Ghost Stories from Port Arthur

Church

Three guys were at the back of the group and taking the piss a bit. When listening to the tour guide talking about the church they were stood near a stairway leading up the church tower. They heard footsteps up there and thought it was a setup. When the group moved off they hung back and ran up the stairs. When they reached the top there was no-one there. Thinking the culprit had got past them they walked back down the stairs. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, once again they heard the footsteps only this time they were descending the stairs. The guys watched as these footsteps appeared to get all the way down to the foot of the stairs only there was no-one there. Suffice to say they caught up with the rest of the group VERY fast.

The Pastor's Cottage

Three stories here.

The first takes place during the daytime when a mother and young child were exploring the site. They came to the Pastor's cottage and as they began to walk up the path, the little girl pulled on her mum's arm and said she didn't want to go in. Thinking the child was just tired after a long day walking round the mother replied that this would be the last cottage she would go into. The little girl repeated her refusal to go in explaining that she didn't like the nasty man standing in the window looking at them. The mother couldn't see anything at all and seeing the obvious fear in her daughter's face, she sought out an attendant. The desciption of the man given by the little girl exactly matched up with one of the pastors who was known to have died in the cottage of Pneumonia.

The second story takes place on a ghost tour and occured as a party was attempting to leave the cottage. Most of the group had left except for the rear lamp bearer, the tour guide and two girls. As they were leaving they heard a loud bang from upstairs. Thinking that it was a practical joke, the tour guide turned to the remaining group members but could see they were all very scared. One of the girls, however, said "It's just Steve". Thinking that it was a friend of theirs the tour guide went upstairs to find the culprit but the place was empty. When she got back down she told the girl that there wasn't anyone there. The girl again said "It's just Steve". At this point the tour guide realised that she wasn't understanding the girl's accent and she was actually saying "Let's just leave".
The final, and spookiest story took place again on a ghost tour, but this time when the tour guide was telling them the history of the cottage. A man standing just in front of the tour guide suddenly clutched at his throat. The tour guide asked him if he was ok and he simply nodded his head. As the group came to leave the cottage, the man hung back and asked the tour guide to shine the torch at his throat. There across his throat were four scratch marks slowly turning purple. They left fairly quickly.

The Chief Surgeon's Cottage

The chief surgeon had a disecting room in the cellar of his cottage where he could examine dead bodies for medical science reasons. Various acts of parliament had meant that any unclaimed body (within 48 hours) could be donated to medical science for research purposes and in Port Arthur it was very unlikely that anyone would claim bodies. Indeed they usually didn't even wait the 48 hours.

The room itself is small with a stone table in the centre. The table is split into three to allow the blood to drain down the cracks and onto the floor where it was soaked up in sawdust and ashes. When a ghost tour is in this room everyone is arranged around this table. On one such ghost tour, the tour guide was discussing the history and stories when she noticed a thick-set man at the other end of the table rubbing his arms. She asked him what was wrong and he explained that he was a butcher and that he had an overwhelming feeling that he had just finished cutting up a carcass and that this arms were covered with blood. He spent the rest of his time in the room with his hands firmly clenched together resisting the urge to rub his arms.

The next day, the butcher and his wife came back to the site looking very pale and asked to speak to someone. He explained that when he had got back to his room that night he could still 'feel' the blood on his arms so he went to wash them even though there was nothing there. As he washed his hands the water went bright red. He also commented that it wasn't just water discolouration but it was coming off in clots.

The Silent Prison

The Silent Prison was built based on the famous Pentonville 'spoke' desigin in London and has long corridors with a centre. It was here that the repeat offenders were sent. As the name suggests, no-one was allowed to talk in this prison and they even put reeds down on the floor and made the guards wear velvet slippers so there were no footsteps. The guards even communicated in whispers.

There are two stories from the prison, with the first occuring during the day. There was a chapel in the prison for prisoners to contemplate their sins. In order to maintain the 'ethos' of the prison - i.e. no communication - the prisoners were made to stand in separate boxes with locked doors between them and the next box. It was also tiered so they couldn't see the man in front of them. A lady was exploring this chapel and decided to stand at the pulpit where the pastor would have preached his sermons from - the only person that the prisoners would ever see. She looked up at the array of boxes in front of her and was horrified to see every box full of a convict staring back at her.

The last story from our little ghost tour took place after all the tours had finished. Some poor tour guide has the job of every night going around and ensuring all the doors are locked. One female tour guide didn't believe in ghosts and had never experienced anything on any of her tours so often volunteered for this job. Her method of locking up the silent prison was to enter down the lunatic wing and lock the two inner doors before going back up the lunatic wing and locking the final door - a grille gate. She had just finished locking the first door when she heard footsteps coming from another wing. She shone her torch down the wing thinking it was a lost tourist and saw no-one. She called out a few times but got no response. Shrugging it off, she continued down a third wing to lock another door, and on her way back down this wing towards the centre of the prison she again heard the footsteps. She again shone her torch down the wing where the footsteps were coming from and called out, again with no response. Starting to feel a little apprehensive, she started to make her way down the lunatic asylum wing but once again heard the footsteps approaching her. This time when she shone her torch around the footsteps continued towards her but again she couldn't see anything. By this time she was very scared and started to run for the exit. The footsteps behind her broke into a run also and started to gain on her. She made the door way and slammed it shut behind her and slammed the lock shut. She heard the footsteps reach the grille and stop. Shining her light through the grille she could see nothing but the footsteps continued to pace up and down behind the door.

Well I've managed to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end just writing this in daylight. Hope you enjoyed the stories!

Tasmania Travels

Just back from my latest adventure. I did my 6th state of Australia for a five day break. Only got one more to do before completing the set!

The first full day we had there we drove over to Port Arthur in the South East of the island. It was the site of the penal colony on the island and was chosen because it is a peninsula attached to the mainland by a narrow 100m wide causeway called Eaglehawk neck. They used to have guard dogs strung along the neck to prevent the convicts escaping. We spent about five hours on the site exploring.

There was several prison buildings including a silent prison for nasty offenders where (obviously) no-one was allowed to talk - not even the guards. They even put reeds down on the floor to muffle the sound of footsteps.



There was also a chapel in the silent prison where all the convicts had to stand in separate boxes so that they couldn't see each other and they were tiered so they couldn't see in front of each other either. We didn't have time to do many of the other buildings (they even had an accountants house!) although we did get to see an archaeological dig where they were exposing the commandants house and showing us some of the articles that they were uncovering. We also did a ferry cruise round the harbour and stopped at the Isle of the Dead which was where the cemetery was located. Both convicts and free people were buried here but the convicts didn't have headstones and were buried on the lower part of the island. A few of the later convicts were given headstones, but only if there was someone who could pay for it.

In the evening we went back to the site for a Ghost Tour. There was about 15 of us in the group and somehow I managed to get given a lamp and was backmarker and had to make sure no-one wandered off. And we all know that its the ones at the back who get got first in horror films!! The first stop was the church which wasn't particularly scary as it didn't have a roof although it was lit up to make it look a little spooky. Next stop was the pastor's cottage which was very scary. There was an irishman who was quite loud and he got sent in first with one of the lamps and then we all filed in afterwards. Apparantly there were 6 ghosts haunting this place including one of the pastors who died of pneumonia in the building. The room we were in had quite an oppressive atmosphere, and when we came to leave people were getting jammed in the doorway trying to get out. Next stop was the morgue where we had to go down into a cellar where they disected up bodies. Apparently the religious belief of the time was that you could be autopsied (i.e. to find out why you had died) but if you were disected then your soul couldn't join up with your body on judgement day. Medical science wanted to find out more about the human body but couldn't so rules were made so that executed criminals could be disected. This gave rise to bodysnatchers (such as Burke and Hare for those of you who have heard of them) who would dig up graves and sell the bodies to doctors. Eventually it was decreed that if any body wasn't claimed in 48 hours could be disected up. In Port Arthur, very few bodies were claimed so the chief surgeon got to do a lot of disecting. The room where all this occurred was also pretty freaky place as the stone table was still there. It was leaving this building that my lamp decided to go out which was a bit annoying! Thankfully we only had one more building to go - the Silent Prison. There was no electric lights in any of the buildings so it was a lot dimmer with only two lamps instead of three. We were told the story of one of the Ghost tour guides who was locking up the Silent Prison at the end of the night and heard footsteps behind her. She shined her torch where she heard the footsteps and couldn't see anything. She could still hear the footsteps as she shone her torch so, scared, ran out of the building. The footsteps ran behind her and when she got to the door she managed to get out and shut it but could hear the footsteps behind the door pacing up and down. It was a grille door as well so she could see in but could still not see anything. There was a little twist on the way out as Jacqui, the Irish guy and I were walking some way behind the group comparing digital camera shots when Jacqui suddenly screamed and grabbed my arm. It turned out that she thought she heard a deep voice whisper in her ear. She spent the rest of the holiday denying it was anything paranormal but managed to make the Irish guy scared which was a bonus.

The next day we drove up the Tasman peninsula and eventually to Bicheno about half way up the east coast. We did an hour walk along some spectacular cliff top scenery where there were several arches formed, a couple of sea caves and a blow hole. We managed to see a Pademelon (a type of Wallaby for all the non-Australians) and also an Echidna (kind of like a porcupine). The drive took us back almost to Hobart and then up north through a fairly mountainous area before we met the coast again and meandered through various fishing villages and seaside towns. Bicheno was a very small little town but is famous for having a penguin rookery where the penguins (Fairy Penguins) nest. The town has taken to protecing the area from unnnatual predators such as foxes and feral cats and dogs. The tour started about half nine and as we got to the coast we could see the penguins all strung out from the rocks where they come out of the sea and all they way up the beach to their nest sites. We could get really close to them (apparently because they were knackered and needed to rest every 5 metres up the beach). They even built a few nest boxes with flip top lids so we could see the penguins inside nesting. While we were looking in one and disturbing a very bemused male penguin, there was a commotion in the group as another penguin meandered through peoples legs (we were taking up the whole path to be fair) and continued on to its nest.

The next day we got up early and headed down to Freycinet National Park which is about 20 miles south of Bicheno. It is one of Tasmania's famous parks and the picture attached is of Wineglass bay taken from the look out. There are no roads in to the park - you have to park on the edge and make your way into the park on foot. The first half hour is all uphill through a small range called the Hazards. Very entertaining to see people struggling up in jeans and flip-flops/thongs* (*delete depending on nationality). At the top of the pass between two of the peaks is the lookout where the photo was taken. There we had another example of tame wildlife when a padmelon bounced through the very busy lookout area. We continued down to the beach which was absolutely fantastic. White sand and beautiful sea although it was a bit cold. After a swim and lunch we walked across the peninsula to the other side and walked round the coast back to the car park. We did managed to see a red-bellied black snake on the way. Mainly because it had about five birds round it screaming their heads off.



We then drove up to St. Helens in the north-east of Tasmania where we turned up to find their regatta in full swing complete with a fair and a pretty good fireworks display.

Out final full day was the worst weather wise as it was very overcast. We drove a little further north to the Bay of Fires (so-called because the local aborigines used to light a lot of fires) and walked along the coast there before driving back down to Hobart through the main highway down the centre of the island. Still only had one lane though. We had a stop at a historic village called Ross which looks like it is still in the 1800s. It is famous for its square which has a pub on one corner representing Temptation, a church on another corner representing Salvation, a Gaol on one corner (now converted into a house) representing Redemption and the Town Hall on the last corner representing Recreation. It was also the site of one of only two female convict prisons in Tasmania (the other being in Hobart) although that was fairly run down.
We had a morning in Hobart before our flight out back to Brisbane and so we did the Cascade brewery tour. Much of the old brewery is still there and used (it is Australia's oldest brewery) and was a fascinating tour. Unfortunately we couldn't have too many tasters as we needed to catch our flight.

It was a very enjoyable few days and if anyone is planning to come to Australia then they should REALLY think about including Tasmania in their trip!

See you all soon!