Why John Batman’s ghost is said to haunt the Queen Vic Market

Ghost sightings and strange occurrences at the Queen Vic Market have been reported for many years. So could it be Melbourne’s founding father?

John Batman in an undated sketch.

It’s unsurprising the Queen Victoria Market is considered one of Melbourne’s most haunted sites given up to 9000 bodies are buried underneath.

One of several ghosts that’s been said to haunt the site is controversial founding father John Batman, who was buried at the cemetery beneath the market after his 1839 death.

Batman’s ghost is the subject of the fourth episode in the Haunted Melbourne series of the In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, out today.

Ben Oliver, founder of Melbourne’s Drinking History Tours, says people have been reporting ghost sightings and strange occurrences at the Queen Vic Market for many years.

“Legend has it that if you’re struggling to carry your fruit and veg to your car at night time, you’ll hear the moaning of society’s undesirables in the background,” he says.

“People have heard strange noises, had objects colliding with each other.”

The Queen Victoria Market was officially opened in 1878.

While the Queen Vic is an impressive 142 years old, the site was home to the Old Melbourne Cemetery long before that and about 10,000 early settlers were buried there from 1837 to 1917.

Also said to haunt the market are the first two people hanged in Victoria, Indigenous men Maulboyheenner and Tunnerminnerwait, who were executed in 1842 for murdering two whalers.

The signing of Batman’s Treaty in 1835.

But the best-known ghost is that of Batman, who lived only four more years after signing Batman’s Treaty in 1835 with indigenous leaders to “buy” their land.

“Amazingly, history has a funny way of creating these coincidences, John Batman was actually the number 13th person who was buried at the cemetery – unlucky for some – in 1839 when he finally succumbed to syphilis,” Oliver says.

“The legend of him haunting this place started almost straight away.”

John Batman

John Pascoe Fawkner, an early settler of Melbourne. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Batman’s great rival, Melbourne co-founder John Pascoe Fawkner, brushed off the story of Batman’s ghost haunting the cemetery.

“It’s alleged that Fawkner laughed it off, and said, ‘that Batman would not be such a fool to play me such a trick,’” Oliver says.

As the expanding market increasingly encroached on the cemetery site, about 900 bodies including Batman’s were exhumed and reinterred at other cemeteries, but up to 9000 remain buried under the market car park.

“Incidentally, in one of my favourite historical quirks, Batman was actually reburied at Fawkner Cemetery, named after his foe and great rival, John Pascoe Fawkner, which I’m sure he’d be incensed about in death,” Oliver says.

“Although, to be fair to Fawkner, I’m sure he didn’t feel too great about Batman sullying his cemetery either, so not a great situation for both men.”

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW WITH BEN OLIVER IN THE IN BLACK AND WHITE PODCAST ON ITUNES, SPOTIFY OR WEB.

Don’t miss the earlier stories and podcasts in our Haunted Melbourne series: the twisted tale of romance and tragedy behind Melbourne’s Mitre Tavern ghost; Federici, the Princess Theatre ghost, and does the ghost of Jack the Ripper haunt Hosier Lane?

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.