What happened
The two-storey, late-Victorian Monte Cristo homestead was built in 1885 by the pioneer Christopher William Crawley, who made his fortune from land and trade along the new railway. After his sudden death in 1910, his widow Elizabeth Crawley almost stopped leaving the house – according to the stories, in more than twenty years she went out only a handful of times, spending her days praying in an upstairs room. A string of tragedies is linked to Monte Cristo: a maid is said to have fallen (or been pushed) from the balcony, a stable boy to have died in a stable fire, and in the caretaker's cottage the housekeeper's disabled son was reportedly kept chained for years. The Crawley family lived here until 1948, after which the house decayed. In 1963 Reg and Olive Ryan bought and restored it and began telling of apparitions: Mrs Crawley's figure at the chapel window, cold spots, lights and strange noises. The house featured in many TV programmes, and since 2025 it is no longer open to visitors.
Witnesses
The Ryan family, visitors on night tours, and the crews of “Ghost Hunters International” and “My Ghost Story.”
Explanations and hypotheses
The Crawleys' story is real, but many of the “tragedies” are known only from the current owners' accounts and local lore, and the details vary from source to source. Accidents, illness and harsh customs were commonplace on 19th-century rural Australian properties. For decades the house operated as a tourist attraction under the slogan “Australia's most haunted house,” which encouraged the legends to grow. There is no independent evidence of paranormal phenomena.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Region Riverina – Could ghost tours ever return to the famous Junee 'haunted' house? (2025)
- About Regional – Riverina's infamous 18-bedroom 'haunted' house on the market for $1.9 million
More: Wikipedia (en)