Chasing the Ghosts of Aradale Lunatic Asylum - Victoria

I have just returned from a weekend in Aradale, Victoria.
Aradale is about 2 hours drive from Melbourne and about an hour from Ballarat.
Its a small township - and very pretty.
It has a small main street, an RSL and a McDonalds.

But...more importantly, it has one thing that has drawn ghost hunters to the township for many years.

ARADALE MENTAL ASYLUM.

Aradale Asylum was an Australian psychiatric hospital, located in Ararat, a rural city in Victoria, Australia.

Now a ghost "town", Aradale was once known as the Ararat Lunatic Asylum. Aradale and its two sister asylums at Kew and Beechworth were commissioned to accommodate the growing number of "lunatics" in the colony of Victoria. Construction began in 1860 and was opened for patients in 1865. It was closed as an asylum in 1998. 
At its height, Aradale had up to 900 patients yearly and is a large complex with up to 70 interesting historic abandoned buildings.
https://www.aradale.com.au/aradale.html

I hosted a weekend with 20 other ghost hunters, mostly from NSW, from my OzGhost Tours business..
OzGhost Tours runs a major tour once a year, hosting a group of fool hardy investigators to different spooky sites in Australia.

We have been on a cruise to Melbourne in 2015 checking out different sites close to the city, last year we went to Tasmania where the highlight was Port Arthur and this year it was Aradale Mental Asylum and J Ward where we were hosted by our brother in ghost hunting, Mr William Tabone and his crew from Australian Paranormal Society (APS). A big thanks the gorgeous Kylie Long too (just an added thanks for organising our dinner night) These guys are simple the best - if you are in the Melbourne area - look them up and do a tour!!!

 If you have not experienced this site - do yourself a favour and put it at the very top of your bucket list.

The sheer size of the place is gob smacking.
Its impossible to see it all in the small amount of time you get on the site but you will experience some very distinct and diverse areas. There is so much to explore and investigate!

We were firstly introduced to the site during the day. Our well versed and totally awesome guide Nathaniel filled us in on the the gory details of numbers of patients and types of medical interventions tested at the facility.
It was pretty gruesome to hear that the female patients out numbered the men for most of the Asylum's history.
Back then you could be locked away for 'hysteria' as well as certain aliments like seizures and very treatable medical conditions.

You could even be locked up just for not speaking English as many of the local Chinese were.

During the day the vibes were already pretty testy in some of the areas we visited with people feeling presences in the Chapel and the male and female wings of the old Asylum. We also got a look at the morgue (a favourite place for ghost hunters).

It's easy to get into the vibe of the place - it has a presence.
Little signs left by visitors like the 'DIE" pictured above just adds to it.



We came back at 7.30pm to a very different Asylum site.
The night heralds the awakening of the dead of this place.
The darkness covers up the gloom, the dust and the peeling paint and the terror the inmates must have experienced as we, in turn, experience our own terrors and are so glad we never found ourselves in such places for real.

We entered areas as a group but then we were encouraged to either investigate in small groups or stay with Bill Tabone, our host for the night, as he created some experiments for us to take part in.

In the men's ward we tried to call out to the ghosts and get them to create some flashes on the equipment set up.People were feeling touches, smelling different odours and trying to ask questions to get things happening.

We moved to the Chapel and tried to reach out with the Ouija Board (and of course, while I was recording nothing happened, but the moment I turned of the video recorder, the board was coming up with all sorts of stuff including the name Peter, who was a smoker, giving us the name of the cigarettes that he smoked - a brand I had never heard of but was told was a popular brand many years ago.)

Things heated up in the staff quarters where one of the group spotted a light coming from a room when we had all left the building.

There was no one in the building at the time - yet a light was shining out of one of the rooms - and I just happened to be taking a photo of the building at the time so caught it.

You can see the light on the top floor.
We looked later and no light could be seen.

The interesting spot for me personally,was the Forensic Ward.
We once again split up with Bill Tabone taking a big group and doing some sessions.
I went into a back room with some of the crew I had come down with from SHHHH Paranormal, another local Newcastle Paranormal group.
We started to joke around and we quickly felt the air in the room change and become quite prickly.

Soon after I was physically pushed to the floor, which felt like whoever it was had hit me in the chest - Anne (OzPara Tech) said she heard a loud thud just before it happened.
She said that she literally heard the hit and then I went down.

We all laughed, as we tend to do - and I did not feel scared at all.
I was quite overcome by the force.
It was another amazing experience of ghostly contact.
A few minutes later it happened again.
Bam!!  Another push and the group laughed at my expense.
I really didn't mind.

We moved onto a few other spots before finishing the night in the women's ward.
Here we tried some old fashioned table tipping whilst the others continued with EVP's etc.
The table tipping (old seance style) was very difficult to get going. Our table was one we had borrowed with a heavy top and four legs making it more difficult to 'tip'.
Usually the tables we use are the 3 legged variety.

We gave it a good go with all at the table feeling waves of energy, but little movement.
Slight vibrations.
People feeling overwhelmed.
People getting headaches.
Feeling agitated.

We moved to a smaller room - and new people joined the table.
Newbies giving it a go.
And just when we were about to give up (it had been about 20 minutes since we had started) we got our first massive and very strong tip.

Wow - what a feeling of elation!
Who was this?
One other woman screamed in another room.
She had seen an apparition crawling along the floor.
Meanwhile we were still focusing on  the table that was happy to just keep tilting!
The girls around it were amazed at seeing this heavy table lifting smoothly and dropping back ever so gently.

Ah - it was worth seeing the look on their faces!
Pure joy in connecting.

We were at the Asylum for 6 hours.
Hours that flew by so quickly we could not believe that it was time to leave.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Let it not be so!
We had just begun!

But it was time to leave.
We all, I believe, had a massively privileged experience that night - one we will not forget easily.

So...Go! Do it!
Add it to your bucket list of ghostly sites to investigate.
And if nothing happens - do not dispair!
Take time to understand this place.
Feel the living history of the site - imagine what life would have been like.
And be very very happy that you did not ever have to experience it yourself.