are told and remembered. People gather around dinner tables and in living rooms and all of a sudden remember a friend of a friend who saw a ghost that one time. If you love the idea of the afterlife and learning about haunted houses and paranormal activities, then you won’t have to travel too far to experience it for yourself. These scary places in Australia are the perfect locations to visit on Halloween, if you’re brave enough!
You might not expect a film and sound archive in Canberra be a particularly scary places to visit, but it’s apparently one of the most haunted locations in the country. Before it was a national archive, it was the Institute of Anatomy for more than 50 years and that means that body parts, skeletons and even animal pieces were kept on site for scientific experiments. One person claims that he was held against a wall by a force by a ghost. If that’s not enough to give you the heebie jeebies, we don’t know what will.
Monte Cristo is known as Australia’s most haunted house, and probably because of the number of truly horrifying events that have occurred here. A boy was burned to death, a girl was pushed down the stairs by a ghost, and a shooting occurred in the 60s. It’s thought that the property’s former owner Mrs Crawley also haunts the premises, so if you do pay a visit, look out for her ghost.
Fremantle Arts Centre is a thing of horror movies. The cultural landmark may have a charming facade, but this place used to be an insane asylum. In the 1900s, patients had to be removed from the facility because of suspicious deaths that kept on occurring. The building was then used as a women’s refuge and became home to pregnant teens. People who’ve walked through the building have reported feeling cold, or the touch from an unknown source, as well as the usual opening and closing of doors. Spooky!
This may look like the perfect place to visit on a long weekend, but the Devil’s Pool swimming spot has seen many deaths. 17 people have died here since 1959 and it’s also the setting for a local Indigenous legend, which says a woman drowned here after leaving her husband for a younger lover. While some say that the strong current and deep waters are the cause of the deaths, others believe something more supernatural is going on.
The amount of prisoners that were held captive and died at the Boggo Road Gaol, it’s no wonder that a few of them are hanging around to try and scare people. 42 inmates were hanged at the notorious jail and many committed brutal crimes. It’s thought that child murderer Ernest Austin still haunts the halls of the jail, with people reportedly seeing his ghost passing through the walls.
It’s thought that the whole town of Picton is haunted, but it’s the Picton Tunnel that is particularly spooky. The tunnel covers an unused piece of railway that was in use between 1867 and 1919. It became an ammunition storage area during World War II and then a mushroom farm, but it’s said that the area is haunted by the people who committed suicide on the tracks.