Last week we stumbled across a piece National Geographic published on 10 of the World's Most Haunted Cities. 

Or as they put it: "notoriously frightful cities beset with ghostly encounters".

Being a glutton for anything spooky we read on, and were surprised to find that our nation's capital had made the list ... 

According to National Geographic, Canberra makes the cut because of the sheer number of haunted sites you can visit in such a small area. It reportedly has a higher incidence of paranormal activity per capita than any other Australian city.

One of the examples NatGeo gives of the hauntings you can experience in Canberra? "You can meet the former Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley at the Hotel Kurrajong (pictured above).

"He is a dapper gray-suited ghost pointing from the hotel’s room 214, where he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1951, toward the Old Parliament House, another of Canberra’s haunted spots."

To honour this paranormal past, the art deco hotel has a plaque outside Chifley’s room explaining his affinity with the hotel.

Old Parliament House was actually listed by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the 35 most haunted buildings in the world.

According to Old Parliament House's visitor experience coordinator, Brian Leadbeatter, a number of security guards have stories of close encounters with ghosts while working at the venue.

He told the ABC: "There have been deaths recorded in both chambers — in both the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as in King's Hall."

You can do a special after hours 'old haunted house' experience if you are feeling feisty and want to check out the paranormal activity for yourself.

Equipped with ghost-hunting tools, you will be taken through the heritage rooms, corridors and exhibitions after dark, whilst hearing stories of death, murder mysteries and supernatural sightings in and around the building.

A small stone cottage on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin is also said to give visitors the heebie jeebies.

In 1892, a 16 year old girl living at the cottage got too close to the fireplace while doing some ironing.

Her nightdress burst into flames and she died from the burns.

Visitors to the heritage-listed cottage - now a museum - report being overcome with the ''disturbing odour of burning human flesh''.

According to Canberra ghost expert and tour guide Tim the Yowie Man (!), the ACT's National Film and Sound Archive is one of the most haunted spots in Canberra. 

(Local legend Tim became the Yowie Man after spotting an unidentified black hairy creature — resembling a mythical man beast called a yowie — in Canberra’s Brindabella Mountains in 1994. Since then, he’s been a passionate cryptonaturalist, involving the study of strange and hidden phenomena).

He told the Canberra Daily: “[the site] used to be the Institute of Anatomy ... where there were animal and human remains, body parts dissected and studied and put on display.

"[to this day] so many strange things happen there - people experience things moving without anyone near it, or poltergeist activity, trolleys being moved around, glasses of water thrown by unknown forces, films coming out of antigravity film canisters, touches to the shoulder…”

In the early 1990s, security and administration staff were called out to the building at 2am as the sensors in the area that used to house the human skulls had detected movement. No logical explanation for the movement was found.

There is also apparently a ghostly vision of a child that looks up through a grill in the old cinema.

What you are looking at above is the Canberra Air Disaster memorial. It depicts a plane's wing, thank you very much. The memorial marks the location of a plane crash in 1940 that killed ten people.

Thirty years later, in May of 1971, a walker stumbled upon the remains of a young woman near the site.

Twenty-year-old Keren Rowland had been murdered 15 metres from the track three months prior. It remains a cold case. Police recently picked it up again in December 2020.

It is considered to be another highly haunted spot.

According to Riotact, since the 1970s, reports abound of mysterious noises and figures, but also things happening to cars – stalling, failing to start, radios flicking on and off, lights going out, and moving while in ‘park’ with the handbrake on.

One teenager fled the forest screaming, claiming she was being followed by images of an airman on fire.

A poll of the Queanbeyan Community Notice Board on Facebook reveals that about 25 per cent of respondents experienced something chilling involving them or their car while visiting the memorial.

"Duntroon House sits at the centre of the Royal Military College and is Canberra’s oldest European house dating back to the 1830s. Most people have seen there what is believed to be the ghost of Sophie Susana Campbell, who died there in 1885,” Tim the Yowie Man told Canberra Daily.

“There’s speculation as to whether she jumped or was pushed from the top floor of the building, which was her bedroom. Furniture is often moved around her room when the doors are locked, and sheets are moved when no one has slept there. It’s a place where, when officers have to stay there, they always draw straws as to who gets Sophie’s room".

The Hyatt Hotel, Canberra (above) is also said to have a ghost.

Tim the Yowie Man told news.com.au "the hotel harbours a pint-sized spook: a little girl in a red dress who knocks on doors in the dead of night. She allegedly burned to death in the boiler room in the 1930s.

“The folklore is she was the daughter of one of the caretakers — she only haunts the older part of the hotel,” Tim says. “She’s also friendly. It’s almost comforting when people see her — like she’s lost.”

However in the past, the girl has caused havoc for Qantas pilots staying at the hotel.

“There’s stories of pilots complaining they weren’t getting enough sleep and wanted to be transferred to the newer part of the hotel after seeing her ghost,” Tim says.