Psychic sleuths give up the ghosts in Adelaide’s most haunted hot spots

Some say there’s shadow people in the Myer Centre, spectres in the Town Hall and a spook in the courts. Simeon Thomas-Wilson channels some local clairvoyants and finds out which street is Adelaide’s hottest medium strip.

• Psychic says judge’s ghost haunts Adelaide court

I never got the chance to meet my mum’s father, who died years before I was born.

Yet messages from my maternal grandparent, the long deceased Alan Thomas, are being relayed back to me — I am told — as I sit across from medium Ann-Joyce Hancock in her Christie’s Beach studio.

I’ve been talking to her about what it is like being a medium — a person said to have psychic abilities — and all things spiritual and paranormal following last week’s Sunday Mail report of how contractors upgrading Adelaide’s law courts hired a medium amid reports of “spooky” activity involving long-dead Chief Justice, Sir George Murray.

I was advised this could happen when I organised the interview with Ms Hancock, who has been a professional medium for about six years and has travelled to England to study at the Arthur Findlay spiritual college — described as a “kind of Hogwarts for those who are spiritual”.

Yet as I discuss the ins-and-outs of being a medium and how they help people find closure after loved ones have “passed on”, the question from Ms Hancock — and how it comes to her — is still a surprise.

“Has anyone close to you drowned?” she asks.

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” I reply.

“How about pneumonia?”

“Yes, my grandad died of that.”

This was all preceded by a noticeable gulp by Ms Hancock, which she says is an indication someone in my family or in my life died from fluids filling their lungs.

Soon after a sharp pain in her chest, she says, leads her to ask me if I know anyone who has died of a heart attack. “My uncle, I think.”

Call it lucky guesses or call it clairvoyance, welcome to the world of the psychic and spiritual — one that consistently piques the public’s interest.

After the Sunday Mail last weekrevealed the bizarre events surrounding the $31 million court precinct redevelopment — which began when workers told construction bosses of strange happenings such as fire extinguishers and chairs being mysteriously moved — the story went viral, creating excitement among those with an interest in the spiritual and spooky.

The medium, hired by major national construction firm Hansen Yuncken, has not been identified but was said to have had a “good conversation” with Sir George.

More details have emerged of Sir George’s “presence” at the old Supreme Court complex, with security guards telling people that he also sets off some of the automatic doors.

Medium Ann-Joyce Hancock in her Christies Beach studio. Picture: Tom Huntley

Ms Hancock, who says there are no evil spirits “just bad people who continue their behaviour after they pass over”, says the detail that Sir George was not too pleased about potential changes to courtroom 11 shouldn’t be too surprising.

“I don’t believe in hauntings as such but I do believe that they (spirits) have a choice to come back,” she says.

“In terms of the judge, I’m not surprised that he is emotionally attached to that courtroom and doesn’t want it to change.

“People are emotionally attached to objects, they are emotionally attached to places and that can continue after they pass on.”

But being called into buildings to help investigate potential presences is not Ms Hancock’s usual work.

Rather it is intimate sessions with grieving family members, where she helps them find closure and comfort despite their loved one’s death.

“People come and see me for closure, to find out what happened in their loved one’s last moments,” she says.

“People want to know if their loved one was in pain when they passed on, they want to know if they are safe.

“I’ve had grieving mothers who have had a teenager who suicided and I am able to help them find out what led them to make this decision.

“In another circumstance I had the family of someone who was murdered come to me and I was able to accurately describe details of the murder scene.”

But despite the urge for those who have lost someone to quickly reconnect with them in the aftermath of a tragic death, Ms Hancock says they need to be ready for the experience.

“It’s important that they wait for six months from an emotional perspective,” she says. “They need to be ready.

“I can connect with a soul instantaneously, it could be an hour or days. Once I connected with a person who had passed on when I was in England before he had even had his funeral because he had a message he was wanting to pass on.

“But the recipient must be emotionally ready to connect because it is a really big thing.”

Despite being a professional for 30-years, Liz McCaskill doesn’t call herself a medium psychic, rather someone “who just gets messages”.

But the messages she receives means she is in high demand.

She has been on TV show Selling Houses Australia, helping Mile End couple Carol and Michael dispel a ghost that was said to show its displeasure every time they fixed things up in their 100-year-old cottage.

And she has also helped lift the lid on some of the unexplained events said to have occurred at Adelaide Town Hall, mainly in the member’s lounge.

Ms McCaskill says when she goes into a building said to be haunted, her job is to find out just why a spirit is acting the way they are.

“I will sense what is going on and I will communicate with the soul,” she says.

“I just help them move on, I will tell the people who have brought me in how to deal with it or I will tell the spirit to go away.

SA Chief Justice, University of Adelaide Chancellor and Lieutenant Governor Sir George Murray. Picture: File

Ruby Bland, who died in 1909 in Kapunda. A TV program claimed her ghost haunted the St John's Reformatory ruins.

“If you tell them to just go away they will, it’s not like horror movies. People see The Exorcist and films like that and get the wrong idea.

“It is just about learning to deal with them.”

Ms McCaskill believes everyone has had an experience with spirits, even if they don’t know they have.

Reports from those who believe they have encountered one usually spread like wildfire.

“I’m based in Port Adelaide and there are loads of stories about buildings in the area,” she said.

“There is the wharf, there are stories about sightings in the pubs and hotels.

“I’ve spoken to staff at the pubs about the encounters they have had and they are quite amazing.”

It is stories, urban legends and myths like this that drive Allen Tiller to look deeper into claims of the paranormal in Adelaide.

And, he says there is a lot to keep him busy.

“Kapunda (in the Barossa Valley) is considered to be the most haunted town in Australia, but Adelaide and Port Adelaide are getting pretty close,” he says.

“So South Australia has a bit of a reputation for this, especially when you get new reports like the Supreme Court.”

When it comes to the city, the two that are the most well known are the Adelaide Arcade and Old Adelaide Gaol, while the 21 deaths that occurred at the Railway Museum bring passionate fans of the paranormal streaming in.

Paranormal Historia Allen Tiller in Adelaide Arcade. Picture: Tricia Watkinson.

But Mr Tiller — who was awarded the 2017 emerging South Australian historian of the year and has curated two paranormal tours in the city and the Port — says North Tce is a hotbed of unexplained activity.

“Nearly all, if not all, of the buildings on North Tce have had reports,” he says.

“Even the Myer Centre, which is quite new, is considered to be haunted … security guards have said they have seen shadow people especially where the food court is.”

In some cases, the spirits said to have been haunting the buildings are actually able to be identified.

“The Freemason’s Lodge is haunted by a former member,” Mr Tiller says.

“The way they were able to identify him is that they saw the spirit and he had an extra finger on one of his hands.

“There is a portrait of one of the members and on the same hand there is an extra finger so that’s how they identified him.”

Old Parliament House is also considered to be a hotbed of haunts.

Former mayor of Adelaide, Chief Magistrate of SA and the first SA resident to be knighted by the English monarchy, Sir James Hurtle Fisher, and former MP Peter Paul Gillen — who died while sitting in a Cabinet meeting on September 22, 1896, aged 38 — are said to be two of the spirits that haunt a location that no doubt has plenty of other skeletons in closets, just not of the paranormal kind.

Outside of the well-known haunts in Adelaide, Mr Tiller says some of the more intriguing ones include a reported haunting of the basement of 66 King William St.

“In the 1940s there was a restaurant there that burnt down, killing five people,” he says.

“Staff have reported the smoke alarm going off, while once they saw a young woman burning, screaming at them.

“At what is now the Charleworth Nuts store, previously the Waterhouse Building, sometimes staff smell cigars.”

The haunting at the Supreme Courts isn’t the only new addition to Adelaide’s haunted offering.

Alison Osborn, ghost hunter, at Old Tailem Town, Tailem Bend.

Adelaide Haunted Horizons Ghost Tours has been running tours at the old Royal Adelaide Hospital, looking at the phenomena of a “grey nurse” that is said to walk the corridors of the soon-to-be innovation hub called Lot 14.

Alison Oborn, who also runs tours in Adelaide Arcade, Adelaide Gaol, the Railway Museum, Old Tailem Town and the Z Ward at the once Parkside Lunatic Asylum, said around the world hospitals had reported having their own grey nurse — a long deceased, dedicated nurse still carrying on with her duties.

Because of demolition work associated with the transformation of the former hospital, the tour will end next month. But Ms Oborn says some on the tour say they got a glimpse of old-RAH’s grey nurse.

“Yes, some claim they saw a grey nurse,” she says.

“I do think the hospital tours for some are one more opportunity to see the place, because it does have a lot of meaning for people in Adelaide, but they have been really popular.

“We also do a lot of research into the history of the place and the grey nurse phenomena, so if they don’t see the grey nurse they still have an interesting tour.”

But the questions still remain, why are people so interested in the paranormal? Why is it that a new haunted place in Adelaide captured the imagination so much?

Ms Oborn says she believes fuelling most of this is a desire to answer one of life’s biggest questions.

“In all honesty we’re all going to get there and all die one day,” she says.

“The reassurance that there is something after you die, you don’t just become worm food I think really drives this interest in it all.”