In the right corner you might notice an orb! Photo taken by 'Nic'
This photo was taken by myself, notice the small white ecto spots? Maybe a ghost was 'orbing' in?
Boggo Road Gaol.
I have visited Boggo Road Gaol a number of times. I have met Jack Sim who runs ghosts tours through there, through Toowong Cemetery and often through Brisbane. Boggo road is active. It does have some energy there that has not moved on.
My experiences at Boggo do not differentiate at each visit, I still feel coldness in certain areas and I still feel awfully sick when I go into the centre block at the gaol. Upon one of the very first visits I was able to climb the stairs as access to the top row of cells was still accessible. This is no longer accessible now but you can still feel the thickness and tightness about the air when walking into this cell block.
I do have a few photos from Boggo, and strangely enough all from this center block. The orb that you will see in the first picture and a closer view of it in the second was taken by a friend of mine upon the last visit which was around a year ago. The second two were also taken from this visit by my self. The small white lights I have no explanation for as to the white glow in the other picture shown. I have had other pictures taken here that have strange abnormalities in them, but for the discretion and respect for Jack, I will not show them, they are also pictures that could have an explanation for, so I leave them out.
So, to the question here, does Boggo Road have ghosts?, is it haunted?, Well, yes I believe that there are ghosts there, do they haunt Boggo Road? Well that would be more of a question for Jack Sim as this is more his territory than mine.
Places can have spirits/ghosts or energy but they are not always active.
There have been other photos I have taken from here, but I do not wish to show them as they may have an explanation for them and for the respect from Jack who when saw these pictures, asked me not to put them on the web.
To visit Jack and his tours, his web site can be found here
www.ghost-tours.com.au
Brisbane's ghostly past revisited
By Louise Rugendyke
When I was seven years old and visiting my cousins, Dad and my Uncle Richard decided it would be really funny if they hired the movie Ghostbusters to give the kiddies a nice fright.
It worked.
We all dived screaming under our pillows, petrified at the thought of sharing space with specters, spooks, apparitions and poltergeists. Because when you're seven and just getting a grip on the fact Santa isn't actually real, being faced with the whole other dimension of ghosts tends to freak you out. But when I was 15 and I watched Ghostbusters again, it suddenly dawned on me that it was nothing more than a combination of dodgy special effects, Bill Murray and that ridiculous marshmallow guy at the end.
Everybody has their own beliefs about ghosts and their own experiences with ghosts, factual or otherwise, so it was with great interest I read that Brisbane had its own ghostly tours up and running. The enterprising soul behind the ghost tours is Jack Sim. He greeted me decked out in a black fedora hat, a dark pinned-striped jacket and matching pants. He looked as if he knew what he would be talking about. Firstly, Jack walked me through City Hall, home of at least three ghosts.
"On numerous occasions over the 50 years at the City Hall...a ghost has been seen ascending the [City Hall] staircase," he said. "Although no actual outline of her has been seen, those who have seen it have said it has a real feminine feeling to it. "Elegant," was the word the gentleman I interviewed said. He said there were no distinguishing features to it and he associated the ghost with the ballroom here and he felt it had something to do with that, but he wasn't really clear on further detail."
The female ghost has also been spotted standing at the top of the stairs overlooking the foyer. The other two ghosts that Jim Soorley shares his office with, inhabit the downstairs region of City Hall. One has been continually riding the lift since the 1930s (he was killed while installing it) and the other one dates back to the war when two American sailors had a fight in the Red Cross tearoom downstairs. Apparently they were fighting over an Australian girl when one sailor drew a knife and stabbed the other to death. And Jack claims since then people have heard the sounds of a struggle, the metallic sound of a knife being drawn and then the subsequent sound of murder.
Goosebumps?
Yeah, I've got them.
Apart from scaring us all silly, Jack's main purpose is to preserve Brisbane's oral history. "Brisbane is probably the most haunted city in Australia," he said. "It has a very violent past. Most people our age (he is 26) have forgotten about it or haven't heard about it [Brisbane's ghosts]." Jack said he also wanted to capture tourists and locals’ imaginations. "I want to grab the tourists who only spend one day in Brisbane and then move on to Cairns," he said. "I want them to stay in Brisbane because we've got a fascinating past."
Jack fist became interested in ghosts when as a boy his grandfather used to tell him about the ghost that inhabited the house. The ghost used to just sit quietly on the back steps and his grandfather used to sit with it of an afternoon and smoke a cigarette. Jack said the ghost used to terrify him, "every time the toilet would go at night, I'd think 'oh no, old Charlie's coming to get me'. It used to terrify me." His grandfather used to cut ghost stories out of the paper and keep them for Jack until he took over.
For the past six months Jack has been seriously researching Brisbane's ghostly past, following up newspaper articles, talking to the inhabitants of haunted houses, restaurants, pubs, cemeteries and Boggo Road Jail. The result is several different tours throughout Brisbane exploring our haunted past. One of the cemeteries they visit is Toowong. Jack describes this a "beautiful and peaceful cemetery" unlike Lutwyche and Bridgeman Downs cemetery. One of the tales relating to Toowong is that of an old woman who lived in the area for 60 years. Every night she would see and hear beautiful white lights over the cemetery singing to her. So when the council opened up some new plots she was the first to snap one up and was subsequently buried there.
Other than that Jack said there had also been some reported sightings of specters wandering through the area. He said it would be a toss-up between the Lutwyche and Bridgeman Downs cemetery as to which was the worst. He said in Lutwyche you could "smell death" and people had got "funny feelings from it". Bridgeman Downs was always surrounded by a really thick, pea-soupy type fog, that's really tough to drive through" and Brisbane bus drivers had complained a few times of seeing apparitions crossing the road. Some bus drivers had become very reluctant to drive through the area.
And at Chelmer there is a lamp post, that was a scene of a car accident four years ago. The passenger in the car was killed. Since then, residents on either side of the road have witnessed the lamp flickering on and off in the middle of the night, even though the council has checked it for defects. A cold presence can be felt in the area. Jack says violent and unexpected deaths like car accidents keep ghosts wandering our streets. "If someone is struck with death so fast, it comes and they are not aware of it; they never think to pass on...it never even enters their conscience," he said.
It's 4pm and Jack's tour group has gathered outside City Hall. So I've decide to do a quick survey among the group to find out their ghostly preferences. Ethel Scott is 82 and there is no doubt in her mind that ghosts are real. "When I was a little girl I'd wake up screaming because I could see this light glowing on my wall and my mother told me it was just my guardian angel. Ever since then I have believed," she said. Her daughter Ms Bailey believed that ghosts "only exist in other people's minds" but she conceded she believed in spirits. Jack's girlfriend Angie Draper said she was "a cautious believer” and was still waiting to see a ghost - but she has felt presences. Leighann, 29, had come on the tour hoping to spot one and Con, 21, thought there was a "fat chance" he would see a ghost that night.
And a final piece of advice for future ghost-spotters, Jack recommends that we go with our "gut instinct". "Most people say they can feel something standing next to them in the same room...or most people are intuitively aware there is something standing in the same vicinity with them they can't actually see or feel. Just go with you gut instinct."
TAKEN FROM "THE QUEENSLAND INDEPENDENT" JUNE 1998. Page 23.
Spooky tours specialty
As a youngster, Jack Sim can remember lying in bed paralyzed with fear. He would pull the sheets over his head and strain to hear the sound of footsteps on the back steps of his grandparents' house. "It sounds laughable now to think I believed my grandfather's ghost stories," Jack said. "It wasn't until 20 years later when I asked my grandmother about them, expecting her to laugh, did I find out that it was true."
Since then, Jack became interested in preserving stories of ghosts and has now taken his beliefs the extra mile by establishing his own ghost tour. Brisbane Ghost Tours are designed to present chilling tales from the next world in an informative and interesting manner. A driver and a minibus take people to a number of spooky locations in and around Brisbane.
Jack said tours are limited to 20 people to ensure the atmosphere is personal and respectful of those who have departed this world but have not made it to the next. A monthly inner city tour is currently operating while a tour of the western suburbs will begin later this month. Tours run for a little more than three hours and include visits to haunted hotels, jails and a cemetery.
"Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the occurrences experienced by many people are deserving of being recorded...their often sad tales encourage us to try and live happy," Jack said.
*Phone (07) 3344 7264.
This story was taken from "South-East Queensland Tourism", June Edition on page 7.
Determined to find ghosts
By Wendy Vukosa
If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters?
Maybe not, but Jack Sim, who runs Brisbane Ghost Bus Tours, would love to hear from you. From Saturday Jack is starting a bus tour through the western suburbs showing curious people where ghosts have been seen. Although he has already tracked down about 10 sites including Toowong Cemetery and private houses and haunted shops, he wants to find new places to keep tours evolving and interesting.
Jack's fascination with ghosts stemmed from his childhood. "My family had a long history of ghosts," he said. "My grandfather used to know a ghost. I thought it was just a family tale but it ended up being quite true."
Jack's grandparents lived quite close to Morningside Cemetery and granddad Ash maintained he used to regularly have a smoke with old Charlie, a permanent resident of the cemetery. "It wasn't until 20 years later when I asked my grandmother about this, expecting her to laugh, did I find out that it was true," Jack said.
"Nana used to walk out at night to call granddad in for his tea. "On several occasions she saw him sitting on the bottom step smoking a cigarette with an elderly gentleman dressed in old-fashioned clothing who was translucent."
Jack has seen ghosts four times and says he lives in a haunted house now. "That re-stimulated my interest," he said. "I have chills down my spine, listening to some of the stories (from people who have contacted him). "It is so intriguing."
Jack said sightings of apparitions or chilling presences seemed to exist all over Brisbane. He also has an inner-city tour which takes in sites at Petrie Terrace, Spring Hill and South Brisbane.
The tours encourage people to form their own opinions about ghost stories by visiting the actual sites of incidents. The western suburbs tour is $25, is three hours long and limited to 20 people. Bookings to 3344 7264.
This story was taken from "Westside News", Wednesday June 10 on page 4.
Ghostly spirits haunt tourists
By Lou Robson
It's 9pm and a man dressed in black is standing on the fourth floor of the Embassy Hotel. "Can you feel the evil?" he asks a group of tourists gathered on the spot of a double murder in the 1970s. "Can you feel a presence?"
Standing in a dark, wood-paneled room on the last stop on Jack Sim's Brisbane Ghost Tour is enough to make the crowd feel decidedly edgy. For 90 minutes the 15 tour members have been listening to tales of dead librarians, angry specters, apparitions of headless bodies and slaughtered cattle who drum their hooves and bellow in the night...and all in the brightly lit streets of the city.
Tour guide Jack, who is dressed like an old detective in an overcoat and a felt trilby, provides a combination of fact and speculation during the walking tour. His stories, the result of several years of research and a macabre fascination with "the other side", include tales of a decapitated public servant who haunts City Hall and an elderly librarian who used to throw books and slap staff in the old State Library in Queen Street.
Across the road in the old Lands Office, now the Treasury Casino Hotel, the tour guide, 27, tells of a secretary who mysteriously disappeared in the building in 1920. Known only as Majorie, the woman is said to haunt the forth floor, turning radios on in empty rooms, shredding newspapers in the halls and trying to start fires. Guests have reported seeing the face of an angry woman peering from a glass pane above their doors and flitting silently through the halls.
In the public bar a drunk called Charlie, who fell to his death from the top floor, is said to open doors for patrons and fondle barmaids as they work. The list goes on and Mr. Sim, who had his first supernatural experience as a child, says the tour changes every night.
"It's not uncommon for a tour member to report feeling a cold hand on their back or icy fingers around their wrist at the most haunted spots," he said. "I tell people to be prepared and if they're scared they should stick to the front of the group. People at the back tend to encounter more and those who trail behind have had sightings."
The basic tour is $10 but for enthusiasts, the service offers extended trips including sleepovers in haunted properties, circuits of haunted jails and after-dark cemetery tours.
This story was taken from the "Sunday Mail", Sunday October 4 on page 24.
