Milk Bar’s Ghastly Guide to Haunted Melbourne

Everyone is fascinated with the possibility of there being an afterlife. We have all heard stories about haunted buildings and objects moving around by themselves. Melbourne has quite a few allegedly haunted locations.

Old Melbourne Gaol is probably the most well known of Melbourne’s haunted locations. Having held many prisoners during its years of operation between 1842 and 1929 — including the notorious tinman bushranger Ned Kelly — a lot of pain and suffering happened behind those stone walls over nearly a century. Numerous people over the years have claimed to have seen ghosts there, giving many tourists the creeps.

I remember hearing how a friend of a friend once went to the Gaol and took a photo of an empty cell block and the printed photo had a woman in 1800s clothing in it! In fact, there were 135 hangings conducted at the Old Melbourne Gaol so if there really are ghosts lurking around you can imagine it is because of what a sore neck they’d have!

Though it is a cliché to say that ghosts roam around cemeteries, apparently this is the case if you go to Victoria Market. The popular market’s location used to be where Melbourne’s first general cemetery was where over 50,000 bodies are buried, including Melbourne’s founder John Batman. You know how people try not to step on graves while walking around cemeteries? Well, herds of people walk back and forth over graves every day at Victoria Market! While people are shopping for exotic fruits or fancy new dresses, they are unknowingly disrespecting the dead.

Like mature age students at university, some ghosts just do not want to leave school. The Methodist Ladies College in Kew is a boarding school that opened around 1890, and a student named Nelly was a boarder who supposedly either killed herself or died from a disease. Students over the years have claimed that they have seen Nelly’s ghost roaming around the top room of the boarding house where Nelly’s room was located. Nelly may sound like a real life version Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter series, though probably not as funny for the boarding students as dunny loving Myrtle is.

All of these places, along with numerous other haunted places in Melbourne, have had terrible things happen there, and the impact of those events from years ago literately still haunt them. The Haunted Melbourne Ghost Tour is probably the best way to see more of the Melbourne’s haunted locations. Though I have not been on this tour myself, it sounds very interesting and people have said good things about it. Tours start at 8:30 on Saturday nights, and the tour guides will show you all you want to know about the places you’re dying to see.

Book here.