Haunted Gladesville Asylum

In the dead of night on Sydney’s Parramatta River, an abandoned asylum sits cloaked in darkness – Gladesville Mental Hospital, once known as Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum. The History of Gladesville Mental Hospital Gladesville Mental Hospital’s story begins in colonial Sydney with lofty ideals and grim realities. Opened in 1838 as the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum, it was Australia’s first purpose-built mental hospital. The site – aptly located at Bedlam Point on the river – was initially designed by Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis and meant to house just 60 patients in humane conditions. Early superintendents like Dr. John Thomas Digby and later Dr. Frederick Norton Manning sincerely aimed to “treat” rather than merely confine the mentally ill. Manning in particular, after studying overseas, condemned the asylum’s original “prison-like” atmosphere and worked to minimize restraints and improve diets and recreation by the 1870s. In 1869 the name was changed from “Lunatic Asylum” to Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, reflecting these reforms. The Medical Superintendent’s Residence at Gladesville Hospital, built in the 1800s, still stands on the sprawling riverside grounds. Despite such efforts, overcrowding and abuse plagued Gladesville from the start. By 1844, the asylum held nearly 150 inmates – more than double its capacity. Reports emerged of patients left in prolonged restraints and subjected to cruel punishments. A scandal in 1843 exposed two convict warders sexually abusing female patients, confirming the worst fears about patient vulnerability. Conditions remained harsh for decades. In 1850, a Medical Board inquiry blamed the asylum’s neglect for the unexplained deaths of two patients. Even as late as the 1950s, stories persisted of brutal treatments: one newspaper recounted a depressed woman whose head was “left burnt” from excessive electroshock therapy, and who had to be strapped into a straightjacket at night in a “refractory block”. Such reports underscore how, behind its sandstone walls, Gladesville often failed its mission of care, slipping into the very cruelty it was meant to replace. Life inside Gladesville could be nightmarish for staff as well. Over the years several attendants were killed by patients – one kicked to death in 1884, another fatally bludgeoned with a broom. These incidents hint at the volatility and desperation within. Yet perhaps the most haunting legacy is the fate of those who died there. Mental illness was so stigmatized that families often refused to claim the bodies of deceased patients. The result? Over 1,200 men and women were buried on the hospital grounds in mass, unmarked graves. Today a quiet cemetery at Gladesville holds 1,228 forgotten souls, of whom about 300 remain completely anonymous. A NSW Mental Health Commission memorial notes that well over a thousand patients lie there, reminders of an era when asylum inmates simply vanished from public memory. Physically, Gladesville grew into a vast complex of sandstone wards, villas, tunnels and cottages over its 155-year operation. By the late 19th century it had acquired neighboring estates (including a mansion called The Priory in 1888) to expand its facility. Multiple architects (James Barnet, etc.) added buildings, and the campus became almost a self-contained village on 25 hectares. Some structures, like the elegant Superintendent’s Residence (built 1878) and the gatehouse, reflected optimism and order; others, like the so-called “refractory wards” or a hidden underground morgue (the “Old Coolroom”), spoke to the asylum’s darker functions. The asylum even had tunnels and a riverside dock – through which supplies and possibly patients’ coffins quietly came and went. Officially renamed Gladesville Mental Hospital in 1915, the institution persisted well into the 20th century. It wasn’t until 1993 that Gladesville was finally closed and its remaining patients transferred to a modern facility at Macquarie Hospital, North Ryde. By 1997, these historic grounds fell silent. Local Hauntings & Sightings For decades since its closure, Gladesville’s deserted asylum buildings have attracted ghost stories like moths to a flame. With 1,228 unmarked graves beneath the soil and countless tales of pain, it’s perhaps no surprise that locals insist “their ghosts wander the asylum grounds”. By day, the old sandstone buildings stand calm and ivy-covered; but by night, many swear the atmosphere changes – cold spots form in warm rooms, disembodied whispers and wails drift through the former wards. Anne takes up the narrative here, sharing some of the eeriest accounts from locals and urban explorers who’ve dared to enter the “Bedlam” of Gladesville after dark. One chilling personal account comes from a painter who worked on-site as a teenager. In the 1980s, this tradesman was repainting an empty ward when something happened that he still can’t explain. He recalls that “while I was painting a window frame in an old ward, my paintbrush flew out of my hand and across the room,” then hung suspended in mid-air for a few seconds before slowly drifting back towards him. “To this day I have no idea what happened,” he says, but the incident left him shaken – a phantom prankster in broad daylight. He quit that job soon after (though he jokingly blames the tedium of painting rather than the ghost!). Still, stories like his have spread through the local community, strengthening the belief that unseen forces linger in Ward 17 and beyond. Other visitors have felt an oppressive presence in certain buildings. A Sydney local who sneaked into an old cottage on the hospital grounds described an overwhelming urge to “immediately leave the room, as if [being] pushed out” by someone unseen. The moment they crossed the threshold, fear gripped them – an inexplicable panic until they fled outside, where the feeling vanishedreddit.com. Such episodes often get dismissed by skeptics as nerves or the power of suggestion; but those who experienced them swear something unearthly was in there with them. Some of Gladesville’s ghost lore comes with photographic “evidence.” In 2011, photographer Yvette Worboys exhibited a series of artful images of the hospital’s decaying interiors. In one shot of a white brick wall draped in vines, several psychic mediums claimed they could discern a shadowy figure standing by an empty doorway. There is no literal figure visible – just an interplay of light and ivy – yet the psychics were certain a spirit was captured lurking “to the left of the doorway,”. Whether or not one believes that, the photo (titled “Ghosts”) certainly feels ominous, as if the building itself is embodying its lost patients. The so-called “vine-covered doorway” from that image has since become an infamous target for ghost-hunters. Modern-day paranormal enthusiasts scour the sprawling grounds trying to find this doorway – reputed to be a hotspot of activity – hoping to glimpse the same spectral silhouette. A group of teens recently documented their late-night ghost hunt at Gladesville, and their experience was straight out of a horror film. Using tips from online forums, they located the legendary vine-covered doorway near the river’s edge around 3 AM. As soon as they approached, they reported, “the atmosphere got colder, and I felt uneasy”reddit.com. One friend bravely stood in front of the door to take a selfie; another snapped a quick photo of the vines. But, in an instant, their technology went haywire. The friend’s phone “went pitch black and powered off” immediately after taking the photoreddit.com – despite having plenty of battery. Panicking, the group recalled a similar story of a livestreamer’s camera dying in the asylum’s basement. As they debated what to do, another member pulled out his phone to document the scene – and “as soon as he opened the camera, the app froze and the shutter stopped working." Two devices malfunctioning at the exact same creepy spot was enough for the teens. “We rushed out of the site…,” one wrote. “That night, we experienced something paranormal, and NO ONE can convince me otherwise” Battery drainage and electronics failing are classic signs ghost-hunters cite for a spirit drawing energy. Sceptics might counter that old buildings can interfere with signals or that it’s coincidence – but to those kids, it felt like Gladesville’s ghosts did not want to be photographed. Perhaps the most vivid ghost story from Gladesville comes from a security guard’s encounter in 1990. Stephen M., a former army man, was assigned to guard a construction site on the hospital grounds over five long nights. Alone in the skeletal shell of a two-story sandstone building, he quickly realized the site was adjacent to the still-operational jail-like wards (“bunkers”) that housed criminally insane patients at night. As darkness fell and a full moon rose, the guard heard a chorus of inhuman howling erupting from those distant bunkers – “they started to howl and moan like tortured animals”, he recounted, a sound that chilled him to the bone. Through the windy night, he felt “constant feeling of being watched” and experienced sudden cold chills in the blacked-out buildingcastleofspirits.com. For hours nothing concrete happened, until just before dawn. Wandering with only a failing flashlight, Stephen peered through the window of a small detached tool-shed on the property. There, “my heart almost stopped”, he said: sitting inside was a young man with shaggy blonde hair, head hung down – clearly visible and solidcastleofspirits.com. Fearing an escaped patient, the guard shouted no response. Then the figure looked up, locking eyes with Stephen – “his eyes looked inhuman; his face contorted as if in pain” The silent figure did not move toward him, just kept staring. That was enough – Stephen fled without checking the shed again. He reported for duty elsewhere and never returned to Gladesville at night. What’s fascinating is that hospital records mention no escaped inmate that night. Who, then, was the mystery blond man? To this day Stephen is convinced he saw a ghost – perhaps the spirit of a patient who died on the grounds, lingering in the only place he ever knew. Beyond these individual accounts, Gladesville has spawned the usual pantheon of urban-legendary spooks: “The Lady in White” drifting near old Ward 8 (some say a nurse who committed suicide); children’s giggles heard by trespassers near the derelict infirmary (maybe echoes of the many child patients treated in early years); and strange “lights flickering” in the empty chapel at night. Security patrols and curious explorers have reported lights in buildings long since cut off from electricity, which they jokingly attribute to ghostly residents “keeping the lights on.” One Reddit user mused that the whole property “is really haunting… the sign out front is worth a read” and that even in daylight the site gave them the creeps Yet interestingly, not everyone experiences something. One former tenant of a nearby house noted, “We rented [the allegedly haunted] house from 2012–2015 and the ghosts obviously accepted us because we never had anything happen”, suggesting the spirits may choose whom to bother. Whether or not such things truly occur, the legends of Gladesville have taken on a life of their own: an asylum as haunted as any castle or gaol, where the “ghosts of those thrown in unmarked dirt remain to recall the times of pain”.