© BRGHS 2010

F Wing

 

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Tripod the Paranormal Para-Pet

It was not uncommon for cats to live in the prison grounds, as they were useful for controlling rodents. During the 1970s one particularly distinctive black-and-white cat named Tripod found a home in the F Wing of No.2 Division. The name came from the fact that the cat had three legs. It became well known to officers and inmates before its death in the the mid-1970s. Years later, during a night tour of the prison museum circa 2000, one visitor was listening intently to the ex-officer guide when something brushed against her leg. She looked down and saw a cat walking away. At the end of the tour she asked the guide about the animal, but he was unaware of any cats in the prison. When she described it to him as being black-and-white and having three legs, he instantly recognised it as being Tripod, a cat he knew during his time as an officer. After telling the visitor this, the story of the ghost cat was born. Another 3-legged black-and-white cat (not Tripod)				Skeptic's Eye
				There are other tales of 'ghost' cats and dogs around, but interestingly no other animals - no phantom rats, fish, elephants, lizards or budgies. This is a massive inconsistency in the whole 'ghost animal' concept, although many pet owners would no doubt argue that their loved ones do indeed have a 'soul'. This sighting could simply have been another cat with similar features, although no such animal was seen around the museum again. A more reasonable explanation is that the description of the cat in the dark was mistaken. Several wild cats did live in the vicinity, including black-and-white ones, a couple of which settled into life at the museum and became very tame and friendly, eventually becoming house pets.

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Ernest Austin - man or monster?

And apparently this is just what he did. In later years prisoners would see a face appear outside their cell door, and when they looked into his eyes they somehow knew it was Austin and that that he had made a deal with Satan to deliver their souls in exchange for his own. Having locked eyes with the prisoner, the ghost of Ernest Austin would then come through the door and try to strangle them, driving some to madness… or so the story goes.

The historical record actually tells a very different version of events. Far from being proud of his crime, Austin had tried to hang himself in the police watch-house, and had appeared resigned during his trial and imprisonment. His execution took place in front of several reporters and officials, and although there were some minor discrepancies in their reports on the event, they all told a very different story to the one above. His last words, no doubt under the influence of morphine, were reported in the Brisbane Courier as:

"I ask you all to forgive me. I ask the people of Samford to forgive me. I ask my mother to forgive me. May you all live long and die happy. God save the King! God save the King! God be with you all! Send a wire to my mother and tell her I died happy, won’t you. Yes tell her I died happy with no fear. Goodbye all! Goodbye all!"
(Brisbane Courier, 23 September 1913)

A similar account appeared in the Truth newspaper, this one reporting that “God save the King” were his actual last words. Did they lie? It could be claimed that this version of events was just part an official cover-up of the more-disturbing events on the gallows, as the authorities were trying to maintain public support for hanging and did not want the awful truth of what Austin had really said getting out. However, the Courier and the Truth took opposing stands on capital punishment, so why write the same story? Surely it would have suited the anti-hanging propogandists at the Truth to print a story with Austin laughing at his executioners, showing the failure of the death sentence to impress any sense of repentance upon him.

The angle they instead took was to to portray Austin as a 'feeble-minded degenerate', someone with a 'mental deficiency' who was raised in a home for neglected children and lived an institutionalised life that made a monster of him. The headline proclaimed 'THE STATE SLAYS ITS OWN CREATION'. Blame for the crime was to be shared with the state, his Frankenstinian creators. In later years, Austin was to be re-created again, this time as a supernatural demon.

It is interesting that Austin is now said to haunt No.2 Division. Like all the other prisoners executed at Boggo Road, Austin was actually hanged in the original No.1 Division, which was demolished to make way for a newer No.1 Division in the early 1970s. The newer No.1 Division prison was demolished in the 1990s.

Skeptic's Eye

The ‘evil Austin’ ghost story, spreading like an urban myth on the internet, is contradicted by the historical record. This is clearly nothing more than prison folklore, passed down among officers and inmates. Folklore, however, can be a very adaptable thing, which is shown by the story being switched from one building to another when the original A wing was demolished. The transformation of Austin from a vicious but all-too-human murderer into a (literally) satanic monster is an injustice to historical enquiry, and while 'evil’ ghosts may be scarier, this ridiculous prisoners' tale needs to be busted.

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Chinese Whispers

It is interesting to look at the concept of ‘ghosts’ from another perspective, as we too often think about them only in the 'western' scheme of things. In traditional Chinese cultures there would be no debate as to whether or not a site like Boggo Road is haunted – it clearly would be. The nature of the way in which Chinese people died at the prison would have serious spiritual ramifications according to their traditional belief systems.
Hungry Ghosts
In her 2005 book The Hungry Ghosts of Boggo Road, Leonie Gane explains the concept of ghosts from a traditional Chinese perspective. According to this worldview there are several different categories of ghosts, and the three Chinese prisoners executed at Boggo Road would fall into the category of ‘hungry ghosts’, having died a violent death: "In Chinese thought, the ghosts of people who have met death by drowning, have died a violent death in an accident, by suicide or by murder, or have not been given a proper burial will return to haunt the scene of their death, wreaking havoc and seeking revenge. If a wandering ghost manages to seize a ‘substitute soul’ to take its place in the other world it may be reincarnated in another form." (Hungry Ghosts, p. 24) She goes on to explain that the Chinese spectres of Boggo Road would be 'hungry ghosts', a category in its own right with which Chinese people from all walks of life are well-acquainted. They are extremely malevolent and are the vectors of bad luck, causing accidents, insanity, illness, and even death. "Hungry ghosts are, as their name implies, starved to the point of malnutrition. They are shaped like teardrops and have bloated stomachs, necks so thin that food cannot pass through their throats and contracted mouths no bigger than the eye of a needle. Food in any case turns to fire as soon as it touches their lips. They do not cast a shadow, can pass through walls and can skim across water without spreading a ripple." (p. 26)
Tim Tie
Chinese cook Tim Tie was executed at Boggo Road in 1886. He had been found guilty of shooting Jimmy Ah Fook to death in the small town of Dulvadilla, west of Brisbane, and was sentenced to hang. He seemed calm as he awaited death at the prison, and according to a prison record sheet he was confident that he would be able to return after death to seek revenge on those who had testified against him at the trial. His police description sheet describes his mindset at this time:
"While under sentence of death prisoner appeared callous. At first was understood to admit the crime of which he was convicted – vis the murder of Jimmy Ah Fook at Roma, subsequently denied it in a statement forwarded to His Excellency the Governor  - Adhered to his denial up to day of his death – Was apparently buoyed up with the belief that he would be able to return after death & wreak his vengeance on those who had given evidence against him. – After being pinioned he asked for a cigarette which was given him – When informed that the moment had arrived for execution he quietly threw it down, walked onto the scaffold – Death was instantaneous."       There is an interesting story, first told by constable Michael O'Sullivan, about the aftermath of the attack on Jimmy Ah Fook. He did not die immediately, but was put on a train so that he could be taken to the doctor in Roma. He died on the way, in the company of and at the moment of his death the lamp in the compartment went out. Four new ones were tried, and each of them went out immediately after being lit. Finally, a resilient ‘bull’s-eye lamp’ was lit, but it too failed. The guards on the train were terrified, believing a ‘Chinese devil’ was on the train. All the lamps were working perfectly the next day. However, Gane has demonstrated that a number of inconsistencies in O'Sullivan's account make his story less than reliable (Hungry Ghosts, pp. 38-40). The other Chinese men executed at Boggo Road were Wong Tong (1886) and Look Kow (1906).

	Skeptic's Eye
	While the above stories would be 'laughed out of court' by western skeptics, the concept of a multicultural pantheon of Boggo Road spirits is a fascinating one, and it is perhaps inappropriate to subject beliefs from Indigenous and non-'western' traditional cultures to western scientific judgement.

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© BRGHS 2010

The Warder's Quarters

Warders quarters, No.2 Division, 1903 (JOL #33844)

From 1903-1921 the rooms on the western side of the main gatehouse in No.2 Division served as the Warder's Quarters. The living room and kitchen were downstairs, and the bedrooms upstairs. Several strange events have occurred in that building in recent years that are difficult to explain. During the 1990s/2000s, the rooms were used as offices by an Aboriginal women's legal service. One of the women who worked there said that sometimes, when she walked up the stairs to the upper floor, she felt a sudden sharp pain in her arm, severe enough on occasion to reduce her to tears. This did not happen to her anywhere else, just on that set of stairs. At the top of stairs is a small toilet room, and another woman claimed that she went in there once and when she closed the door behind her, she saw the vague 'figure' of a woman standing there. On another occasion, when the same woman locked up and left the empty building after work one day, she looked back and saw a woman looking down from one of the upstairs windows.			Skeptic's Eye
			The people involved in these incidents were legal professionals with a skeptical, sometimes cynical, view of the prison ghost stories that were in circulation. The credibility of the witnesses means these stories should be treated with an element of respect. It is possible, however, that the stories could have just been a bit of fun, much like the tales spread around by prisoners and officers.

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Voices in the Night It has been claimed that the sound of female voices singing was heard during a night tour at Boggo Road. The sad, out-of-tune song lasted for a minute or so before it stopped. This incident was then linked to the female prisoners of the 1900s being made to sing at around 8 pm every night. A similar phenomenon was alleged to have occured when the sound of an old fashioned radio was heard during a tour, with a male voice reading the news, before fading out into static. The cells used to have built in radio's, but for security reasons it is doubtful that the inmates were allowed to listen to the news.			Skeptic's Eye		The big questions here are; If these sounds were an ‘impression’ left in the place years ago, why have no other sounds been heard? Why no 1980s sounds? Why does this not happen in other places where people have died, such as hospitals? Why don’t we hear blasts of old TV or radio shows in our homes? Why no ethereal concert bands or choirs in places where music used to be performed more often?
			Reasonable doubt? Events such as this could easily be staged using audio technology. This is not to say that they were, just that they could be. We know of nobody else with any Boggo Road experience who ever heard such sounds.

 

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The Gallows Beam

The gallows beam was installed at the gaol in 1883, inside what was later to become known as A Wing. It was first used in 1884 and by the time of the final execution in 1913 had been used to hang 39 prisoners.The beam was removed from the prison after World War II by sawing it out, leaving the end sections embedded in the interior walls on either side of the cellblock. The central part of the beam, with its three metal rings, became a part of the collection of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland. After being displayed in Newstead House and the Commissariat Store, two historical sites in Brisbane, the beam temporarily returned to the Boggo Road Gaol In May 2005 as part of a display curated by the BRGHS.

The end sections of the beam were ‘souvenired’ when the old cellblock was demolished in the 1970s. According to a former officer, a part of one of these macabre artefacts was subsequently made into an ashtray! Another part ended up in the home of an officer, who later recounted a story about a strange incident involving the piece. His adult daughter was recovering from a serious injuries sustained in a car accident and was staying at her parents house, in the same room where the beam section was stored. He said that she was in sleeping in bed one night when she woke up and saw a hazy figure standing in the doorway. The figure subsequently disappeared, and when she later described it to her father, the description of the clothing matched that of a 19th-century prisoner. Another officer claimed that he took one of the gallows beam end sections home and was using this rare artefact to wedge open a window. This was until it ‘flew’ out one day and landed in his garden, after which his wife made him throw it away!

Skeptic's Eye

Haunted bits of wood? Hints of animism and relic superstition. here. It is telling that no strange happenings have been reported regarding the main section of the beam, stored for so long in other 'spooky' 19th-century buildings. You wooden believe it.

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© BRGHS 2010

Haunted Hangman Hudson

In 1905 the Queensland executioner Samuel Hudson resigned from the position that he had held for five years. The Truth, a popular Brisbane tabloid, interviewed him and presented a portrayal of a man hated by the public for work he did, who could not walk down the street without being abused, who had lost all his friends, whose blacksmithing business had gone bust, and who could not sleep night because he was haunted by the spirits of those he had hanged: "Though he hides from the sight of his fellow men, he cannot escape from the uncanny visions, the abominable apparations which ever and anon haunt him. One moment the black, agonising form of a Kanaka's face will conjure up in his diseased imagination, followed with lightning-like rapidity by a fellow white-man's contemptuous stare, until the whole 16* of his victims, armed with the dreaded noose, manacles, and tools of his degrading profession, would seem to to be crowding in upon him, hissing their curses in his livid face." (Truth, 19 November 1905) So bad was his situation that after his resignation Hudson reportedly emigrated to San Francisco with his family and became a farmer.

Skeptic's Eye

Any historian worth their salt would tell you straight away that the reporters at the Truth were rather prone to stretching a simple 500-word article into 3,000 words of prose and drama of Shakespearian proportions. If Hudson had been publicly hated, then the Truth had more than played its part, having conducted a campaign of vilification against him unlike anything endured by any other Queensland executioner. Ever since the hanging of Truth favourite Patrick Kenniff in 1903, Hudson had been variously described in its pages as 'the horrible hairy-handed Hudson, the human butcher', 'degenerate', 'man-killer', and a 'horrid monster'.

As for the haunting described above, this was obviously no more than a flowery attempt to describe what the reporter imagined to be the troubled conscience of the hangman. After all, the same writer also imagined that whenever Hudson walked to the gallows with a condemned prisoner, "a hundred caged hands are stretched forth in impotent desire to tear his hated body into shreds. Ferocious eyes, set in livid faces, devour him". All in all, a rather severe case of Purple Prose and not to be taken seriously. * Hudson actually executed ten people, and not sixteen as stated in the article.

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Ol' Red Eyes is Back The following quote was part of a promotional piece about paranormal tours at the prison, and was published in a local newspaper circa 2004: "Those who have had the experience swear there are spooks in the place, chief among them The Warder, a black spectre with red eyes that peers down on intruders from a top floor cell. There’s also a lot of chain rattling and things that go bump in the night." Tales of a supernatural ‘warder’ have circulated the prison for decades, and have changed over time. What may have started out as a 1900s uniform became a 1960s uniform in later versions. It was in July 1966 that trade instructor Bernard Ralph became the only officer ever killed at Boggo Road when he was attacked by a prisoner wielding an iron bar in the prison workshops.			Skeptic's Eye		The 'red eyes' piece is only included here as an example of the paranormal industry at work. The creation of a cast of marketable characters is standard practice, and this one has been given a nickname of its own, here becoming ‘The Warder’.
			The shifting nature of the warder story shows how folklore can change over generations, adapting to new circumstances and incorporating new features. The stories involving 'Bernie' are vague and unconvincing. Feeling a 'presence' or hearing the jangling of keys is hardly evidence of the supernatural. There is much more evidence to show that practical jokers were at work.
It was not long before ‘Bernie’ was incorporated into the old warder story, and some officers claimed that they occasionally ‘felt’ Bernie’s ‘presence’ when they were in the workshops where he died. Was this the result of a fertile imagination or an actual paranormal experience? There is another Bernie story in which officers on night duty on the ‘Track’ near to where the workshops used to be claimed that they would sometimes hear the jangling of a set of keys behind them. When they looked, there was no-one else around. It has since turned out that ‘key-jangling’ was a favourite officer prank.

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Tales from the Scrypt

Mythmaking and haunted reputations

As many authors and Hollywood types have long known, it is easy to get people’s interest (and money) with stories of the supernatural. The attraction of the paranormal is understandable. Human beings are naturally fascinated by the unknown, especially if it offers answers to the meaning of life and death. Paranormal tours have been conducted in and around most old Australian prison sites, including Maitland Gaol, Old Melbourne Gaol, Adelaide Gaol Museum, St. Helana Island, Port Arthur, Fremantle Prison, and Boggo Road, Brisbane. Indeed, there are many such tours operating, with varying degrees of success and theatricality, in old and abandoned locations all around the world, including cemeteries, asylums, underground catacombs, historical homes, hotels, castles and mansions, to name a few examples.

Old and disused places like Boggo Road have their own inherently ‘spooky’ atmosphere. Merely being inside a dark cemetery or old building at night is enough to scare some people, and visitors to such places will generally end up scaring themselves as their own imaginations work overtime recalling camp-fire stories and movie scenes. It is easy to imagine specters lurking in the dark corners, especially if you are told they are there - and people are told that they are there. Any paranormal tour business is entirely dependant on the place of business being publicly perceived as a haunted site. If people did not think that the place was actually haunted, then the business would struggle.

Of course, Boggo Road gaol has been around for long enough for stories to develop long before it closed. When the No.2 Division became a historical site back in 1992, one newspaper carried the story with a passing reference to old ghost stories at the prison. Other articles since then have used headlines that played on a tired theme, such as 'LAST HANGING HAUNTS BOGGO ROAD'.

As with any other subject, there are many websites on the Internet devoted to ghostly happenings, and as with any other subject, many of these websites are unreliable. Ghost stories are picked up on one website and cut-and-pasted straight onto another. This duplication results in a story being on many diffferent websites and giving the false impression that it must be true. People will then proclaim that a particular place is one of the most haunted places in Australia, or even the world, although a hundred different sites will give you a hundred different top tens. It all depends who has been 'voting' or putting the stats together. Even ignoring the fact that there is no hard evidence that ghosts exist in the first place, there are a few big problems with such 'most haunted' poll claims:

1. Is there a quality control check on the stories. Which stories are clearly nonsensical, and which ones are harder to explain away?

2. Who votes or complies the figures? Is the system is open to manipulation by pranksters, local bias, or businesses?

3. The sheer variety of different lists and results allows for some very selective reading of the polls.

Of course, the mere presence of a paranormal tour can imply that a site is haunted. After all, would these tours be there if it wasn't haunted? However, these tours, much like the internet, can be responsible for perpetuating stories that are quite clearly untrue.

The routine

Various paranormal tours employ a range of techniques to ensure that a suitably ‘spooky’ atmosphere is generated during the tour. All tour companies are different, and the techniques described here refer to the industry in general and no specific place or company. First of all, the lights are usually switched off, and the customers carry torches or lanterns. Secondly, a sense of expectation is created. In the pre-tour chit-chat it may be announced that people on other tours have seen apparitions, felt someone tapping on their shoulder, broke down in tears for no reason, etc. The customers may also be told by the tour guide that they need to be ‘receptive’, or aware that the paranormal may manifest itself through smell, sound, sight and sensation. This can be a specific warning, and the customers may be told that they may ‘feel’ something before entering a certain room or building. If a room has any cold areas (due to drafts, concrete structures, the presence of water, etc.), customers are sometimes reminded that they may feel ‘cold’. They may also be assured that although they may not be seeing anything, they are probably being watched through a dark window by a matron/ superintendent/ authority-type figure. Some tours may employ props to provide a cheap fright, including hidden ‘extras’ moving about the periphery of the tour or making noises. Other props can be much simpler. One of the darkened cells at Boggo Road was found to contain a crude cardboard cut-out of a man with a rope around his neck, complete with dripping blood (paint). It is not known who placed it there, but this cheap prop seemed to be designed to provide a cheap chill in a darkened cellblock. In such an artificially-charged atmosphere, any innocent shadow or creak can be interpreted by some as supernatural activity. Some ghosts tour guides are in ‘character’ for a themed tour, and sometimes they are simply old Joe from the daytime history tours, this time with a torch in his hand and telling different stories (or the same stories in a different way) for the nighttime audience. Other guides are presented as being ‘psychic’ and in touch with the spirits dwelling in the haunted location. It is possible for the more unscrupulous psychic guides to manipulate visitors by claiming to see or feel sensations that the tour group cannot. They can also blame the non-appearance of ghosts upon the bad vibes given off by any skeptics or non-believers in the group.   The ghost stories themselves are often shrouded in ambiguity, beginning with lines such as ‘old-timers claim’, ‘some have said’, ‘legend has it’, ‘a visitor on one of our tours’, or ‘someone told me’. Upon enquiry, these sources may be untraceable, dead or unwilling to be identified. There may be a cop-out claim that these stories are worth repeating because the people who originally had the alleged paranormal experiences believed they were real. “I believe that they believe” is the message here, a disingenuous approach that allows for the retelling of all ghost stories without them having to be upheld as necessarily being true. Unfortunately, some people will believe every story and repeat them later, and so those stories become part of the overall mythmaking process.

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© BRGHS 2010

What is a ghost?
"I had a dull heavy pain in my head; and for a time I placed my hands over my eyes to keep out the darkness. When I removed them I had a strange optical delusion. Far away over me in the deep darkness – thousands and thousands of miles it seemed – there was a beautiful luminous ball, of a pale yellow colour. It seemed to slowly descend. It appeared to take hours in coming down, and reminded me of the angels in Gustave Dorés picture, which are hovering over the bodies of the Christian martyrs in the Coliseum. This light was very beautiful, but, strange to say, did not get larger, although at last it seemed close to me. Now, religious or superstitious people might say this was an angel or a devil; the spiritualist that it was a manifestation; but I, with ordinary scientific knowledge, knew that it was a mere delusion. “When I close my eyes again it will go,” I said. I did so, and it was gone." (Julian Thomas, The Vagabond Papers)
	Julian Thomas (State Library Victoria, H29809)
The above words were written by Julian Thomas, a reporter working under the pseudonym ‘the Vagabond’, about the time when he voluntarily spent six hours in a ‘dark cell’ at the old Brisbane Prison on Petrie Terrace in 1877. This small experience illustrates a great truth in ‘the unknown’: that people experience things differently, and they explain them differently. Theories seeking to explain allegedly paranormal phenomena are many, but can be grouped into two basic groups: those that attempt to explain the phenomena in purely normal (natural) terms, and those that require a psychic element. A third explanation is simple fraud. However, if there are different types of ‘hauntings’, with different causes and mechanisms, no single theory may be able to account adequately for all cases.
PSYCHIC THEORIES
In short, psychic theories of paranormal activity fall into three schools of thought: the spiritual, the para-psychological, and the mechanical. None of these explanations, however, have been positively tested with any degree of scientific credibility. Spiritual There are three approaches in the traditional spiritualist explanation of ghosts. In the first, they are the spirits of dead humans that resemble their previous earthly forms, including clothing, and often reenact things that they did in the past. Such ghosts are bound to a particular location as they have failed to make the transition to an ‘afterlife’. This is similar to the second approach, in which they are still thought of as spirits of dead humans but they have the appearance of clouds of light or vaporous columns. According to the third approach they are not spirits of dead humans, but are instead used as vehicles for angels or demons who try to either help or harm living people. Spiritual concepts pervade many small-scale and Indigenous cultures around the world and are an essential part of traditional belief systems, where the application of western-based scientific theories and investigations may be deemed inappropriate.  Although the concept of life after death is central to many major religions, the Western idea of ghosts has become increasingly removed from religion and more the stuff of popular culture and commercial exploitation. Para-psychological Ghosts are sometimes explained as being a product of the not-yet-understood human mind. In this way, telepathic powers may account for such experiences as the appearance of a friend or relative at the time of their death. Poltergeist-type activities may likewise be the result of uncontrolled psychokinetic abilities, in which the presence of a person with these unrecognized abilities triggers a range of visible phenomena such as breaking cutlery, opening of drawers, throwing of stones, jiggling of latches, and banging of doors. It has also been claimed that ‘out-of-body experiences’ may sometimes be visible to other people. Mechanical According to the mechanical explanation, ghosts are merely ‘traces’, or ‘projected images’, recorded in an etheric medium and visible to certain people in certain situations. This is somewhat like watching a video-recording of past events. While this would help explain how some apparitions act in a rather stereotyped way or ‘disappear into thin air’, it does not cover those situations where an apparition is said to interact intelligently with those who encounter it. This theory might be used to explain some auditory cases of haunting. If someone had walked through a room and produced the sound of footsteps at some point in the past, and if some sort of trace of that event had been made, later occupants of the building might be able to hear the sound of footsteps. Similarly, the discredited ‘psychic expert’ Harry Price suggested that mental images may have an ability to persist independently of the originating mind, having a ‘telepathic charge’. In certain circumstances, an image or group of images which originated in the mind of someone who lived in a certain place might become localized there. If someone with the appropriate ‘telepathic affinity’ enters that place, haunting-type phenomena might be experienced. This, of course, is a highly speculative theory with absolutely no evidence to back it up. It also seems rather hit-and-miss, given the constant production of sounds and ‘mental images’. It does not explain phenomena with physical effects, nor why relatively new buildings have less ‘hauntings’ associated with them, and old ones only have very specific ‘traces’.
'NATURAL' THEORIES
Although much works remains to be done in the field, research has suggested that people consistently report unusual experiences in ‘haunted’ areas because of environmental factors, which may vary from place to place. These factors include variation in magnetic fields, size of location and lighting levels. The findings suggest that alleged hauntings are more likely to be the result of people responding to ‘normal’ environmental factors rather than being caused by ‘ghostly’ activity. A useful resource on this research is Richard Wiseman’s website at www.richardwiseman.com/research/ghosts.html. Magnetism Researchers have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes, and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Testing for this is controversial, and involves: examining the relationship between the onset of unusual phenomena in ‘haunted’ locations and increases in global geomagnetic activity testing the location of ‘hauntings’ for certain types of magnetic activity, stimulating the temporal lobe with transcerebral magnetic fields in a laboratory setting. These tests have elicited subjective experiences that strongly parallel phenomena associated with hauntings. Tests have shown supposedly ‘haunted’ areas to have high variance in local magnetic fields, as opposed to low in variation in ‘non-haunted’ locations. Controlled laboratory studies have showed subtle psychological and physiological reactions to a changing magnetic field, reactions that may lead to that person making a ‘paranormal’ attribution if they occurred in a place associated with paranormal events. It has also been shown that experimentally applied weak magnetic fields can lead to compelling experiences such as a sensed presence. This suggests that magnetic fields, along with a range of other variables, together may account for some haunting experiences. Infrasound Infrasound is very low frequency sound waves below about 20Hz. Researchers have suggested that this might be present in some supposedly haunted locations and be responsible for people feeling ‘uneasy’. This happened to a researcher who was sitting alone in a laboratory one night when he started to feel uncomfortable and got the feeling that he was being watched. He saw a figure emerging in his peripheral vision, moving as a person would do. When he turned to face it, the figure disappeared. The following day the researcher returned to the lab to do some work on a foil blade, which he held in a vice. After leaving and returning to the lab, he saw the free end of the blade frantically vibrating. After investigating the matter in a scientific manner, he inferred that a low frequency standing wave of about 19Hz was responsible for displacing air particles in the centre of the room – the same spot where he ‘saw’ the figure. The source of the infrasound was a new extraction fan in a room at the end of the lab. Effects of infrasound include the vibration of the eyeballs, which would cause a ‘smearing’ of vision, and hyperventilation (an effect of whole body vibration) which could explain the researcher’s feelings of fear and panic when he saw the figure. Psychological factors Some researchers believe that many experiences reported in ‘haunted’ places are psychologically-based. For example, people with prior knowledge about parts of a building supposed to be ‘haunted’, and the anxiety they feel when entering those places may result in mild psychosomatic and hallucinatory phenomena. Suggestibility and the holding of certain beliefs might also influence individuals to interpret mundane phenomena as being paranormal. Unseen mice disturbing a jar, draughts of wind closing windows and the nocturnal creaking of timber can all be misinterpreted as having paranormal causes. In some cases, the experience might be explained by mental illness, such as schizophrenia (although the presence of a mental disorder does not exclude the possibility that paranormal phenomena could be occurring). Haunt experiences can and do occur in group settings and it is possible that group contagion effects may increase reports of haunt experiences Visual Alternatively, certain areas may simply 'look' haunted (i.e., be especially dark or creepy looking) and cause people to feel anxious. The visual features of old buildings might match the commonly-held stereotype of a typically ‘haunted’, and bring on mild psychosomatic and hallucinatory experiences. These features may also cause unusual physical and psychological experiences. For example, people walking from a well-lit space into a much darker space may experience types of phenomena related with mild sensory deprivation. Similarly, particularly large or high spaces may cause a sense of vulnerability and unease. Combined with the other environmental stimuli described above, such spaces could play a part in the reporting of paranormal activity.
FRAUD
A final and often overlooked explanation is simple fraud. Poorly-conducted investigations and shoddy reporting can produce misleading reports, but deliberate exaggeration or outright fraud has always been a factor in some places developing a haunted reputation. One of the great examples of this practice was the famous British ‘ghost hunter’ Harry Price, whose investigations into the supposedly haunted Borley Rectory in the 1930s were later discredited. Price himself was exposed as cynical confidence trickster and salesman who made a living by posing as an expert in psychic matters. Unfortunately, the vagaries of the paranormal still make it a fertile ground for frauds and fakes to make an easy living off the gullible.

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© BRGHS 2010

The Jokers

 

 

This page is currently under construction while we finalise our research of the many practical jokes that Boggo Road officers played on each other during long, quiet night shifts.

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© BRGHS 2010

© BRGHS 2010