HAUNTED PLACES

Aradale Lunatic Asylum

Aradale or Ararat Lunatic Asylum is the largest abandoned lunatic asylum in Australia. Opened in 1867, Aradale was reserved for many of the incurable mental patients in Victoria during the 1800's. An estimated 13,000 people died here during 140 years of operation.

The complex was huge with 63 buildings and a staff of 500. Reports of hauntings talk about nurses in white uniforms, crying, moanings and footsteps.

The asylum was built as a town within a town with its own market gardens, orchard, vineyards, piggery and other stock kept on the grounds.

Today the building is used for ghost tours, where reports of visitors unexpectedly fainting, feelings of nausea and pains while walking through certain rooms, wards with ominous smells and methodical banging sounds like patients hitting their head against walls.

However, out of the asylum's 60 buildings, the J Ward as known for housing Ararat's most infamous patients, with one of its most prominent being Bill Wallace.

While never tried or convinced, Wallace was a suspected murderer who allegedly shot a friend over an argument about a cigarette and was then declared "insane" by two separate doctors in 1925. He was sent to Aradale for 64 years to be held at the Governor's pleasure and died there at the age of 107 in 1989.

According to Real Paranormal Experiences, visitors have reported feelings of being "shoved and bitten," as well as sounds of shrieking voices, ticking clocks and electric interfere with cameras and other electrical equipment.

In the J Ward, three prisoners were hanged while it was being used as a jail. They were buried upright and their spirits are said to be forever locked inside the complex. The inmates marked the graves. The friends of J Ward have since places plaques above these burial sites.

Other tales of ghosts are plentiful. Nurse Kerry is said to haunt the women's wing and watches the ghost tour groups from one room in particular. Others report unexplained pains and sense of being touched by people in the old men's wing surgery.

And then there is old Margaret. She is the best-known ghost and was one of many patients who was kicked out in the late 1990's when Aradale officially closed. She is said to haunt the halls because it's the only home she ever knew.

The Superintendent's office is also known for being haunted by visitors experiencing a bitter taste while walking by his office. The explanation is that a former superintendent died by suicide after swallowing prussic acid or Hydrogen Cyanide. While we don't know for sure who this is, according to reports this could have been Dr. William Mullen who died in 1912.

Dare to enter the cell of one prisoner, Gary Webb, have been told to "get out". Webb a very disturbed individual, mutilated his own body over seventy times whilst in his cell and clearly doesn't appreciate visitors invading his privacy.

Make your way downstairs to visit the underground kitchen and you may encounter the spirit of a young boy called Stuart. Said to haunt the kitchen area along with a former cook, it is not known whether the young boy is a former inmate or former employee of the asylum.

In reality, many who entered the asylum were suffering from minor mental illness, disabilities or were an inconvenience to their families. Behind closed doors, terrible treatments were inflicted upon patients, often without anesthetic. Many who entered were driven mad.

Bound forever to this dreadful place and destined to endure its tortures forever, even death failed to release some poor souls from the hellish misery of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum.