Australians, and particularly Western Australians love to quarantine things. And it's not surprising. If I had an isolated continent with thousands of species of plants and animals that can't be found anywhere else in the world, I'd want to keep it that way. Forget a banana in your carry-on and the sniffer dogs will be on you (good one Tom). Try to bring your pet to Australia? Wait 9 months. Oh, and even traveling within Australia can be tricky. Make sure you bin (throw away) all fruits and vegetables, honey, and dirt (because everyone travels with bags of dirt) when traveling into Western Australia domestically.
Perth's original quarantine station was near Fremantle, at Woodman Point. It was almost too close to Fremantle, that it as kept a secret for fear that the public would worry about the afternoon winds bringing disastorous plagues to downtown Freo.
As the first port of call for visiting ships, it was open until 1979 and saw the bubonic plague, smallpox, and the Spanish flu. Today, it is a recreation center for school groups and scouts to spend the night (yes, little children sleep there).
It's also happens to be one of the most haunted places in Perth. And psychic medium, Rebecca Millman, leads ghost tours of the peninsula with a haunting past.
The mystery started before we even got inside the grounds. We all met outside the gate, on a deserted road, in the dark, until she arrived to let us in. Once inside, she explained to us how we were unlikely to "see ghosts", as it takes a lot of energy for spirits to appear. We were more likely to feel things out of the ordinary and see things in photos we took.
The first building we went into was the old shower block where we were left to wander around in the dark with our flashlights (or should I say torches?). This was the first stop for immigrants, and you can imagine it was quite traumatic for those who had been in the concentration camps of World War II and seen the heinous murder in shower blocks like this.
We wandered through the boarding halls (which are now where the kids sleep!), armed with ghost finding tools and taking pictures to see if we saw anything of the paranormal. She also told us we could talk to the spirits if we wanted, but that was a bit too much for me.
We went into the old hospital, where we had a seance. The group of about 30 of us sat in a circle, and sang songs to "raise the vibrations". Every time we stopped, she would say, "Did you hear that?" Yes, I heard creaks, and whistles, and knocks. But isn't that what you hear in an old building? Either way, it was creepy sitting in the dark, listening into the silent for something I did or didn't want to hear, in a building where many people's dreams of coming to a new country ended in illness.
Campers also camp in the hospital. She told us the story of one scout troop that after all the children had left, they saw a little boy running in circles around the building. They called all the parents, but every one had returned home. Rebecca told us that he had lost both of his parents. Traumatic events like this can leave residual paranormal activity, where a traumatic moment is imprinted in time.
The creepiest place we went was the crematorium and morgue. It's estimated that over 200 people died at this station. If you look closely, you can see little white dots, which many people call ghost orbs. Just Google "ghost orbs" and see what the pictures look like. I'm not sure what they are. I'm sure they can be explained by reflections of dust with the flash. But they didn't show up in any of my other pictures...
The creepy dude on our tour crawled into the oven.
We didn't have any overwhelmingly other worldly experiences. And I'm not sure I believe ghosts. But it did open my mind to the possibility, if even for the night.
Do you believe in ghosts...?
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