Port Arthur is the definition of Tasmanian Gothic. Walking onto the site, by day or by night, you are almost overcome by an atmosphere of foreboding as the echoes of its dark past creep over the hillside.
After dark, the grounds open only for ticketed evening experiences, and I highly recommend booking the lantern-lit Ghost Tour. The storytellers who guide you through the site make history come alive, and nothing compares to touring the old prison grounds at night.
Port Arthur is roughly a 90-minute drive from Hobart, with free parking that can fill up at peak times. Fill your tank first, as most service stations on the Tasman Peninsula close before 6 pm.
But Ghost Tour tickets can sell out, and if you haven’t planned ahead, you might miss the chance to explore Port Arthur after dark. So I’ve gathered a bit of history and the ghost stories for anyone who wants to learn more about the paranormal activity reported here. Read this self-guided tour during your daytime visit and, trust me, the site is so spooky that even in the light of day these stories will send a chill down your spine.
Along the way, you’ll see that the real history of the settlement, more than any single apparition, gives Port Arthur its Gothic character.
If you can’t make it onto the grounds at night, head to the Port Arthur Motor Inn & Restaurant, which sits beside the historic site. Dine in the restaurant, and you’ll have a view of the settlement as the light fades, and if you’re brave enough to stay the night, you can look out over the complex from your room. Read these stories there and imagine being among the ruins yourself. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the tales provide insight into the settlement’s history and the beliefs the earliest settlers clung to.
Tasmanian Gothic is a literary genre that merges Gothic fiction traditions with the history and natural features of the Tasmanian landscape. Its stories deal with the themes of horror, mystery and the uncanny. Many writers point to the dark convict history and the ghost stories that grew from it as a major influence on the genre.
Irish and Celtic immigrants brought a strong tradition of belief in the supernatural, and those old-world ghost stories took root in the new landscape, particularly on the Tasman Peninsula where Port Arthur stands.
Another, perhaps unexpected, influence came from Chinese immigrants, who also carried strong supernatural storytelling traditions. They arrived in the 1870s and 1880s, mainly in the north-east, to work the alluvial tin fields. Their numbers were never large, peaking at roughly 1,000 to 1,500, but in places they outnumbered European miners by as many as ten to one, and many Chinese ghost stories still circulate in the region today.
Port Arthur began life in 1830 as a small timber station, named in honour of George Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Van Diemen’s Land was the name Dutch explorer Abel Tasman gave to Tasmania when he reached its shores in 1642, in honour of Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Convicts from Britain and Ireland were sent here, among them men who had offended again after arriving in the colonies. Being transported to the other side of the world was already one of the most severe punishments short of execution, and Port Arthur became known for strict security and harsh discipline.
But Port Arthur was also a working settlement. Authorities wanted convicts reformed through a combination of religion, education and training in a variety of trades, which is why it is often called an “industrial prison.” The location was rich with forest, and convict saws supplied a steady stream of timber for building works on and off the peninsula.
By 1834 the settlement had a dockyard, and shops for shoemaking, smithing and brick-making followed. Before it closed in 1848, the dockyard launched 16 large decked vessels and around 150 smaller boats. A grand water-powered flour mill was completed in 1845, although it ran only in fits and starts. Throughout its life, the settlement struggled to pay its own way.
Port Arthur was reputed to be an inescapable prison. It sits on a peninsula ringed by deep, cold water that rumour held to be shark-infested, and the only land route to the mainland was a 30-metre-wide isthmus, Eaglehawk Neck, guarded by soldiers and a line of fierce, chained dogs. Many convicts still tried their luck, and a few succeeded, most famously the bushranger Martin Cash, who got away in 1843. One of the most bizarre failed attempts came when a convict named Billy Hunt disguised himself in a kangaroo hide.
According to some accounts, conditions were so dire that men would murder a fellow inmate, knowing the crime was punishable by death, just to escape their situation. Under the early regime, discipline relied on the cat-o’-nine-tails, irons, solitary confinement, and chain gangs hauling timber through the bush. Port Arthur earned a reputation as “hell on earth,” and the toll was heavy: more than 1,000 people died here during its 47 years as a penal settlement.
But for many, the lash was not the worst of it. As ideas about punishment shifted from the body to the mind, work began in 1848 on the Separate Prison, modelled on London’s Pentonville Prison and often called the “silent system.” Prisoners spent about 23 hours a day alone in individual cells, in silence.
For their single hour outside, they wore a hood or mask to prevent any communication with other inmates. The aim was reform, but critics feared, and many believed, that the isolation drove men mad. By the 1860s, with an ageing and increasingly infirm convict population, the settlement had added a Paupers’ Depot and an asylum.
According to legend, the old stone church at Port Arthur was cursed almost from the moment its first stones were laid. Its foundation stone went down in 1836, and the church was never consecrated by any denomination. Much of its stonework and panelled pew fronts was prepared by the boys of Point Puer, the boys’ prison across the water. Those young convicts were kept apart from the settlement so that the older inmates wouldn’t influence them and they might stay on a path towards righteousness. A fire gutted the church in 1884, and it has stood as a picturesque ruin ever since.
But living apart from the main settlement, the boys were easily overlooked, and life at Point Puer was harsh. Their days were filled with hard labour as they quarried, shaped and hauled stone for the church, and historians describe years of punitive treatment. One can only imagine how exhausting that work must have been. According to legend, the haunted souls of these young men cursed the church from the start.
Legend tells of another dark moment in the church’s construction, when convicts were used as free labour. One day, a violent prisoner got into an argument with another labourer. Without a second thought, he picked up a pickaxe and struck the man in the head three times. When he was done, he set the pickaxe down and whispered, “I am satisfied.” Blood splattered across the stone walls. Although it was washed away, the ivy that grows over the rest of the church is said never to grow where the man’s blood was spilled.
Visitors and residents have reported strange figures in the bell tower at night, though the tower lost its steeple in 1876 and was gutted by fire in 1884. The bell is said to ring out on its own with no ringer present. Perhaps it is the spirit of a prisoner, pleading for help and unaware that he is already dead. The site’s soundscape does include church bells on the hour, so keep that in mind as you listen.
The Parsonage, easily spotted by its brightly painted terracotta exterior, was built in 1842 on Civil Officers’ Row beside the church. Today it is often counted among the most haunted buildings in Australia, and an account of strange events here, published in the 1890s, helped launch Port Arthur’s ghostly reputation. The Irish-born Reverend Edward Durham and his family were its first long-term residents, living here for about a decade from his appointment in 1843. Reverend George Eastman later made the house his home.
Eastman was popular, but local accounts say his older children ran amok, trampling the gardens and surrounding farmland that the inmates worked so hard to keep in proper running order. The children’s carefree attitude angered the inmates greatly.
Eastman died in this very house in 1870. By most reports, he fell ill after going out in bad weather to comfort a dying convict. Soon after his death, people began to report ghostly apparitions in the Parsonage. Visitors report a foul odour with no discoverable source, moaning and other strange noises at night, and lights that flash on and off, even when no one is home. Perhaps Eastman’s ghost lingers still, restless in the house where he died.
Near the church stands a row of houses known as Civil Officers’ Row, home to some of the settlement’s senior officials. The houses were set apart from the prison area so that the officers and their families wouldn’t have to live alongside the inmates. Among them is the Junior Medical Officer’s House, completed in 1848.
In the basement of the senior surgeon’s quarters on the row is the old dissection room, where the bodies of dead convicts were examined. Walking in, visitors report that the temperature drops sharply, far more than it should in an underground basement. People have described seeing eyes on the walls and bloody faces appearing in the stones, only to vanish instantly, and cameras are said to malfunction here. Perhaps these are the spirits of the prisoners whose bodies were laid out in this room.
The most famous ghost of Civil Officers’ Row is a melancholy woman who lost her baby, called the “Lady in Blue” for the iconic blue dress she wears. Legend has it that she was an officer’s wife who lost her child, and in some tellings her own life, in childbirth, and that she still searches the grounds for her baby. It is rumoured that the baby could not be buried with its mother on the Isle of the Dead because the child had not been baptized, and in those days an unbaptized child could not be buried in consecrated ground. Unable to rest for eternity beside her lost child, she is said to wander the grounds, searching endlessly in the hope of being reunited.
Built between 1864 and 1868, the Asylum housed convicts too mentally ill to remain inside the central prison, along with the settlement’s ageing and infirm. Treatment was rudimentary at best, and many lived out their final years within these walls. Visitors report footsteps at night and lights that turn on and off on their own. But the two most famous ghosts of the Asylum aren’t prisoners at all. They are said to be a young girl and an older woman who roam the halls.
After the settlement closed in 1877, the building, badly damaged in the 1895 bushfires, went on to serve as a school, a town hall and a museum. We don’t know why a teacher and her pupil would haunt these halls, but one can imagine the ghosts of the old inmates troubling them in turn.
Beside the Asylum stands the Separate Prison, where prisoners suffered the torments of solitary confinement. By the time it was built, the authorities had come to believe in punishing the mind rather than the body, although corporal punishment had been prevalent for years. In these silent cells, prisoners spent about 23 hours a day alone. Whenever they left their cells, they wore a hood or mask and were made to stay quiet at all costs. The guards reportedly wore soft slippers and communicated by hand signals, so that the inmates never heard the sound of a human voice.
This kind of treatment was thought to give prisoners time to reflect on their misdoings, and this kind of penitence was presumed to guide them towards a life of reform. But it often did no such thing, and many men are said to have been driven mad. Those who lost their minds were referred to the Asylum next door, where care was rudimentary at best.
One of the best-known stories is that of William Carter, who, according to the tale, took his own life in his cell in 1867, seeing it as his only escape from the “silent system.” When a man believes death is his only escape, you know how dark things must have been inside Port Arthur’s walls. Visitors to the Separate Prison report an overwhelming sadness in some cells, as if a spirit were still lingering. Some have felt someone touching them when no one was there, and others say they have been scratched by phantom hands.
According to local lore, a convict named John Gould appears in the small window of his cell, peering out hauntingly at guests.
One of the saddest stories from the Separate Prison tells of a young boy awaiting execution. It’s hard to imagine what a child could have done to deserve such a sentence. Today, people report hearing the cries of a boy at night, like the cries he is said to have made before his death.
It’s worth mentioning that few ghost stories are told about the old Penitentiary. While many inmates suffered horrible fates, this building, converted from a failed flour mill in the 1850s, was also a place of reform. Its lower floors held 136 cells for prisoners of bad character, but the top floor was a dormitory for about 480 better-behaved men, who slept in the company of others. Above the cells were a dining hall that doubled as a night school, a library and a Catholic chapel. Prisoners were given a chance to reform themselves by attending church and learning trades such as shipbuilding, carpentry and blacksmithing at the settlement’s dockyard and workshops.
The Guard Tower, built in 1835 with stonework shaped by the boys of Point Puer, looks out over the rest of Port Arthur. Standing here, visitors have reported moans echoing through the tower. Apparitions of soldiers in uniform have appeared to guests, and one guest even reported having their arm grabbed as they passed by.
The large house on the high ground at the far end of the settlement from the church belonged to the Commandant. Built in 1833, it looks out over the bay and the entire prison complex, and five of Port Arthur’s ten Commandants lived here, each leaving his mark on the house and the prison. Those who held the post oversaw a regime that put prisoners, even the well-behaved ones, into abominable conditions.
According to legend, one of the Commandant’s rocking chairs rocks back and forth inside with no one sitting in it. This is thought to be the spirit of an old Commandant, still obsessively watching over the colony all these years later. People have reported that when they try to photograph the chair, their cameras malfunction or the images come out extremely blurry, even though the photographer remains perfectly still.
Near the jetty where boats cross to Point Puer, keep your eyes open around the cottage for a young soldier. One night in March 1840, 20-year-old Private Robert Young was escorting a doctor who had gone across to Point Puer to see a sick boy. Back at the jetty, Young fell into the freezing waters of Mason Cove. Despite efforts to pull him from the dark water, he drowned. Some tales say dark spirits dragged him under, though the records suggest he simply lost his footing in the dark. Young is said to be seen still on the cottage’s stoop, looking out over the water. Perhaps he keeps watch to make sure no one else suffers the fate he did.
Off the mainland we find the most haunting part of Port Arthur, the Isle of the Dead. This island is a scary place to be during the day and at night, especially when it gets quiet. The settlement’s dead were buried here between 1833 and 1877, around 1,100 people in all, though no accurate figures exist. They included convicts, soldiers, free settlers and their families. Graves for staff and officers were marked, while many prisoners were laid in unmarked graves. According to folk belief, those who don’t receive a proper burial with a marked headstone will roam the earth, endlessly searching for revenge and unable to take their eternal rest.
The settlement kept a convict as its resident gravedigger, who lived alone on the Isle of the Dead in a small hut. Mark Jeffrey is the most infamous of Port Arthur’s gravediggers. Born in England and transported for burglary, he was later convicted of manslaughter after a fight in a pub and sent back to Port Arthur for life. The authorities, tired of his violent outbursts, sent him to the island as gravedigger. There, according to Jeffrey, the Devil appeared in his hut and spoke to him. He was so terrified that he begged to be taken off the island. Years later, he wrote an autobiography titled A Burglar’s Life.
Point Puer was a separate prison on a small peninsula across the bay, holding only young offenders. It was thought that by keeping them far from the main settlement, the boys wouldn’t be subject to the negative influences of the adult inmates. More than 2,000 boys were sent here between 1834 and 1849. Most were between 15 and 17, though records show boys as young as nine. Few of the buildings survive today, although archaeological remains such as foundations and a quarry can still be found. People regularly report hearing the sounds of children’s voices on the peninsula, crying out in pain and screaming for help. But when they make their way there, they say no one is to be found.
Hopefully, after reading these stories, you can see why Port Arthur is considered one of the most haunted places in Tasmania, if not all of Australia. It is the definition of Tasmanian Gothic, where real history and local legend have grown together over the decades. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, there is no doubt that life for the prisoners sent here was brutal, and that their stories linger in the ruins. If you have the chance to visit, whether by day or on one of the lantern-lit Ghost Tours, take a moment to remember all who passed through, and perhaps you’ll be lucky enough to spot a spirit yourself!
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