Port Arthur was settled in 1830 as a tiny town and logging outpost but was transformed into a penal colony just three years later. Isolated Port Arthur quickly became the leading destination for the worst of the worst of British convicts; often these men were violent and dangerous offenders. Many of them were sent from other prisons no longer willing to put up with them. The original penitentiary building was enormous, housing hundreds of inmates, but it was a second prison structure completed in 1853 that would set the stage for a new paradigm in convict treatment. Known as “The Model Prison”, this eighty-cell edifice would become the arena in which to usher in an entirely new kind of punitive dispensation. Gone were the ways of the abusive physical torture and beatings of inmates; that method of meting out punishment had been deemed effective at only hardening criminals further. It was replaced instead by the burgeoning concept of the “Silent Prison”. Essentially, convicts were made to sit in absolute silence in their solitary cells; their heads covered with hoods, and were not allowed to use their voices at any time except to sing hymns during the mandatory Sunday church services. Even for these religious services each prisoner was isolated inside of single occupant-only, metal box with only a small slot affording them a view of the preacher and nothing else. So extreme was the isolation of individual prisoners that the convicts ate even their meager rations of food alone in their cells. In fact, the only time at all that prisoners even saw one another was during forced labor sessions where, again, they were not allowed to speak. Any prisoners attempting to communicate with one another would undoubtedly invoke severe repercussions upon themselves. The idea inherent in this “Silent System” was that it left the convicts nearly every waking hour of their prison sentences to dwell in absolute silence and reflect upon their crimes against society. The notion behind such a practice was that rehabilitation would occur through this constant confrontation with one’s own conscience. Of course, however, with this virtual lack of any and all human contact for years upon years almost every prisoner at Port Arthur’s “Model Prison” instead just went stark, raving mad. It is said that some of these prisoners would actually murder their fellow inmates during the brief periods in which they did have contact with one another simply so that they would be put to death for this capital offense and subsequently end their earthly torment.

In addition to going completely bat shit crazy, prisoners also had to contend with the discouraging fact that there was virtually no hope of escape from the penal colony. Port Arthur rests on the Tasmanian Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by shark-infested waters. The 30-mile-wide isthmus of Eaglehawk Neck which connects Port Arthur to the Tasmanian mainland is the only way in or out by land. Also, of course, there were fences, dogs and armed guards a plenty. Even the supply ships dropping off provisions for the penal colony were required to hand over their sails and their oars until their scheduled departure time so as to avoid any chance of convicts escaping by hijacking a sea-going vessel. Despite the near impossibility of the feat, three men, led by notorious bushranger (Australian for ‘outlaw’) Martin Cash, did manage to escape during Port Arthur’s history by swimming along the Eaglehawk Neck isthmus miraculously undetected. In another bizarre and yet failed attempt at escape, a prisoner by the name of William “Billy” Hunt managed to find and slay a kangaroo after stealing away from his work party during his forced labor duties. Hunt gutted the kangaroo and donned its hide attempting to pass himself off as the animal and escape across the ‘Neck’. Unfortunately for Hunt, his disguise and act was so convincing that the guards, not much better fed than the convicts, began lining up the “kangaroo” in their rifle sights in order to supplement their dinner rations. Upon realizing he was a hair’s breath away from being shot, Hunt threw off his immensely disgusting disguise and surrendered to the quite likely disappointed guards.

Of course, death was a near constant factor at Port Arthur, inmates do seem to drop like flies at times and one does need a spot to deposit all those decaying corpses, doesn’t one? Enter Opossum Island; a tiny island about a kilometer off shore from Port Arthur that was later renamed the ‘Isle of the Dead’. From the settlement’s inception in 1830 until 1877, the island served as the official burying grounds for all those who perished at Port Arthur. All in all, 1,769 prisoners and 180 free persons are buried upon the desolate island, a place that to this very day no tour guide will dare to venture to at night. One interesting tale concerning the Isle of the Dead involves an Irish prisoner by the name of Mark Jeffery, who was confined to the island in the capacity of its resident gravedigger. Jeffery would be ferried across to Port Arthur on Saturday nights to attend Church services on Sunday and would then be returned to his lonely island for the rest of the week. However, midweek one day Jeffery lit a signal fire on the island indicating he was in distress and in need of help. When prison officials arrived they found Jeffery trembling and mentally unhinged. He claimed that the Devil, himself, had visited him in his hut the night before, enveloped in a cloud of sulphur and surrounded by a glowing red light. Jeffrey refused to ever return to the island and was returned to the general prison population.

But now on to the ghosties, for we are talking about a haunted place, after all. In fact, it seems there is ghostly happenstance around every corner of Port Arthur. It’s not just the two prisons where the paranormal rears its frightening head. Oddly enough, it seems that some of the outlying buildings that served as residences and working facilities for the prison staff are among the most haunted places throughout the penal settlement.

First, there’s the old Parsonage where reports of haunted activity go back as far as 1871. When the Reverend George Eastman passed away in an upstairs room, his body was placed in his coffin and workers attempted to lower it to the ground from an upstairs window. In a gruesome spectacle, however, a rope snapped sending the deceased Reverend’s corpse toppling from his coffin and into a gutter below. Since that day, smells of rotting flesh, sounds of tortured moaning, and strange lights have plagued the Parsonage. Many authorities on the supernatural claim the building to be the most haunted structure in all of Australia.

The next occupants of the Parsonage, Reverend Hayward and his family, encountered their share of haunted goings on all throughout the 1870’s. In one incident, the Reverend and his family had been away visiting Melbourne. The Reverend returned to Port Arthur alone, days ahead of his family, to resume his priestly duties. One night, the doctor at the settlement saw the lights on in the upstairs rooms of the Parsonage indicating to him that the rest of the family had also finally returned. Upon going to welcome them home, he found only the Reverend and his servant downstairs, both of whom claimed that the upstairs lights had never been on. This was only the beginning of the strange phantom lights that the Hayward family would experience. One room, the study, would appear to be illuminated at times. Indeed, anyone looking through the keyhole would see the room brightly lit inside. When the door would be opened, however, the room would be completely dark. A visiting Judge experienced this strange phenomenon for himself one evening, leaving him both befuddled and frightened.

The guest room in the Parsonage is also said to haunted, as a terrified guest of the Hayward family learned the hard way one evening long ago. She awoke to heavy knocking on the floors and walls inside of her room, and as she fled in terror she could hear footsteps chasing behind her upon the stairwell. The Reverend’s own mother awoke to see the apparition of a woman in white in this room as well. The ghost appeared to strike up a match and then to examine a young child, also asleep in the room, before disappearing through a wall.

In the 1980’s restoration workers at the Parsonage (which is now a historical site, as is the whole of Port Arthur) reported unexplained banging noises and the sightings of apparitions in period dress. One worker spending the night awoke to the feeling of something pressing down on him and pushing the air from his lungs.

During ghost tours given at Port Arthur today, many visitors report the feeling of uneasiness in the old Parsonage more than any other place within the compound.

The old accountant’s house is known for sightings of an apparition known as ‘The Lady Blue’, presumed to be one of the young accountant’s wives who died in childbirth. She is said to be very sad and appears to be searching for her lost child (some believe this may also be the same spirit that Mrs. Hayward and others have seen in the Parsonage as well). The spirit is not malicious and often communicates to children in the tour groups who can see and talk to her much to the bewilderment of their parents who cannot.

While she may not ever find her own child, The Lady Blue is not want for the company of ghostly children. Their specters and ghostly laughter are seen and heard throughout the settlement, likely the long dead offspring of prison employees.

In 2003, renovation workers sanded and finished the floor in the Junior Medical Officer’s building and locked up for the night. The next day, upon reentering the locked room they found the bare footprints of an adult and a child.

The Commandant’s cottage is haunted by the spirit of the old Commandant himself, who many people have seen gazing sternly out the window at them. There is also a rocking chair in this former home that interferes with people’s cameras when they attempt to photograph it. Some people report feeling the painful broken arm of a young girl who fell down the stairs in this house so long ago even before they hear the story, and others report smelling blood and seeing the apparitions of several children (perhaps the Commandant’s offspring?) in this house as well.

The Dissection Room, like the Parsonage, is another one of the scarier places at Port Arthur. Here, convicts were forced to hold lanterns high for the Doctor as they watched him dismember their former fellow inmates in the name of science. One tour guide reports that when he goes to close up the Dissection Room at night there is sometimes a force pushing back on the door trying to prevent him from closing it, as if something refuses to be shut in…or wants out. A lot of people faint in this room on the tours as well.

The two prisons themselves are naturally quite haunted, with apparitions of long dead convicts appearing on a regular basis. Tourists often experience a strong feeling of oppression in one particular cell where an inmate hung himself to death, and in The Model Prison, where prisoners were kept isolated and in the dark for most of their incarceration, people report experiencing trouble with the flash bulbs of their cameras.

In 1996, a man by the name of Martin Bryant went on a murderous rampage through Port Arthur and its surrounding township with an AR-15 and several other firearms. Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 37 more in the worst massacre of non-indigenous people in Australian history. After being captured by Special Operative Police, the mentally deranged Bryant claimed that with its long history of torment and suffering, Port Arthur just seemed like the perfect place to conduct his merciless slaughter of innocent people. This national tragedy is remembered in a monument upon the grounds of the former penal colony, while ghosts both old and new continue to haunt the scariest fucking place down under.