Hotels, pubs and restaurants dominate Australia’s ‘most haunted’ list

With Halloween looming, a playful new round-up from Ray White puts hospitality venues front and centre of Australia’s paranormal lore, with hotels, pubs and restaurants making up nearly a quarter of the 296 reportedly haunted sites.

Ray White Group senior data analyst Atom Go Tian said the locations were collated and mapped by the team’s “resident ghost hunters”. “While we’ve been as comprehensive as possible, ghosts can be very private, so this is by no means a complete documentation of all haunted locations in Australia,” he said. “It’s a fun story with Halloween coming but I’ve never seen one (a ghost) myself.”

Of the properties documented, 72 (24%) are hospitality venues. Melbourne’s landmark Hotel Windsor — Australia’s only surviving grand city hotel from the 19th century — is among the best known. Built in 1883, it’s linked to the apparition of a woman in a lilac gown on the grand staircase, believed by some to be Dame Nellie Melba.

Beyond the capitals, the North Kapunda Hotel in regional South Australia is often billed as the nation’s most haunted pub and regularly features on ghost tours. In Queensland, the Breakfast Creek Hotel (Albion), the Plough Inn (South Brisbane) and the Royal Bulls Head (Drayton) are perennial entries.

Australia's most spooky pubs 

Residential addresses account for 45 sites (15%). The headline act is the Monte Cristo Homestead in Junee, NSW, frequently dubbed Australia’s most haunted house. The property’s lore centres on Elizabeth Crawley, who is said to wander the homestead after spending her final 23 years there in seclusion. Tragic episodes — including a maid’s fatal fall from a balcony and a stable boy burned alive — cement its fearsome reputation.

Still, Mr Go Tian downplayed any cause for alarm. “We found that ghosts don’t bother most people anyway. It become more like a spectacle in a way,” he said. “It seem that in the most part haunted houses affect property prices.”

The analysis suggests public infrastructure is a magnet for ghost-hunters. Roads, bridges, lighthouses and stations — often associated with unsolved mysteries or fatal accidents — combine easy access with unsettling atmospherics. The abandoned Picton Mushroom Tunnel in regional NSW is a case in point, with reports of a girl in white, disembodied children’s voices and inexplicable equipment glitches. Lemon Tree Passage Road, famed for its motorcycle “ghost lights”, even inspired a 2014 horror film.

“It’s remarkable to think that some locations are so comprehensively haunted that entire towns, camps, and islands earn the reputation,” Mr Go Tian said. “Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, Port Arthur in Tasmania, Walhalla in Victoria, and Rottnest Island in Western Australia all fall into this category.
“Thankfully, most Aussie ghosts tend to stick to their dwellings, making this category a rarity.”

Newcastle–Cooks Hill tops the rankings, packing six haunted sites into an easy stroll — Newcastle Civic Theatre, the former Newcastle Police Station, Royal Newcastle Hospital, Newcastle Courthouse, Miss Porter’s House and the site of KFC’s first Newcastle branch. The city’s status as Australia’s second-oldest after Sydney, and its wealth of preserved heritage buildings, likely explains the concentration.

Brisbane’s inner city and Adelaide’s CBD follow with five hotspots each, again reflecting dense historic cores. Interestingly, these areas — aside from Meekatharra in regional WA — skew to the pricier end of their markets.

“Newcastle isn’t just the most haunted, it’s also the most expensive on our list, with typical house prices of $11.2m,” Mr Go Tian said. “The range outside of these two spans from $1.46m in Rockhampton City to $7.95m in Brisbane City.
“Once again, our ghosts appear to prefer being where we are.”

Jonathan Jackson, 27^th October 2025