What happened
The settlement on the Tasman Peninsula was founded in September 1830 as a timber camp, and from 1833 to 1877 it received convicts deemed the most hardened – those who had reoffended after arriving in Australia. Discipline was severe. In the Separate Prison, built in 1853 on Jeremy Bentham's ideas, prisoners wore hoods, were forbidden to speak and even sat in individual stalls in the chapel. On Point Puer boys were imprisoned, some as young as nine. The dead were buried on the nearby Isle of the Dead. For decades guides have led lantern-lit ghost tours here, and the list of stories is long: lights and groans in the abandoned parsonage, said to be the most haunted building, figures in the windows of the doctor's house, footsteps in the Separate Prison and a weight on the chest felt by visitors. Port Arthur, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is also a place of remembrance for the victims of the 1996 tragedy.
Witnesses
Guides and night-tour participants, site staff and residents of the former settlement.
Explanations and hypotheses
The history of the penal colony is well documented; the ghost stories are part of local folklore and tourism and have no independent confirmation. Darkness, ruins, sea damp and the knowledge of thousands of convicts' suffering act powerfully on visitors' imaginations. Historians and archaeologists working at Port Arthur stress that the real history – the prisoners' daily lives, their labour and attempts at reform – is what matters most here.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Port Arthur Historic Site – Useful Facts about the Port Arthur Convict Era
- Port Arthur Historic Site – Ghost Tour
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