Paranormal AustraliaThe Australian buildings that sell a ghost tour, and the people who run them.
The Port Arthur penitentiary ruin at dusk, stone walls open to the sky, an adult tour guide in the foreground holding a lantern
The penitentiary began as a granary, was converted to hold convicts and burned in 1897. It has been held as a ruin ever since.Photo: Penitentiary ruins at Port Arthur · Wikimedia Commons

Peninsula

The oldest ghost tour in the country runs through a ruin the state pays to keep standing.

Port Arthur has sold a lantern-lit walk through its convict settlement since the 1980s. The site authority is a Tasmanian government business, the walk is one of its products, and the ticket is priced like one.

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A group of adults standing on a lawn at a heritage site at dusk, a guide visible at the edge of the group, lanterns in hand
Group size is capped by the guide rather than by the building, which is what sets the staffing cost of an after-dark ticket.Photo: Valentin Ivantsov / Pexels
Ruined brick building with tall chimneys stands beside a grassy waterfront lawn
The Separate Prison was built around silence and isolation rather than the lash, and it is where the evening walk spends most of its time.Photo: Anh Thu Le / Pexels
Old street map of Baku showing the city center, harbor, and Caspian Sea coastline
The Authority reports visitation across its whole programme, which is the document any claim about the night walk has to come from.Photo: Russia, with Teheran, Port Arthur, and Peking; handbook for travellers (1914) · Wikimedia Commons

Fourteen hectares of quarantine station, and a tour that leaves after dark

North Head held Sydney’s quarantine station from the 1830s until 1984. The buildings now trade as accommodation inside a national park, and the after-dark ticket is sold from the same desk as the rooms.

Aerial view of a coastal headland with scattered buildings, roads and sports courts amid bushlandFourteen hectares of quarantine station, and the cemetery the tours walk pastDocuments the station’s operational history from establishment to National Park, drawn from the State Archives quarantine registers.

The Prize

$100,000

Unclaimed since 1980

Australian Skeptics Inc. has offered it to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal ability under agreed conditions. Nobody has taken it. The organisation also hands out the Bent Spoon Award each year.

The terms of the challenge
Close-up of a tarnished silver spoon's bowl and part of its curved handleThe Bent Spoon, awarded every year since 1982A hand signs a document with a pen above the printed word "signature"Randi’s million-dollar challenge, closed in 2015

Six buildings that came with the story already attached

Open The Gaols

What the ticket buys

A lantern, a route, a guide and a printed stub. The equipment sold to the hobby is a separate trade.

  1. 01Bilingual sign on wooden siding lists admission as $3, free for children 12 and underNight permits
  2. 02A hand fills out a family therapy referral form on a clipboardThe application
  3. 03An EMF meter on a table, photographed as a consumer productThe meter
  4. 04A hand signs a document with a pen above the printed word "signature"The signed protocol
  5. 05A group of adults standing on a lawn at duskThe group

Five places, and the standing challenge behind them

The full archive

Fremantle to Junee to the Tasman Peninsula

Ten sites in five states and Tasmania. Every one sells a ticket to walk through it after dark.

Outline map of Australia
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Ten sites across five states and Tasmania. The list names each one; on wider screens the numbers key to it.Geometry: supplied basemap

Junee, Picton and Ararat, where the after-dark tour is the town’s own business

Open Inland

On television, and in the journals

Ofcom found in 2005 that Most Haunted was made for entertainment, not investigation.

Haunting: Australia01Haunting: AustraliaOne season, Syfy, 2014Most Haunted02Most HauntedOfcom finding, 2005The 19Hz paper03The 19Hz paperTandy and Lawrence, 1998

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