What happened
The bluestone building went up in the early 1860s as the gaol for the Ararat goldfields. Three men were hanged here: Andrew Vere (15 August 1870), Robert Francis Burns (25 September 1883) and Henry Morgan (6 June 1884). As the law required, they were buried within the prison walls, and their graves have never been moved. The gaol closed in 1886, and in 1887 the Lunacy Department took over the building as a high-security ward for the ‘criminally insane’, attached to the Ararat asylum (later Aradale). J Ward operated until the late 1980s, and since 1993 volunteers from the Friends of J Ward have guided visitors through it. After dark there are ghost tours and overnight ‘ghost hunts’. People tell of figures in the cells, footsteps in empty corridors, whispers in the governor's bathroom and by the gallows, and the ghosts of executed prisoners said to have been buried upright beneath the yard – marks on the walls are supposed to show where their graves lie.
Witnesses
Guides and night-tour participants at J Ward; organisers of so-called ghost hunts.
Explanations and hypotheses
The history of the gaol, its executions and the ward for offenders deemed mentally ill is well documented in the Victorian Heritage Register. The ghost stories are modern tour folklore with no independent confirmation. Grim walls, the knowledge of convicts' graves beneath the yard and the years of patients' isolation work powerfully on the imagination. Sources differ on some dates: construction is dated to 1859–1863, and the ward's closure to 1989 or 1991.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Victorian Heritage Database – J Ward (Ararat Asylum)
- Goldfields Guide – J Ward Asylum for the Criminally Insane
- Atlas Obscura – J Ward Museum
More: Wikipedia (en)