Spooky Sydney: Where do the city’s ghosts sleep?

Poltergeists are a polarizing topic. Whether you’re a believer, belieber or non-believer, it’s hard not to admit there are some places you’ve been that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. How can we describe this overwhelmingly eerie feeling? Was it a spirit from lives lost, or just the wind? In a city that’s more than 220 years old, we’ve tallied up some pretty notable history, stretching all the way back to our settlement days and beyond. From haunted houses to mental hospitals, there’s a dark side to Sydney that not many people know about. Here, we’ve rounded up a few spooky Sydney spots that are bound to make you feel a little unsettled.

Q Station, Manly

Q Station in Manly is a series of heritage-listed buildings that operated as a quarantine station from 14 August 1832 to 29 February 1984. The idea behind it was anyone arriving from the motherland to the colony, who might have had an infectious disease, would be kept in quarantine until it was considered safe to release them. One can only imagine how many people perished at this location due to their illnesses. They say this site is extremely haunted. Transformed into a hotel, restaurant and conference centre, reports say people who have visited Quarantine Station have been pushed by a non-existent entity, pushed to the floor in the middle of the day and have heard strange noises and lots of paranormal activity in the area.

Gladesville Asylum

Built in the 1800s, the old Gladesville Mental Hospital looks like something straight out of a horror film. The now abandoned asylum is built from sandstone and has a host of empty jail cells flanked by billowing willow trees that sweep into the ruins. Here’s the really scary part: under the hospital ground lays the corpses of more than 1000 psychiatric patients, most of them anonymous. Creepy. There is no surprise this location is deemed a little haunted. Torture, insanity, death and disease remain a fixture of those hollow walls.

The Rocks and the Brown Bear Lane murder

The historical Rocks area is known as the birthplace of Australia and has many eerie, spine-tingling true stories of murder, suicide and hangings. History showcases this was the settlement location for many convicts, publicans, sailors and wharf labourers, perhaps whose ghosts still haunt the location today? The Rocks’ very first pub, The Romping Horse, was located on the corner of Brown Bear Lane from 1789. In 1844, Thomas Warne was brutally murdered by his servant in a tenement on this corner. His body was cut up and burned in the chimney. The remains were put in a chest and taken to Cadman’s Cottage, located further north on George Street. A boatman was hired to dispose of the chest in the harbour however he became suspicious and alerted a police constable who discovered the crime. Gruesome.

QT Sydney

Just kidding; we’re not haunted…

words by sophie rennard