Adelaide is a city of rich and fascinating history, and I’m always making a conscious effort to discover more about its intriguing past. Most recently, I read about some chilling ghost stories and paranormal encounters from the old Adelaide Gaol, and I knew I had to find out more.
So I spoke to Gary Joyce, who’s been the manager of Visitor and Commercial Services at the gaol since 2012. Gary, who says “every day is different at the goal”, offered up a feast of spine-tingling, jaw-dropping tales to chew upon.
The gaol is South Australia’s second oldest building from colonial times, and today remains about 95% untouched, standing almost perfectly preserved in its original state. First opened in 1841, the correction centre only closed in 1988, and remains the longest ever operational jail in Australia after running for 147 years, during which over 300,000 inmates populated its cells.

The first ever governor of the gaol was a man named William Baker Ashton, who held that position and lived above the main gate entrance until his death. But Ashton wasn’t only the gaol’s first governor. He’s also the chilling subject of a reoccurring paranormal experience.
Originally from the United Kingdom, Ashton arrived in Australia in 1838 under the impression that he would lead the police force. Instead, he was asked to govern the gaol. According to Gary, Ashton was “a decent man”, who “liked an ale or a beer or two and treated the prisoners well”. When Ashton passed away in 1854, he was so large that his body had to be manoeuvred outside through a window, as it couldn’t be carried down the gaol’s narrow stairs.

Here’s where it gets interesting: Gary told me about numerous reports of knocking and footsteps being heard in the administration building below Ashton’s old quarters. In particular, the footsteps sound like a “heavy person walking along the corridor”, as though Ashton’s ghost still occupied his former residence. People have also heard voices, and there was one case of a file flying out of a bookshelf.
Gary has personally heard knocking on the walls of the admin building multiple times, but says the walls are made of thick stone: “You wouldn’t hear a thing if you knocked on them”.
“The first time I heard it I was freaked out, and everyone who’s heard it has been alone, so there’s no one to turn to and ask if they also heard it. It wasn’t so bad the second or third time”.
Gary told me about another of his personal encounters: one night in autumn, he was inspecting the mess hall in Yard 4, a facility that had previously housed a dining area. After locking up, he walked “about 10 metres from the door” and heard a metal plate drop to the floor, spinning around like a coin before it finally fell flat.
“I heard it clear as day, like someone had dropped it deliberately. I can still hear that noise to this day”.
Nevertheless, there had been no one inside the mess hall when Gary locked the doors, but he believes, “hand on heart”, that someone dropped it.
Then, Gary told me the story of Frederick Carr. In the early 1980s, a prisoner in A-wing said he couldn’t sleep because a man had been chatting at the end of his bed all night. The guards grew frustrated when the prisoner reported the same occurrence several days in a row, so they told the prisoner to ask the mysterious figure for his name the next time it happened.
The next morning, the prisoner said the man identified himself as Frederick Carr. Unbeknownst to the guards, Frederick Carr had been executed in A-Wing, and his grave was located just outside the wall of the cell where the prisoner had been sleeping, with the head of his bed directly against it.
Fast forward to last year, former AFL player Chris McDermott visited the gaol for a charity sleepover. While setting up, Gary told them about Frederick Carr’s history and the eerie whistling sounds sometimes heard in A-Wing.
Later that night, at around 1 AM, with no wind, the doors to the cell swung wide open by themselves. Chris couldn’t sleep, and remarked the next morning that he had been whistling nonstop for the last 24 hours without realising it. Gary attributed this to Carr’s influence, as Frederick was known for spending much of his time whistling.

There are a number of other mysterious stories from the gaol, such as that of Ben Ellis, the gaol’s executioner in the 1860s-70s, and the ghost of Elizabeth Woolcock, the only female inmate to ever face the gallows. These stories will be covered in a future part 2 of this article.
Gary has lead a fantastic team of creatives at the Adelaide Gaol who have overseen a 300% increase in visitation since 2012. He says there’s been a monumental uptick in ghostly and dark tours in general, with “lots of people into ghost hunting, visions, and spirits, and the lives of the prisoners”. He believes their Halloween event is the best of its kind in South Australia at the moment, attracting thousands of visitors each year.

But it’s not just those interested in dark tourism that are visiting the Gaol. Gary says that other visitors are “just interested in the history of the prison”.
“They love the intrigue of the place. It’s pretty much as it was when it was built, and visitors like that it hasn’t changed. There are no toilets or sinks in the cells. Prisoners used to use buckets as toilets overnight. That’s a real eye opener that astounds people.”
“Then you’ve got the dark side of executions and the hanging tower.”
If you’re interested in checking it out for yourself, there are a range of different experiences offered by the Adelaide Gaol tour operators. History tours offer visitors a comprehensive telling of the background of the gaol and its countless inhabitants, and ghostly tours offer atmospheric, nighttime journeys through the gaol’s unnerving, dimly lit corridors and cell blocks.
Not long after its closure in 1988, prisoners were moved to other facilities and the keys were handed over from the Corrections Department to the Department of Environment. Volunteers began hosting tours in 1989, and since 2012, four different operators have been holding weekly tours of the premises, as well as educational programs and even kids parties.
WHAT: Ghost tours at the Adelaide Gaol
WHEN: Multiple tours run weekly
WHERE: 18 Gaol Rd, Adelaide SA 5000
For more information, click here.
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