Ghosts are a big thing in Port Arthur. This is not necessarily surprising, given its past and the thousands of convicts who passed through here - many going through some quite bad times and suffering considerably. For anyone who is cynical about wandering spirits, take note. Many complete sceptics have been converted over the decades following personal encounters with a supernatural force of some sort. An evening ghost tour of the historic site, under the veil of nightly darkness, with only the flickering of lanterns to guide you on your way, is something that you should not miss out on - believer or not.

Ghostly apparitions and numerous other supernatural phenomena have occurred in many of the buildings dotted around the site. Encounters vary from hearing noises, right through to some people actually having the sensation of being grabbed. Perhaps the restoration activities that have taken place since the 1970s at Port Arthur have disturbed previously dormant spirits, although ghostly occurrences date back to the last century.

Builders working on the restoration of the Parsonage in the early 1980s are a prime example of sceptics turned believers. Whilst carrying out their work, they lived in the Parsonage itself. One of them, upon entering a room at one point, saw a transparent woman whilst the curtains simultaneously and quite spookily parted from the wall.

Even more traumatic for his colleague, was the incident which involved him waking in the middle of the night literally going through the motions of being strangled. He was struggling for breath, and later described a sensation of being pinned down.

Also about the time of the Conservation Project, a garden historian was hired to assist in the planting of historic plants. She went to interview the man who was living at Trentham Cottage. It was whilst she was conducting this interview that a very strange episode took place. The chair in which she was sitting began to shake ferociously, almost as if there was a perpetrator very deliberately carrying out the act. She was unable to continue with the interview and had to leave.

A group of archaeologists were staying in the Commandant's Residence when they were working on the site. They too experienced a number of strange occurrences. One of them heard footsteps one night, and thinking that it was her friend, she called out to him in the room right next to hers. Much to her surprise, instead of hearing his reassuring voice, she heard a woman's groan and the footsteps then grew fainter.

This did not just happen once, but twice, to this particular archaeologist. Understandably, she was not too keen to spend another night in the house, and another person took her place in the room. He not only heard noises, but actually saw the face of an elderly woman, who then floated on high towards and through the ceiling.

As if all of this was not enough, on another occasion whilst in the drawing room, one of the archaeologists saw a ghostly woman with a scared look in her face. Whilst glancing through items relating to the Residence's past, this same archaeologist picked out a picture of a woman whom she identified as being the face she had seen.

The picture dated back to the 1920s, and was of the former manageress who had worked here when the Residence was a hotel.

Quite a number of attendants working at the historic site have had scary encounters. These have included an attendant arriving in the morning, having securely locked the Parsonage the previous night and switched all of the lights on, to discover all lights on.

The same building was also the site of a strange vase incident. An attendant had left a vase of flowers in the house. The following morning when he unlocked the house and turned off the alarm, he discovered that the vase had moved and was now facing a different direction entirely to when he had left it prior to locking up.

In the Medical Officer's Residence there have been a couple of times when the laughter of children has been heard, and when further investigated by the attendants, nothing was found in the upstairs room from where the sounds were emanating.

The building had been used in the past to house the families of the medical officers, and the children's rooms had been upstairs.

The asylum / museum has also been the site of some spooky incidents for attendants. On one occasion two of them witnessed an ashtray glide across the table before their eyes whilst they were on a break. On a separate occasion, two others found the door behind them slamming as they entered the staff room.

When they went to exit the room they could not get the door to budge. They managed to signal to a couple visiting the museum. The man attempted to push at the door to open it but had absolutely no luck. After a while his wife approached the door and with minimal effort, the door opened before her.

Sometimes members of ghost tours actually encounter strange ghostly incidents for themselves. One tour group, on being told of the various goings on that had occurred in the Parsonage over the years, in particular about the original scepticism of the builders involved in its restoration, were treated to quite a ghostly experience.

The gate on the residence next door to the Parsonage began to bang madly, and a number of the group observed flashes of light beaming from some of the Parsonage windows. A sudden drop in temperature was also noticed, and as soon as they moved away from the Parsonage, calmness returned.

There have been incidents of slamming gates, the sound of horses hooves and apparitions of a horseless coach, plus many, many other unexplainable happenings which visitors have encountered.

The rocking chair in the Nanny's room has been yet another site of odd goings on. Some people have found that their cameras won't work in the room at all, and that as soon as they leave they are fully functional again; or that the camera appears to be working while in the room, but when the film is developed the pictures from this particular room simply fail to come out.

The ghost associated with this room is a former nanny, who was supposedly a very caring person towards the children in her charge. She seems to appear before children more readily than adults. When the chair was damaged and removed from the room to be repaired on one occasion, a child who was visiting with his parents started to call out 'take the chair from the cupboard' - a sentence he repeated over and over.

It turns out that while awaiting repair, the chair had been placed in the former pantry, which basically is a large scale cupboard. The ghostly nanny was pacing before the little boy with nowhere to sit.

If these incidents were few and far between one may well be justified in being doubtful, but the fact that there have been so many of them over the years, with people who were genuinely sceptical having the wit scared out of them by some unusual force, really does make one stop to wonder.

Of course, if you are still doubtful, perhaps a visit to Port Arthur will result in you joining rank with the forces of those who are convinced that there is something in these ghostly tales.

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