Cockatoo Island: Paranormal activity is rife on former convict prison site

COCKATOO Island is a place scarred by a dark and brutal past, but for tour guide Ross Downie, there’s one terrifying story that makes his blood run cold.

Cockatoo Island could be one of Sydney’s most haunted sites, with countless reports of paranormal activity.

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DESPITE the many accounts of paranormal activity on Cockatoo Island, there’s only one story that makes tour guide Ross Downie’s blood run cold.

“It’s the story of the contractor getting violently pushed out of the room in Biloela House,” he said. “That’s an intelligent haunting, a poltergeist. That’s something that can actually hurt you.”

While most hauntings on the island were harmless, the ‘poltergeist’ was violent and only engaged with men.

“That room is now closed off, there’s no entry into it. That does scare me a little bit.”

Ross, who has worked on the island for a year, says paranormally, it’s a very active site, which is understandable considering it’s past.

“It’s just got an appalling history of death out there and every bit of it is very tragic and dark,” he says. “Too much has happened in my mind and I’ve seen too much, so I do have to say I’m a believer.”

Cockatoo Island’s grim history began in 1939 when it became a convict prison. It was a savage place where barbaric punishment was the norm.

It later became a reformatory for girls, another cruel chapter, then a prison to manage the overflow of crims from Darlinghurst Gaol. By the 1900s it had emerged as one of Australia’s biggest shipyards, where industrial deaths and accidents were not uncommon.

Ross and his fellow tour guides have been documenting ghostly guest experiences on the island for the past year . He has no doubt it’s haunted.

“One of the weird ones that happened the other night, we were in the commanding officers building in the dining room and you could distinctly smell pipe tobacco smoke,” he said.

“There were six of us in there and it lasted for about 20 seconds then it disappeared and that’s the sort of residual haunting where you get smells coming back from the past.”

Cockatoo Island in the late 19th century. Reshaped, levelled, cleared and used for a range of social and industrial purposes, the island is now a historic landmark, administered by the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust.

While he hasn’t seen an actual ghost, he’s experienced electronic failures in one location on the island where guests frequently have mobile phones and cameras drained of power.

But he says the most paranormal location on the island is the beautiful old mansion called Biloela House, where the presence of a playful little girl lingers.

“I had a girls’ school in there once and she smacked a little girl on the hand, she’s been seen by a little girl in the window who said to the guide Nikki at the time, ‘Does a little girl live in the house’ and he said, ‘Yes, why?’ And she said, ‘I can see her in the window’.

A young girl in a white dress aged five to six has been seen by visitors near Biloela House.

Biloela House was built c.1841 as a residence for the convict prison’s superintendent .

Recently, two teachers who bring school groups to camp on the island, told him that during one camp, two female students had difficulty sleeping “because a little girl in a white dress kept coming into our tent”.

The tour guides, who have done extensive research on the island, theorise that the girl may be Caroline “Minnie” Mann, the daughter of superintendent Gother Kerr Mann who lived on the island with his wife and 12 children from 1864-1870. Aged just five or six, Ross says “she might still be there, making her presence felt to other girls”.

The turbine shop was the scene of several violent deaths, and today many believe it is haunted by a dark presence. Credit: Sydney Harbour Trust Collection

In its heyday, 3000-4000 people worked on the island, mainly men, represented by 21 different trade unions, meaning there was some fierce rivalry among workers. Credit: Sydney Harbour Trust Collection

Not all hauntings are as benevolent as Minnie, however. There are multiple reports of a sinister shadow presence in the turbine shop, the scene of gruesome deaths from 1911-1988.

“There were so many industrial deaths, men being blown up in accidental explosions, getting sliced in half by sheet metal when a crane backed into one guy, there were three men in the turbine shop directing a large turbine on cranes when the chain broke and crushed the three of them to death,” Ross said.

Looking through a window built by convict labour to one of Cockatoo Island's rusting cranes. Picture: Sarah Nicholson

“We also know about three suicides on the island. There’s one particular building in 1988 when it was announced Cockatoo Island would shut down, we know one of the managers hung himself and a face has appeared in the window.”

Ross says before European settlement, Cockatoo Island would have been a pleasant place.

“It was a women’s’ place for the Aboriginal clans that lived on the north and south of the harbour, this was their special place.”

But the brutal conditions of the convicts, reform girls and prisoners erased much of that pleasant energy until recently, when restorations transformed it into an arts and tourism hub.

“It still has a very very eerie feeling to it at night, especially when you go into Biloela House and you go into the commanding officers building, you just feel your skin crawl a little bit, its really quite a creepy place.”

Cockatoo Island is opening its heritage houses and apartments to the public.

TYPES OF HAUNTINGS ON COCKATOO ISLAND

● Solid mass dark shapes: Experienced in the turbine shop, the elevator shaft in the main tunnel and the wood drying area near Biloela House.

● Residual hauntings: Energy “stains” absorbed into the surrounds, which are released to “replay” over and over again from time to time. Experienced in the Commanding Officers quarters, including footsteps on the staircase and the smell of pipe tobacco in the dining room.

● Intelligent hauntings: These are real time interactions with an entity. The playful little girl in Biloela House is an example. She’s known to touch and gently smack other girls.

● Poltergeist hauntings. This is where an entity has the energy (power) to physically move objects around, including pushing people with force. A different form of intelligent haunting which can be dangerous and cause injury. Experienced by a contractor who was pushed violently out of a room in Biloela House.

● Electronic malfunctions: where guests have had their electrical devices drained of power.

COCKATOO ISLAND GHOSTYARD — A PARANORMAL TOUR

An adults-only encounter with supernatural forces after dark. Equipped with a paranormal detection device, tour guides share the island’s most macabre stories as they lead guests on a 1.5 hour journey through buildings that have achieved notoriety, one of which is never open to the public. Follow up your scare with a Ghostyard Glamping Experience.

Details here

Originally published as Cockatoo Island: Paranormal activity is rife on former convict prison site