Drunken Ghost Hunters: Sydney Quarantine Station

Today’s episode of Decoding the Unknown is slightly unorthodox. It is a firsthand account of a paranormal investigation conducted by two of the world’s unlikeliest investigators, David and Alexandra, while staggering around one of the world’s most “haunted” sites. Simon quite charitably has allowed me to write up the legendary story of our brave and intrepid efforts for you. Our loyal, faithful, kind, intelligent, and, may I say, rather handsome audience. Be warned, however. Zak Bagans – we ain’t.

The Target: Sydney Quarantine Station. Widely known as “The Most Haunted Place in Australia.”

The Challenge: Accepted.

The History of Sydney Quarantine Station

Sydney’s infamous Quarantine Station operated for 152 years from 1832 to 1984. During that time it was used to lock up over 13,000 travellers suspected of carrying disease into the country. In the days of sail and steamboat travel, the idea was to prevent ship-borne diseases from entering Australia by holding any infected ships and their passengers in an isolated location until the disease could run its course.

As a result, an estimated 570 to 581 people died horrible deaths there, riddled by everything from smallpox, to cholera, to tuberculosis, to typhoid, to bubonic plague, to the Spanish Flu. With over 500 people dying agonising deaths in the isolated wilderness in a strange new land, surrounded by the sickbeds of others, also moaning and crying helplessly in pain, it is no wonder that dozens of spirits felt compelled to stalk the grounds for all eternity.

The Quarantine Station is located just off the entrance to Sydney Harbour in an area that is still heavily forested and separated by bushland from the residential dwellings and businesses of the nearby holiday suburb of Manly. The station itself is composed of a small number of buildings, all of which are chock-full to bursting with ghosts. If you tried to escape the compound, you’d face the ocean on one side, and high cliffs on the other.

And if you tried to make your way into Manly, a couple of kilometres of dense forest, made impassible by thick brush, filled with poisonous brown snakes and redback spiders, confronted you. Many of the grave sites of the dead were knocked over as the years went by, and new buildings were callously erected on top of them and around them. Auxiliary graveyards still sit atop the cliffs of North Head, peering out into Sydney Harbour.

The headstones are faded and chipped, the graves are overgrown with brush, and signs are posted warning you of snakes should you decide to walk inside. Personally, I’ve never seen anything up there beyond a cute little echidna, waddling around, digging for bugs.

With all those graves, with all that suffering, countless reports of paranormal activity, sometimes quite violent and troubling, have been made over the years.

The Ghost Hunters

I first heard about the Quarantine Station years ago. When I heard about the title “Most Haunted Place in Australia” this immediately presented itself to me as a challenge. I am the sort of skeptic that occasionally enjoys watching ghost-hunting shows and paranormal documentaries while shouting perfectly reasonable and rational explanations loudly and obnoxiously at the screen.

For some reason, the slack-jawed yokels and credulous idiots who decide to humiliate themselves on television for a bit of attention never seem to listen to me. Neither do the hucksterish, badly dressed hosts, with weird haircuts, who obviously don’t believe any of this shit, while they deliver clichéd and corny lines over a spooky royalty-free soundtrack.

Unfortunately for my plans, for years I had a girlfriend who kinda believed in ghosts and was too scared to ever go there with me. I wasn’t going to make her. And so the matter rested for a time. A few years later, free and single, and ready to mingle with all manner of spooks and spectres, I decided to go. And not just for a laugh. I hatched an elaborate plan. But more on that in a bit.

Joining me was my friend and fellow ghost-hunter, Alexandra, who had been to the Quarantine Station before and had largely enjoyed herself. Like me, she is a skeptic. And she won’t mind my saying that she is a somewhat cynical, grumpy, no-nonsense sort of person who is more likely to kick a poltergeist in the balls and call it a “fuckwit” than to run away screaming.

In fact, a veteran bushwalker, surfer, and spear-fisher, she is ridiculously brave and brazen in the face of physical danger, to the extent that it is difficult to tell who wears the pants in our ghost-hunting partnership. She’s maybe a little rough around the edges and not very diplomatic, bless her, but that’ll come into play later.

It should be said that both of us have received quite a considerable degree of academic and scientific training over the years. To a fairly experienced level. In yesteryear, we both conducted complex research involving disciplines as diverse as evolutionary biology, psychology, and a fair bit of physics. We weren’t just a couple of hooligans looking to laugh at some urban myths and popular superstitions.

We had serious intentions. We had a plan. We were going into this with our eyes wide open, intending on delivering concrete results. There was even talk of publishing in an academic journal, but nothing came of that.

The Plan

The pseudo-scientific theories surrounding ghosts and poltergeists are, unsurprisingly, somewhat of an incoherent mess. A jumble of half-baked ideas and explanations. But one thing most of them seem to have in common is that ghosts are supposed to exist on a plane of existence parallel to ours.

They are held there by strong emotions, usually surrounding the circumstances of their death or the suffering they experienced in life. These ghosts supposedly manifest themselves in our reality via the electromagnetic spectrum or via quantum physics (both versions of this explanation are pseudo-scientific gibberish). Ghosts are leftover signatures of human energy, capable of both movement and a certain degree of consciousness.

Why the brain chemistry and perpetual firing of hundreds of billions of synapses, which are required to make human emotions and thoughts exist, would physically survive decades after the brain had rotted away into putrid mush, has never been adequately explained.

Nevertheless, like vinegar mixing with baking soda, these spirit-based energy signatures are highly reactive to the presence of living humans. Though no one I’ve seen has really cared to explain why. At least beyond the fact that they are people and we are people. The same species.

I guess that’s why we don’t see more ghosts of woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers roaming about. Or the ghost of a cockroach we crushed last Tuesday. But ghosts have a profound impact on living people, and we in turn have a profound impact on them. Probably because they are figments of our fucking imaginations.

Some ghosts react to the living in benign and even pleasant ways, other ghosts are a little creepy but largely indifferent to us, and some ghosts are quite malevolent, angry, and aggressive. Ghosts are also known to react differently to different people, or to people with differing intentions. A ghost might calmly accept the presence of a human in one instance, and may turn angry and foul toward a person in another.

It is on this generally vague chunk of theory that hinged our entire ghost-hunting plan. We were simply playing by the rules of ghost hunters we’d seen on television. And they could hardly all be wrong…

Our plan was twofold. Phase One. Go to the Quarantine Station on a ghost tour and deliberately try to provoke a negative emotional reaction from the ghosts. We’d do exactly the opposite of what we thought the particular ghost in question would want, and improvise the sort of thing the ghost in question would definitely not want. If a ghost didn’t want us to enter a certain room or stand in a certain part of it, we’d barge right in. If a ghost was angry about the manner in which he had died, we’d laugh, mock, and tell him to get over it. If a shadowy apparition appeared right in front of us, we’d try to punch it in the face.

In short, we’d behave like total jerks toward the spirit world. And, yes, I know this sounds mean. That was the point. In order to augment this obnoxious behaviour, we’d get a little pissed up with dinner before we went. All in service of provoking the most extreme supernatural phenomena.

No “Casper the Friendly Ghost”, or “oh my god, a door just moved and I felt a little cold” pussy-ass bullshit was to be allowed here. We wanted full-on demonic possession, hellfire golems, sadistic poltergeists, flashes of the number 666, whisperings of “get…out…”, upside-down crucifixes, chairs flying around the ceiling and blood pouring down the walls. Those kinds of supernatural activity.

If we could handle it. Or, if one of us died, it would all be in the name of science. And the revolutionary breakthrough of definitively proving for the first time in history that, yes, ghosts and the afterlife exist. Such an earth-shattering revelation, which would change humanity’s outlook forever, was surely worth one or two people dying for it.

Hell, it’s not like we’d be losing much. We’d probably wind up as ghosts. If a ghost got angry and killed us while we were proving the existence of the afterlife, we’d at least have the afterlife to go to. Hence, logically-speaking, win or lose, we had nothing whatsoever to fear from ghosts.

Phase Two. After the initial ghost hunt, we’d regroup, list all the phenomena we encountered that night, and make a list of plausible sane hypotheses for what we’d experienced. We’d then go back to the Quarantine Station again, a few days or weeks later, sober and during the daytime, on a vanilla historical tour, and science-the-fuck out of it. Which I believe is the technical term.

There were just a couple of direly needed ground rules. First, we could never wander off alone. Human instincts, particularly in dark and unfamiliar surroundings, are more likely to set off alarm bells and start shooting adrenaline into our system when we are alone than when we are with other people.

We did not want to go the whole night “imagining” things were happening, when really we were just startled by accidentally kicking an empty water bottle on the ground or seeing the shadow of a tree branch on a wall. It is no good walking into a situation, where your guide says you might experience a haunting, with your mammalian instincts already on high alert. This was also the more practical reason for the booze.

A numbing effect to the natural creepiness of old buildings and the cloak of nightfall. And, probably, to numb a sense of growing frustration at some of the sheer bullshit we’d likely encounter on the tour.

Two, we were not to announce our intentions to anyone. We were not to ruin the ghost tour for any other paying customers by either our statements or behaviour. We were not to harass the tour guide by peppering him with difficult questions or skeptical arguments. The poor bugger was just earning a wage.

We were to keep it all to ourselves. And, as an extension of that, we could not do anything so obnoxious or horrible to antagonise a ghost that it would get us noticed and thrown off the tour. Or worse, banned from ever returning to the Quarantine Station. Since, obviously, that would have the opposite effect of what we intended and would ruin all of our efforts.

The only people we wanted to act like assholes toward were the ghosts. And, because we were pretty sure ghosts didn’t exist at all, our conscience was clear. That, in a nutshell, was our plan.

Phase One

At this point in the show, I want to issue a disclaimer before we continue shitting on the existence of ghosts and delusional nonsense about the paranormal. Primarily because I feel bad about what we did. The Sydney Quarantine Station, now renamed Q-Station, after it was renovated, declared a heritage site, and turned into a hotel, is a lovely place. It has a rich vibrant history dating back to the earliest moments of the Australian nation. For example, many of the inmates of the quarantine station for a hundred years etched their names and the name of their ship into the sandstone cliffs near the entrance to the place. Each one of these etchings has its own fascinating story. Many of them are explored in an excellent book Stories from the Sandstone by Hobbins, Frederick, and Clarke. They also don’t give a damn about ghosts. Q-Station also sits in a lovely, sun-kissed spot, away from the bustle of the city, and there is a lot of good bushwalking, swimming, fishing, and boating to be had. It is also right next to the small “gap” of Sydney Harbour where 23 million years ago the ocean waters finally eroded their way through the sandstone cliffs and burst into the valleys that now form the basin of the Harbour. Q-Station boasts stunning views of Sydney, a nice restaurant that even the locals visit, and a tea room where you can have high tea or a fancy gin cocktail. I have spent many a happy afternoon there. Even the ghost tours are a spot of good fun and they do a good job building a spooky atmosphere, which never crosses the line into being utterly cheesy.

There. My guilty conscience is soothed. Now onto kicking the veritable ectoplasm out of some ghosts.

We took an Uber from Manly up the steep hill, along the old military road, to the gates of the Quarantine Station. The old sandstone archway of the camp greeted us. From here, our car could go no further. We sauntered over to a bench and waited for the next shuttle to take us down the hill to the Station proper.

Two other people were waiting there. A man looked at us and did a double-take, a woman openly gaped. Since the tour was to take place in the evening, Alex and I decided to make an event of it. We had decided to have a fancy dinner down there first.

As such, we were dressed up to the nines. I was wearing a black three-piece suit with red tie. Alex, very uncharacteristically for her, was in a red sequined evening dress.

I remember feeling a little embarrassed. We were horrifically overdressed. Everyone else we saw that evening was dressed in casual clothing. But there is no accounting for taste. We did want to squeeze every drop of enjoyment out of this particular stone. After a few glasses of wine, we ceased to care.

The shuttle took us to the bottom of the hill, to the Wharf Precinct, where the beach and docks were. Passengers from infected ships were dropped off here for their long isolation. We pottered over to the restaurant, which is housed in the old boiler-room, a brick building with a giant imposing smoke stack. In days of plague, it fed steam into the sterilisation chambers that killed off bacteria and viruses on people’s luggage, and to the laundry room where people’s clothes were similarly blasted clean.

The boiler-room was fully renovated into a two-story restaurant, and we were led to a table on the second floor.

First “Supernatural Event”: The Neck Touch

It was here that we experienced our first """"""""""""""""""""supernatural event"""""""""""""""""""".

I had tucked into an appetizer of scallops with a glass of prosecco followed by a hefty chunk of lamb, washed down with liberal amounts of merlot. Alex says she had a Portobello mushroom followed by the steak. The room was filled with middle-aged holiday makers, a bachelorette party, and what looked like office pencil-pushers at a corporate retreat. At one point during our meal, Alex suddenly shivered and said, “Don’t shit yourself, Dave-o, but it felt like someone just touched the back of my fucking neck.”

As insignificant as this may seem, many people at Q-Station (and in haunted places generally) report the feeling of being touched by human hands on their legs, back, and neck. Just as well we start light with our “decoding.” The first thing to consider is front-loading. You already know you are in a place that contains ghosts. The idea is already planted in your mind – even if you don’t believe in the damn things. If you were buying condoms in a drugstore and you felt something brush the back of your neck, your thoughts would probably not immediately jump to “ghost!” But if you are already primed and ready to think in those terms, your mind is more ready to play tricks on you. Again, even if you don’t believe in ghosts.

Secondly, it was evening. The sun had gone down. The temperature was dropping.

Alex was sitting there in an evening dress, with legs, back, and shoulders exposed. Furthermore, in Australia, the A/C is always left on too long and too cold in public buildings. And because Australia is usually so warm, we seem incapable of properly heating them.

Some places are like living in a shed. Draughts from the restaurant doorway, the circulation of cold air around the room, could easily stimulate the hair follicles on the back of Alex’s neck. These hair follicles, by the way, which cover most of the sensitive areas of the human body, are evolutionarily designed to pick up sensations that could potentially be dangerous (like a spider, malarial mosquito, or paralysis tick) and alert the brain.

So it is not a massive stretch of the imagination to figure that a wisp of cool air would stimulate the follicles on Alex’s neck, leading her front-loaded brain to amusedly think, “What if that was actually a ghost? Did a creepy pervert die in the boiler-room?”

When we returned to the boiler-room restaurant a few weeks later, during the day, me wearing my usual t-shirt and shorts, and Alex in a tank-top and leggings, both of us with plenty of exposed skin, we both noticed the exact same sensation from the A/C. So next time you feel a ghost touching your neck, remember it’s probably just a spoonful of the Earth’s atmosphere. Air exists. I promise you that.

Dial M for Merlot

Our ghost-hunting then hit our first real obstacle. We had sat down for dinner at 6pm. Our ghost tour began at 9pm.

We had three hours to wait. Within the first 90 minutes we had worked our way through dinner and slurped up whatever we had for dessert (neither of us for the life of us can remember what we had). So, playing for time, generally enjoying the conversation and slow descent into madness, and with the object of being only “slightly” soused for the actual tour, we shared a bit of wine.

All told, we went through about two and a half bottles between us. We hadn’t put too much of a dent in the third bottle, thank god, before it was nearly 9pm and time to go. That is roughly 1000 ml and 9-10 standard drinks apiece.

To be clear, both of us are quite thin and make for pretty cheap dates. I shudder at what our blood alcohol content must have been. Thank god we had both eaten a heavy meal.

The volume of our table got louder. The use of expletives more frequent. Grandiose claims and bullish self-confidence approached megalomaniacal levels. Eyes bloodshot. Our teeth were gradually more stained red with wine tannins as the evening progressed. We swished with a bit of water to little avail. As Alex puts it, “When your teeth start to match the colour of your lipstick, you should probably stop.”

We were thoroughly and utterly pissed. Sozzled. Squiffy. Blotto’d. Couldn’t find our ass with both hands. Riding the pink elephant. Drunk as a hobo’s fart.

We had not yet lapsed into total incoherence. Neither of us had pissed ourselves. We were still capable of maintaining some sense of social instinct and good decorum as we headed out the door and marched toward the ticket area to wait for our tour to begin. Despite everything, the game was afoot!

The Gas Chamber

Our tour group consisted of about fifteen people. The tour guide, who professed an unshakeable faith in the existence of ghosts (whether this was genuine or paid for is unknown), led us down to the docks to begin the tour. I was already beginning to feel drowsy. A bad sign. Alex pulled on her jacket.

The tour guide asked the group, by a show of hands, who among us believed in ghosts. A few people put up their hands. The guide then asked who among us definitely did NOT believe in ghosts. Alex and I kept our hands firmly down by our sides.

The guide had used a rather clever tactic. At the start of the tour, he’d take note of the “easy marks” among the crowd and also flag up the hardened skeptics who are likely to make his job difficult and give him a hard time. But Alex and I had no intention of giving the guide a hard time. Or spoiling the fun for anyone.

We were on a secret mission. For science. For glory.

While still on the docks, the guide mentioned the existence of two spectres called “The Lovers.” A first-class passenger, Lady Margaret, who had an affair with a young Italian immigrant. Witnesses had seen them walking along the beach, dressed in late-19th century garb, arm-in-arm.

What was more unusual is occasionally they were seen rising from the water itself. It should be mentioned, however, that the lighting on the docks is fairly dim. On the water and on the beach it is almost non-existent.

The water is generally black at night. I doubt you could see even a real human being swimming in it. Lighting was not particularly bright anywhere in the Wharf District, probably intentionally, and remember that the entire Quarantine Station is a couple of kilometres from the bright lights of Manly.

A shortage of artificial lighting surrounded by a stretch of dark snake-infested forest. Essentially, a person could make out hazy shapes and see whatever they wanted to see. If they wanted to see a couple of amorous ghosts, they’d see them.

From there we were led across the square toward a couple of run-down looking sheds. The guide mentioned another spectre. A young girl, aged around 14 or 15, who liked to run up to people and strangle them.

People would have difficulty breathing and would later find red finger marks around their necks. Again, front-loading. If you have already been told about a young teenage strangler, you were more likely to get strangled by her.

Second, if you are susceptible to ghost-nonsense you are more likely to be anxious, to panic, and to hyperventilate. Thus achieving a vague simulacrum of choking. Finally, I sincerely doubt anyone had clear hand-marks on their necks.

I’ve seen those bruises in autopsy photos. They are distinct and dark. More likely you are willfully misconstruing harmless inflammation, temporary discolouration, clogged pores, or a hickey your boyfriend gave you last night, than the mark of an other-worldly hand.

Meanwhile, in the back of the group, Alex muttered to me savagely, “If the little bitch tried that with me, she’d be in for a punt in the cunt.” I tried to stop from bursting out laughing. A few people looked over.

We were ushered inside one of the compartments of the shed. It was dark inside except for the dim illumination of the outside streetlamps. There the guide instructed us to guess what the room was for, and to think about it while he left us there for a few minutes. The guide promptly shut the door and 15 people were engulfed in total darkness.

Meanwhile, Alex and I had immediately gone to one of the corners and pressed our backs against the wall to avoid any cheap trickery. A girl let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her boyfriend had obviously impersonated a ghost with a roving hand. Again, all this was a good tour tactic.

Leave us locked in a pitch black room at the start to get us already on edge.

The guide opened the door. He explained that the shed was a gas chamber. Up to fifty people at a time were locked in here to kill off any parasites that were crawling in their hair or on their bodies.

The Disappearing Girl

We proceeded to the luggage sterilisation chamber adjacent to the boiler-room. Within was a fairly dirty concrete floor, some old rickety shelves nailed together about a century ago, and some stairs leading down to a couple of enormous doors with giant wheels on them that functioned as spinning locks. Like on an old-fashioned bank vault.

The doors themselves looked like something out of 1930s science fiction. They were unbelievably thick. In the dark they looked quite sinister.

The purpose of the room, however, was quite innocent. People’s stuff would be piled in there, blasted clean from every microbe, and then put on a small trolley track up the hill, where the luggage would be stored. The inmates, particularly outside of first class, would have limited access to most of their clothing and stuff for weeks.

All this oppressive trouble! And here I was grumbling about wearing a mask on a plane.

As we sat on the filthy concrete stairs in front of the doors (both Alex and I were too drunk to care about dust on our nice clothes) the guide told us about the “Disappearing Girl”. A spectre who would join tour groups and walk around with them. There were numerous reports where people would spot the ghost, think they were a normal person, and several minutes later would notice that they couldn’t see the girl in the crowd. She had dematerialised into thin air!

Or simply buggered off to the toilet. Or they just didn’t see the total stranger again because they were standing behind other people in the dark.

Alex and I didn’t need to come back another day to figure this one out. Hmm. A tour group of 15, and at least half of them were total strangers to each other?

And you’re saying that you think you see a stranger in the dark at one moment and then you don’t recognise her again amongst the group? Say it ain’t so! What is perhaps more interesting is why you would take note of a total stranger in a large group of people in the first place to even notice their absence a few minutes later.

Maybe if you were already an excitable believer in the afterlife, front-loaded with the story of the disappearing girl, perhaps? Or maybe you just thought she was really hot and wanted to ogle her again later? Either way, she probably wasn’t a ghost.

A third possibility is the staff actually joined tour groups as so-called “ghosts” periodically, then slip away to freak people out. But I didn’t detect anything that elaborate at the time.

The Acid Showers and “Shadowman”

From there, the guide led us a few more yards to the building that housed the mass showers. It was here that new arrivals had to strip down naked, hop into one of these cold steel showers, and scrub themselves thoroughly to get rid of any parasites or surface level infections they might be carrying on their persons. But after your shower, you didn’t exactly dry yourself off. Instead the water mixed with carbolic acid sat on your skin.

Over the course of the next few days, you would turn red, itchy, and the top two layers of your skin would gradually peel off. It was like being sunburnt all over, including on your scalp and genitalia.

I will admit that the shower building looked like something out of a horror film. Chipped early 20th century tiles you’d see in a creepy derelict insane asylum. Walls made of rusted corrugated iron on each shower. And rows and rows of them.

Dozens. Stretching on and on into the darkness of the building, lit only by the small windows at each end, and the flashlights of the tour group. The building was too long for a single flashlight to light it from end to end. Cavernous shadows yawned onward into oblivion between the rows of acid showers.

It was genuinely creepy and reminded me of something you’d see in a concentration camp. Perhaps it was the fact newly arrived travellers were tamely led here to have their skin burnt off.

Perhaps unsurprisingly it was in this location that the tour group really started to get jumpy. While filming the showers, someone’s camera turned off suddenly while the phone was still on full battery. I guess a ghost was a bit shy being filmed in the nude. A few people reported feeling a sudden coldness wash over them as if a spirit had just passed by. Yet another person reported having a “metallic taste in their mouth” which the guide speculated was consistent with the “taste of blood.”

When Alex and I returned to the showers during the daytime a few weeks later during “Phase Two”, we discretely took a few swab samples of dust when the historical guide wasn’t looking. A simple chemical test revealed that within that dust were plenty of iron and rust particles, most likely chipped off from the decaying shower stalls that lined the entire building. Such dust could easily be agitated and swirled into the air by people walking around the showers, and could easily have been inhaled or ingested by a person, who would then report a “metallic taste.”

But it wasn’t blood. If anything it pointed to how the air in the building was mildly unhealthy because of the particles in the air. But one can inhale worse chemicals when wandering through an old building, and it is unlikely it did the bloke on the tour any lasting harm.

Also during “Phase Two” we took a portable thermometer to investigate the flashes of cold that were frequently reported in the building. It was 24 degrees Celsius outside that day, or 75.2 degrees Fahrenheit, and within the building the temperature varied between 21 and 18 degrees Celsius or 69.8 to 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit. The construction of the building should be noted.

There was very little opportunity for sunlight to enter the building during the day. The building itself was not built to retain heat (like many buildings in Australia) so when it was in use the showers did not become a sauna on really hot sub-tropical days. The building was old, not meant for living in – even at the time of operation – and thus had worse draughts than the even boiler-room restaurant.

But it was the rows and rows of little metal cloisters, each with a drainpipe through which a blast of cold air could rush upward, that caused the most discrepancies in the building. So it is indeed likely that it wasn’t just the night or people’s paranoia. They were quite likely experiencing sudden slight drops in temperature as they walked around.

It just wasn’t from ghosts.

As for the camera suddenly turning off, without being able to look at that smartphone specifically to see what its screensaver and lockscreen settings were, or whether there was a malfunctioning battery, or to see how incompetent the person using it was operating a smartphone, we’ll just have to chalk that up to user error on the part of the living. The alternate explanation is a ghost could somehow operate a piece of 21st century technology better than that bloke could. And if that is the best evidence we have for ghosts, I think both Alex and I can live with that.

It is one of those cases of confirmation bias. If your electronic equipment messes up during a ghost hunt, then it must be spooks responsible for it, through the electromagnetic spectrum. Yet if your computer were to crash or TV were to suddenly lose power in normal life, it is likely you wouldn’t blame it on sodding ghosts.

Electronic things mess up. All the time. And 100% of the time there is a mechanical explanation for it.

It is only when it happens in a dark room with “Scooby-Doo vibes” that it sends us into hysterics.

It was at this point that the ghosts themselves began to appear.

The tour guide told us about a girl who can sometimes be heard crying in one of the shower stalls. Unsurprisingly a few minutes later, a woman on the tour said she could faintly hear the sound of a girl crying. To this Alex merely whispered into a nearby shower stall that the ghost should pull herself together and shouldn’t hang around the showers all day, but should get her “fat weeping arse” into her swimmers and get to sun-tanning on the beach. As an afterthought, she added that, today, people pay hundreds of dollars to come here and do that and to stop being such a mopey idiot.

The ghost did not care to respond.

The tour guide then told us about Shadowman, a 7 foot-tall spectre that only appeared as a black phantasm, and was at times quite malevolent. Ghost hunters had previously talked to the ghost via a spirit-box and had determined that Shadowman was an ugly ghost disfigured by smallpox, and that is why he never showed his true form. Shortly after hearing this story, a girl screamed quite loudly and said she had seen Shadowman lurking around one of the showers.

Not missing a beat, Alex said, “Well, let’s go find the bastard!” And swiftly charged off in the direction that the spectre had been reported in. A few people from the ghost tour merrily followed us, while the more timid and impressionable folks remained behind near the exit.

Alas, Shadowman was nowhere to be found.

It should be mentioned, at this point, that some ghost enthusiasts will say that if you don’t believe in ghosts or are otherwise “spiritually closed off” like Alex and I almost certainly were, that the ghosts will not appear to you. I hope most of us can agree this is some Santa Claus level bullshit right here. Conveniently, the only sort of person who sees ghosts is either someone who believes in ghosts or is easily startled in dark foreboding places? And on what information are people basing this claim?

Wishful thinking? And if that is the case, if homeowners want to avoid the nuisance of living in haunted houses, all they have to do is stop believing in ghosts and they’ll stop appearing to them. What circular nonsense.

Alex and I took note of how the lines of showers could potentially refract and restrict light through the building. Indeed during the night, you could easily see without the aid of a flashlight just from the dim lighting from the windows. It wasn’t pitch black and there was a moderate amount of visibility to walk around without tripping over stuff.

Otherwise with all those hard corners and tiles, they’d have a massive lawsuit on their hands. This all changed when you turned on a flashlight. Suddenly you had clear visibility immediately in front of you, and darkness lay beyond.

In the “pictures of Shadowman” posted online, the light of a flashlight ends and the yawning chasm of darkness begins, just as you would expect it to in any shadow. It just so happens that these shadows can take on a vaguely anthropomorphic shape. Again, if you’ve just been front-loaded with a story about Shadowman (conveniently the same height as the showers, roughly speaking) it is hardly surprising you would imagine seeing something sinister.

A Merry Jaunt to the Morgue

From the acid showers we had quite a hike to our next “ghostly location.” Alex swore loudly at her uncomfortable shoes, stopped, furiously kicked them off, and pulled a pair of thongs from her purse (flip-flops or plastic pool-sandals for those not from Australia). The national footwear of our country.

As we trudged along a forested path, the tour guide continued to regale us with interesting facts. The first was that the grounds on which the Quarantine Station was built belonged to the Cadigal [caddy-gal] Aboriginal peoples of Australia, who had used this as a site of health and wellness prior to European contact. This made me reflect about where all the Aboriginal ghosts were.

These peoples had first come to Northern Australia roughly 60,000 years ago and had been in New South Wales for approximately 40,000 years or more. As long as humans had been in Europe. In 1791, three years after Europeans arrived in the Manly-North Head area, a smallpox epidemic wiped out an estimated 90% of the Cadigal people, because they had no biological resistances to Eurasian diseases.

It seemed to me there should have been thousands of years’ worth of very angry Aboriginal ghosts roaming about, not just some European settlers who rocked up in the last two centuries.

The guide then gave us an account of “The Twins” whom a colleague of his had seen on multiple occasions. These two eerie apparitions were 7 to 10 feet tall, but were composed of shimmering silvery light. They nevertheless resembled very clear silhouettes of humans, with the outlines of their rib-cages somewhat unnervingly moving back and forth, in and out of their bodies, like pendulums, as they stood and stared at you. One theory went that the Twins were actually just one person, the abnormally tall Dr.

Reid, who was once a doctor at the station. Or maybe this particular tour guide in question was just a little pissed up and seeing double whenever he ran into the good doctor.

A similar story came from yet another colleague of our guide. This colleague was walking along a path near the mortuary called “paranormal alley” in a part of the Station where supernatural energy is at its highest, when he saw two ghostly apparitions walking menacingly toward him. Filled with foreboding, he turned around to beat a retreat, and he saw two more ghosts behind him, also heading in his direction. He was trapped.

The man sat on the ground, felt dizzy, an overpowering sense of doom, and was violently sick. It was only when he managed to rally and leave the area that he began to feel better again.

In both of these cases, which were testimonies of people who worked at the Station, related to us second-hand by yet another staff member who was literally paid to creep us out, they are of dubious reliability to say the least. So it could all just be nonsense. However, with some later research, I found out that numerous staff members swear up and down that they are “true believers” in ghosts, and evidently those same true believers are drawn to apply to work at the Quarantine Station in the first place.

Like a Disneyland for kooks. So if the stories aren’t outright lies, if you are regularly seeing shimmering silvery “Twins” with moving ribcages, or are being bushwhacked by fast moving spectres while walking on a forest path, these aren’t just incidents where you “get the creeps” from a bit of darkness or a bit of cold that can easily be explained away. This is either a sign of more serious mental illness for which might need medication or therapy, or a hallucination brought on by a neurological condition.

In fact, you may want to get yourself checked out by a doctor to make sure you don’t have brain cancer or chemical poisoning.

I’m being serious here. Profoundly realistic and bizarre visual hallucinations while you are awake might mean there is something very serious and life-threateningly wrong with your health. Get yourself checked. Be safe. Don’t just say “ooh ghosts!”, tell your friends, and go on with your day while a tumor that could significantly reduce your life expectancy might be growing inside your skull.

Mr. Slimey

We arrived at the morgue. While standing outside, a man, aged in his 20s or 30s, started to have what I would describe as a “panic attack.” He said he couldn’t head inside the morgue.

There was just too much overwhelming negativity coming from the place. The tour guide, obviously familiar with this sort of episode, was comforting him and eventually convinced him that everything would be fine and to head inside. During the man’s panic attack, Alex and I happened to be standing nearby, but we said nothing and merely observed.

What was interesting about it was the man said he didn’t really believe in ghosts, but that the feeling had just suddenly hit him. Either this meant he wasn’t telling the whole truth, or the creepy stories of the evening had taken a mental toll on him. Which just goes to show how strong the power of suggestion can be for some people.

Alex also wants me to mention he could also have been high off something, which might have made him more quick to internalise the creepy atmosphere and have such a pronounced reaction to it. Indeed the entire tour group had something of a party vibe, so I can’t rule out that some pills were popped or spliffs were smoked by some people prior to the tour.

Inside the morgue there was a table, on top of which there was a mannequin from a 1980s shop window simulating the appearance of a corpse. We filed into the room and stood around the table, with our backs against the wall. There was one gap where there was a large window with no pane of glass, which people would not stand in front of. So in order to make room, I stood in front of it.

My own anxieties were about spiders or snakes coming through the window, or maybe a flying fox (a giant kind of bat), rather than a ghost. As it turns out, in Phase Two, in the light of day, I discovered the window just opened into a second part of the morgue, also inside, so I needn’t have worried.

On top of the mannequin, the tour guide placed an “EMF meter”, a device the size of a TV remote used to detect abnormalities in electromagnetic fields. If a disturbance was picked up, the green light on the EMF meter would turn red. Thus, according to paranormal investigators, a ghost was nearby. Unfortunately, scientific testing has shown that EMF meters can be set off by anything from a mobile phone, to a computer mouse, to powerlines, to car batteries, to vibrating sexual aides.

The tour guide began to explain that cadavers were brought to the morgue for dissections, autopsies, and embalming once a disease killed them. As such, even today the “ghostly stench” of rotting flesh could be smelled by witnesses standing in the morgue. I figured it was more likely a possum or bandicoot had died in the bushes somewhere outside, or a nearby trash can was stinking in the Australian heat.

The guide then warned us of the local morgue poltergeist. A gentleman known only by the nickname of “Mr. Slimey”, who was nevertheless theorised to be a highly-sexed mortician who used to hook up with nurses at night in his place of work.

I’m not sure how many nurses would be fond of making out in a morgue, but whatever floats their boat. I’m not one to kink-shame. The problem with Mr.

Slimey, the guide explained, was his libido did not abandon him at his death. Numerous witnesses over the years claimed that Mr. Slimey had sexually assaulted them by groping their genitals, playing with their nipples, or kissing them on the mouth.

And apparently Mr. Slimey did not discriminate between men and women. This was another interesting tactic to creep out the crowd in a whole new way, and draw a particularly pronounced groan from some of the women there.

No boyfriend or husband had the audacity, thankfully, of impersonating Mr. Slimey to scare their better half. But I bet it’s been done over the years.

Maybe Mr. Slimey was the reason they left a mannequin in there.

People filed out of the morgue. I was one of the last people to exit. Just me, Alex, and a couple people standing by the table talking quietly to the tour guide. As I strode forward from the wall and past the table on my way out, the EMF meter, which had previously been a placid green, started flashing an alarming red. The tour guide met my eyes and said, “He likes something about you.”

In order to break the tension and pass over this awkward moment with a light-hearted joke, I said rather loudly to the unseen spectre, “How about a blowjob?” The ghost did not respond. And the guide, to my disappointment and shame, seemed slightly annoyed and upset. I felt I had pushed my luck too far.

Just then, Alex decided to chime in and ask what a ghost ejaculated when he orgasmed. “Was it semen? Was it dust? Or was it ectoplasm?” At this point I was seized by a blind panic that we might get thrown off the tour, so I grabbed Alex by the shoulders and steered her toward the exit, while she was still cackling and making a joke about “ectoplasm bukkakes.”

The tour guide, thankfully, did not throw us off the tour. He manfully took it on the chin. The jokes, I mean. Not ectoplasm.

The Postmaster and the Matron

The tour continued uphill to the post office. Here was supposed to be an evil, malevolent spirit named “The Postmaster.” It is speculated the actual identity of the poltergeist is Superintendent James Forsythe-Vincent, who ran the Quarantine Station for many years.

His wife died mysteriously of a morphine overdose, and he married a woman 24 years his junior, six months later. William Hay, a witness to the death, was also allegedly killed by the Postmaster. Hay is said to have committed suicide by “shooting himself twice”, first in the stomach and then in the head.

An unusual method for suicide. The Postmaster had him buried within 24 hours of his death, and personally signed off on his autopsy. William Hay also became a vengeful ghost at the Quarantine Station.

Meanwhile, the ghost of the Postmaster is said to be able to reduce people to “spontaneous tears” by sheer force of evil. But given how many reasons a person can have for bursting into tears, especially when impressionable and front-loaded by the ghost story, it is difficult to investigate the phenomenon without more time and a suitable group of crybaby test subjects.

Alex nevertheless spent several minutes trying to provoke the ghost, calling the Postmaster, and I quote, “a small-dicked loser who was too stupid to know that getting a divorce was less scandalous than murdering your wife.” The phantom did not appear and smite us down, despite all of Alex’s “come at me bro” taunts and insults. The only spontaneous crying that happened was from me laughing.

We then moved toward the hospital section. The guide told us on the balcony that witnesses had detected an angry male energy there, most likely from a male doctor who used to work there. Nobody in the group detected anything.

We moved inside the hospital wing to where there were two main rooms, filled with hospital beds. In the first room, we were told was a benevolent spirit and we were asked if we felt a warm aura of kindness in the room. A few front-loaded people muttered agreement.

In the second room, we were told that it was inhabited by “The Matron”, the ghost of a head nurse, and the most formidable entity in the Quarantine Station. We were asked if anyone noticed the energy of the second room was drastically more evil. Led by the nose, some people agreed.

The Matron could overpower you with negative energy if you represented even the slightest disorder to her tightly run hospital ward. At the back of the group, Alex immediately began rustling and messing up the sheets on one of the hospital beds. Nothing happened.

The only thing of note to occur was a girl laid down on one of the hospital beds while the guide talked. She later complained that she couldn’t breathe properly, which the guide speculated was because people had died of tuberculosis and Spanish Influenza in those beds. Unless there were still traces of the disease in the bedsheets a century later, I suspected it was more likely hyperventilation and an active imagination.

I had also sat down on one of the beds, and noticed no such disturbance.

The Gravedigger’s Cottage

Which brings us to the climax of our tour. The last stop. The so-called grave-digger’s cottage, located between two grave sites. Despite the name, a grave-digger never actually lived there. Instead the cottage was periodically inhabited by doctors, who were said to have conducted sick and perverted experiments on women and children. One woman is said to have committed suicide in the bathtub at the back of the cottage, which is reputedly its most haunted room.

The cottage itself is said to be inhabited by a powerful ghost named “Sam”, of unverified origin or identity. The tour guides there all pay him a great deal of respect. Prior to entering the cottage, the guides always knock and ask Sam permission to enter. A great way to ramp up the tension.

Apparently Sam was okay letting people inside today. I do wonder if, for believability and consistency, guides sometimes pretended that Sam was angry and packed paying customers on their way before they could look around. Somehow I doubt it.

But certainly it paid not to make Sam angry. A few years ago, a video went semi-viral in the Australian media when a German medium pretended to be pushed by Sam into an adjoining room. The woman then claimed to have received a bruise from Sam on her elbow.

The footage, if you can find it, shows a rather portly woman, looking at the camera to make sure it was pointed at her, then comically flinging herself into another room, out of sight of the camera. If Sam was truly responsible for this, I am comforted to know that we share the same opinion of mediums. I think it is a little messed up that some people think it is okay to take money by lying about talking to grieving people’s deceased relatives.

Numerous phenomena have been noted at the grave-digger’s cottage. Voices. Moving furniture. Randomly opening cabinets, or cabinets that refuse to open.

Sounds of crying. Screams. Strange lights being emitted from the windows late at night when nobody is there. The tour guide sent us inside, gave a little talk, and then told us he was going to wait outside because the energy of the building was just too overwhelming.

Later, with research, I found out that all tour guides are instructed to do this. A perfect tactic. Not only is it too much for our guide, but we are left alone, in the darkness, to wander an extremely haunted location with a ghost that might harm us. If ghosts were real, this would be a legal minefield.

Alex and I immediately set about our business. Alex seemed to be thoroughly absorbed by uttering obscenities at ghosts, so I didn’t interrupt her. Meanwhile I quickly looked inside multiple cabinets to see what was inside. Not much, it turned out.

At one point I found myself reflecting that it actually was a nice little traditional Australian cabin, and I told Alex that I would love to have one like this on the edge of the woods. Alex snorted and said, “the place is a shithole.” Looking at the old furniture, rotary-dial phone, and rickety brass-framed beds, I admitted that it certainly would be creepy to sleep all night in this place alone. At least not without a couple of lights and a nice show on TV.

May I recommend streaming a nice relaxing podcast by Simon Whistler?

Alex and I then headed into the bathroom, which was indeed a bit run down. We walked up to the bathtub and stared inside at its empty contents. We did not see the spectre of a woman who killed herself. Nevertheless Alex said, “get out of there, lady, you’ll get all pruney, come back with us, we’ll have a drink.”

There was no reply. Meanwhile a girlfriend and boyfriend had followed us into the bathroom. The girl said, “It is so creepy in here,” and turned around toward the door to leave again. She then let out a massive bloodcurdling scream.

Directly in front of her, she watched a cabinet open, seemingly on its own. Her boyfriend gripped her in his arms, but they both seemed rooted to the spot.

I, meanwhile, in a flash knew what had happened. When I had looked through that same cabinet a few minutes earlier, I had struggled with the latch at the top that held both doors shut. It was an old-fashioned latch, and it was dark, and I was admittedly still slightly drunk. So the thing had merely come free and scared the life out of this poor girl in the dark.

I quickly moved past the couple, marched up to the cabinet, and slammed the doors shut as half the tour group looked on. I then turned to the girl and said, “It’s going to be alright, nothing to worry about here.” The tour guide meanwhile came in, inquired what happened, and spent a few minutes calming the girl down on the porch.

Shortly thereafter, we all piled into a shuttle, and, previously ignored, I got a number of backslaps and compliments on my “bravery”, as if I had swaggered up and done something heroic, instead of simply closing a cabinet I had mucked up the first time. All of which Alex thought was hilarious.

But at least we had given other members of the tour group their money’s worth without spoiling their fun. I didn’t mention the cause of the “paranormal activity” to anyone. It just seemed like telling a child that the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real.

Monkeys in Shoes

The Tooth Fairy really strikes to the core of things. When we are children, the ghosts and goblins we fear in the dark seem all too real. To an extreme degree. I remember being deathly fearful for years as a young lad of an oddly-shaped chest of drawers in my bedroom. I had nightmares about this chest of drawers coming to life, and dragging me into the basement, where the furnace would eat me. Even at a young age, we draw conclusions about natural phenomena, but our young minds often draw the wrong conclusions.

Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. We are evolved to find patterns in things, and this in turn helps us to invent, to adapt, and to survive. It is a power that makes us extremely successful as a species and has taken us from stone-tools to skyscrapers in just a few thousand years.

But occasionally the wires get crossed. We see patterns that aren’t really there. Or we don’t see the full picture.

The wheels and gears behind the illusion. 3000 years ago, thunder and lightning might be seen as the rage of an angry god. Less than 300 years ago, the death of some livestock might seem like the work of devil-worshipping witches. And the bumps we hear in the night might be attributed to ghosts.

When all it is – all it ever is – is our powerful human imaginations running rampant and our instinct toward pattern-seeking working overtime with limited information. Or misinformation. We must recognise, with some humility, that we are just apes.

Intellectually the same as we were a hundred thousand years ago. Just with more knowledge, and more stuff. Or, to put it more glibly, we are just monkeys in shoes.

As for Alex and I, we recovered from our hangovers the next day. We decided not to write a paper. We did, however, go back to enact Phase Two and came to some pretty solid empirical conclusions about our experience. We mused that it was a unique idea for a TV show, for two skeptics to wander around haunted houses, drunk, taking the piss out of ghosts and urban myths. Then returning the next day to investigate the “paranormal activity” we provoked. So if anyone out there steals this idea, you owe us royalties.

Anyway, my fellow apes, sweet dreams and sleep tight.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Sydney Quarantine Station known for?

The Sydney Quarantine Station is widely known as ‘The Most Haunted Place in Australia.’ It operated for 152 years from 1832 to 1984, and during that time, it was used to isolate over 13,000 travelers suspected of carrying diseases, resulting in an estimated 570 to 581 deaths.

What was the purpose of the Sydney Quarantine Station?

The Sydney Quarantine Station was used to prevent ship-borne diseases from entering Australia by holding infected ships and their passengers in an isolated location until the disease ran its course.

What are some of the diseases that were prevalent at the Sydney Quarantine Station?

Some of the diseases that were prevalent at the Sydney Quarantine Station include smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, bubonic plague, and the Spanish Flu.

What are some of the reported paranormal activities at the Sydney Quarantine Station?

There have been numerous reports of paranormal activity at the Sydney Quarantine Station, including the feeling of being touched by unseen hands, the appearance of shadowy figures, and the sound of crying or screaming.

What was the plan of the ghost hunters, David and Alexandra?

David and Alexandra’s plan was to go to the Quarantine Station on a ghost tour and deliberately provoke negative emotional reactions from the ghosts by behaving obnoxiously. They also planned to get slightly intoxicated to enhance their behavior. After the initial ghost hunt, they intended to return sober during the daytime to investigate the phenomena scientifically.

What was the first ‘supernatural event’ experienced by David and Alexandra?

The first ‘supernatural event’ experienced by David and Alexandra was Alexandra feeling like someone touched the back of her neck. This sensation was later attributed to the cool air from the air conditioning and the front-loading effect of being in a supposedly haunted place.

What was the significance of the ‘Disappearing Girl’ story at the Sydney Quarantine Station?

The ‘Disappearing Girl’ story refers to a spectre who would join tour groups and then dematerialize or disappear. David and Alexandra attributed this to the large group of strangers and the dark environment, making it easy to lose sight of someone.

What was the ‘Shadowman’ phenomenon at the Sydney Quarantine Station?

The ‘Shadowman’ is a 7-foot-tall spectre that appears as a black phantasm and is sometimes malevolent. David and Alexandra attributed sightings of the Shadowman to the way light and shadows interact in the showers building, creating vaguely anthropomorphic shapes.

What was the ‘EMF meter’ used for during the ghost tour?

The EMF meter was used to detect abnormalities in electromagnetic fields, with the belief that a disturbance indicated the presence of a ghost. However, scientific testing has shown that EMF meters can be set off by various electronic devices and environmental factors.

What was the ‘Mr. Slimey’ phenomenon at the Sydney Quarantine Station?

Mr. Slimey is a local morgue poltergeist known for sexually assaulting visitors by groping their genitals, playing with their nipples, or kissing them on the mouth. David and Alexandra found this story to be a tactic to creep out the crowd and draw a reaction from the participants.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Drunken Ghost Hunters: Sydney Quarantine Station
• Hero image source by thegetty / openverse, cc0.