The old homesteads in Melbourne’s north-west make it a favourite site for ghost hunters. Tara Murray joined one tour searching for spectres.
Alex Mifsud suddenly stops talking and asks: ‘‘Did anyone else see that?’’ He looks for another moment, then says: “There was a lady just ran across the room.
It’s the first time I’ve seen someone run across this room like that.’’ But it wasn’t just any lady. It was a ghost.
It isn’t the first time Alex claims to have seen one, nor will it be the last.
Misfud is one of the hosts of Lantern Ghost tours. On this occasion he is taking a group through Point Cook Homestead.
‘‘People get pushed, poked, their hair gets lifted,’’ he says. ‘‘Some people hear their names being called and others can smell and hear things. Every night is different. Some nights there’s lots of activity, then other nights we don’t get as much.’’
Jacqui Travaglia started Lantern Ghost Tours Williamstown in 2009. She and her partner Andrew Wishart have expanded the tours to Altona, Point Cook and Eynesbury homesteads, and overnight tours to places like the infamous J-Ward asylum in Ararat.
Travaglia has seen ghosts for as long as she can remember.
‘‘I grew up in a haunted house in Williamstown and I used to see a little old woman walking around the house and hear footsteps that were unexplained. A little old woman used to live there with her husband and she liked to cook.
‘‘Then I moved to England and there’s a lot of history and ghost activity there as well. I did every single ghost tour I could do and stayed at every haunted place I could. Then my friends would come along with me and go ghost hunting.
“Their friends started to join and then I thought, I could get a bit extra for this and cover my costs, and it developed into a business.’’
Travaglia says the Point Cook Homestead is one of the most active places for ghosts, with at least 12 there. They include a little boy who drowned, a stablehand, a cat, a couple, an RAAF pilot and the ghosts of the property’s owner Thomas Chirnside, his brother Andrew and his wife Mary.
‘‘Point Cook Homestead has the most activity and we haven’t had a tour without any action. It’s not scary, but a welcoming tour.
‘‘At Eynesbury we believe there’s a lot of spirits there as they use to hold wakes there. When somebody died they would hold a wake and put the body on the lounge-room table and people would come and see the body and they would keep a visual on it in case it woke up. That’s why we believe there’s a lot of bodies trapped.
‘‘The scariest [place] is the J-Ward asylum [in Ararat] which housed the criminally insane. We stay overnight there and it’s quite uncomfortable.
“We had one guest we believe was possessed and we’ve had people locked in the cells, which is physically impossible.’’
Travaglia says many people who look for ghosts are sceptics, who want to be proved wrong or right.
‘‘We have a lot of sceptics come to our tours. We have a number of different tours catering for those who want to research it more with equipment, and others involving the general public.
‘‘Some walk away more sceptical, but have a good night having enjoyed the stories. The best thing is when they change their minds.
“Sceptics are more scared than the non-sceptics when they experience something. For us it’s about the history, the stories and the ghosts. Some of the stories are more interesting than fiction.’’
Paul Levey didn’t believe in ghosts until 2006, when he took over The Coach & Horses Inn in Clarkfield, which many people call Australia’s most haunted pub.
‘‘I thought the stories were sort of not true,’’ he says. ‘‘My wife was the believer. But I have since changed my mind. There’s whistling upstairs, unexplained noises, stomping upstairs, glasses break, chairs and cutlery move and you can come in the morning and the stove top is on.
“We get lots of people taking photos on the stairs and they will send them in and we’ll see a person in the background.’’
Levey isn’t the pub’s first owner to change his mind about ghosts. Frank Nelson and his wife bought the hotel in March 1984. It took only three days for Nelson to experience his first ghost.
He was pushed down the stairs resulting in an ankle broken in three spots. The final straw was when Nelson felt a hand between his leg and the plaster cast. He and his wife moved out a short time later.
Levey says there are three known ghosts who haunt the pub, including a Chinese man who was found hanging in the stables after a fight over gold, and Irish man Patrick Regan, who was murdered after talking about finding gold.
The third is a little girl who was murdered by her father and thrown in the well at the rear of the hotel.
The girl, who was intellectually disabled, is often seen around the staircases; a number of children have reported seeing her.
Levey says many people come to the pub, just to see if they can see ghosts.
‘‘There’s three types of people who come to the pub to see the ghosts.
You have the people who come to take photos, you have the psychics and mediums, and then you have those dressed all in black who come on the full moon at midnight.’’ The Blackwood Hotel is another which claims it’s the most haunted pub in Australia.
‘‘I’m not a great believer of ghosts, but you get a sixth sense about things,’’ says Heinz Mueller, who took over the hotel three years ago.
‘‘When I’m doing my rounds, you get a feeling around the [former] morgue and you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Staff members, some who have been here for over 20 years, won’t work by themselves, so that says something.’’ He says there are four ghosts at the hotel and describes them as ‘‘friendly.’’ The most famous are Laura Dalton, who was burnt to death in the 1940s, and a miner who sits next to the fire.
‘‘Everyone who comes here, comes to see if they can see the ghosts.
We take them on tours of the cellars and downstairs.
Unit three has been built into the morgue and people come from far and wide to stay in that room.’’ In 2007, a TV series, Haunted Australia, visited nine locations looking for ghosts, three were in Melbourne’s outer north-west.
They visited the Coach & Horses Inn and the Blackwood Hotel, as well as the Melton Equestrian Centre.
The old Sunbury University campus, which was originally the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum, is another spot where ghosts have been reported, while there’s reports of a maid being seen at Salesian Bridge also in Sunbury.
Travaglia puts this down to the fact that a lot of the old buildings are still in existence.
‘‘I think the reason for that is that we we have a lot of old homesteads like Eynesbury and Point Cook.
On the other side of the city, they have lost a lot of that and the history with it.’’ Back at Point Cook, sadly for Misfud, no one else sees the lady running across the room.
On this occasion, it was the only ghost to appear on the tour and many people are left disappointed.
Opinion will always be divided on whether ghosts are real, but for people like Mifusd believing is only the beginning.
