Haunted Locations That Will Make You Pee Your Pants: North Head Quarantine Station, Australia.

  Ok Before we leave the relative safe confines of the United States on our worldwide wide tour of haunted locations we first need to make sure that we have a few important items.  Objectivity, check. An open mind, check.  And some extra pairs of underpants, check.  Did you bring yours?  I truly hope so because these places in the coming entries just might scare the Pee right out of you and off we go.

  When the British Empire took control of the island continent of Australia, they came up with a pretty nifty idea, “Hey let’s take this pristine Island paradise with all it’s interesting animals and it’s native people and turn it into the biggest prison the world has ever known.”  And that is exactly what it did.  About a year after taking possession from the Dutch the English started to send their roughest, toughest most bad ass criminals to the island continent to eek out a sad hard labor life.  Either it did not matter or it had not ocurred to the Brits that the Island was already populated by an indigeounous people and perhaps they didn’t want a bunch of outlaws sharing their space.  I’m sure that at first things were a bit tense but eventually they worked their issues out and got along just fine (dripping with sarcasm).

  Eventually, by the late 1800s, the borders of the penal colony were thrown open to receive general immigration and folks came by the boat loads to seek out a new life and new oppurtunities in an alien land.  However the ever present threat of carrying a disease into the new colony of Australia was a very real concern especially small pox, cholera and the bubonic plague.  These horrendous diseases had run rampant through Europe for centuries oftentimes wiping out entire population centers virtually overnight. The new leadership of the colonies knew this all to well and wanted to take precautions that such a thing did not happen to the isolated colonies and they did the only thing they could think of, establish a quarantine station.

  North Head Quarantine Station was established in 1828 as a way station to make sure that those immigrants who showed signs of any of the dreaded diseases would either have a place to get better before they admitted into the new colonies.  Or a place to die whichever came first.  Upon a ship’s arrival into the port all passengers were forced to disembark at North Head and undergo a series of quick medical exams.  If you were deemed healthy and free of disease well than, G’day mate and welcome.  If not and you showed some kind of signs of disease you were stuck, forced to stay at NorthHead until you got better or as I said earlier, worse.  In most cases the worse happened.

  As time moved on and more immigrants arrived showing signs of some kind of illness overcrowding became a very real concern.  Those who were either not terribly sick or those lucky enough to be on the trail of recovery were forced into an almost slave like labor to clear brush and fields to make way for new structures and tent camps to receive the sick and dying.  Conditions at NorthHead were deplorable at best there were many reports of patients who were forgotten about and were discovered much later already in the advanced stages of decomposition making the threat of new diseases even worse.  Captain Stokes of the HMS Beagle could always tell when he was coming into the Port of New South Wales when he spied the gleaming white tombstones that surrounded NorthHead Station.

  As the old cliche states, “Time heals all wounds”  this certainly applied to NorthHead Quarantine Station.  As the nineteenth century rolled into the twentieth century and medical science was on the move in eradicating old diseases the government of Australia needed to find new uses for NorthHead.  In the 1970s those who were fortunate enough to escape the destructive power of Cyclone Tracy with their lives were set up with emergency housing at NorthHead.  After the victims of the cyclone moved on, NorthHead was used as an orphanage to house children from Vietnam who escaped the worn torn country in the latter years of the Vietnam conflict.  In 1984, NorthHead became the property of the Sydney Harbor Parks department and was opened up to tourists as a national monument.  Although strange happening such as the witnessing of ghosts had been going on since NorthHead was established it wasn’t until this time when tourists began making reports of something strange going on that the Sydney regional government began to sit up and take notice.

  Aside from the regular tours of the facilities, on the weekends special tours are given to the tourists who are hunger for a bit of the macabre.  The staff, which consists mostly of college students, has absolutely no problem filling the need that some may have for the strange and unsual unlike most locations of historical significance.  No shock value tricks are used during the tours to raise horror up a notch or two.  No buttholes dressed in sheets jumping out at you, no spooky music is used to give the casual visitor a feeling of dread and the guides don’t use certain word tactics to express just how haunted the place is.  Those who have paid a visit to NorthHead have witnessed ghost lights or corpse candles as they are called in the land down under dancing around the grave sites and the buidlings.  Others claimed to have been grabbed and pinched by unseen hands as they they toured the buldings.  While others have claimed to catch the occassional sighting of a the pathetic specter of a former disease ridden patient strapped to a hospital bed begging for help.

  Perhaps the two most witnessed spirits at NorthHead is the ghost of a small pox infected chinese immigrant who has been witnessed solemnly wandering the halls of the former hospital.  Some have seen this spirit standing quietly in the corners of some of the rooms and then suddenly vanishes when someone asks if he needs help.  The second most commonly witnessed spirit is that of a sickly little girl dressed in a dirty nineteenth century dress.  Those who have seen this little girl say that she clutches a teddy bear close to heart and weeps, “Where is my mommy?”  right before she dissappears leaving the unfortunate witness with tears of their own.  Many tourists upon leaving NorthHead have reported seeing a crazy eyed ghost jump out in front of their cars and dissappear before impact.

  NorthHead Quarantine Station is not for the faint of heart.  However if you happen to be in the land down under and your feeling brave and your sick of the Fosters and the shrimp on the barbi than NorthHead is definately for you.  It has been reported by many tourists over the years that they have been witness to more than one episode of paranormal phenomenon which could prove that NorthHead Quarantine Station in New South Wales is the most haunted location in all of Australia.

                                              Rick E. Hale