Review: Ghostly Matters at the Caboolture Historical Village

The old hospital which stands in the grounds of the Caboolture Historical Village was originally a family home but became a hospital called Riverview Private Hospital in 1920. The hospital which was on King Street in Caboolture operated until 1939.

There are no records available of the number of patients whose lives ended within the walls, but those with connections to ghosts can feel the presence of them. In 2015 there was a group of people who did a night tour of the Historical Village grounds, and the hospital was one of the buildings open. The Village is a very dark and eery place at night with strange noises coming from the many trees as possums and other creatures skulk among the branches. Fruit bats squeal and flap their wings too – and the sound echoes through the leaves up in the trees. A number of people on the tour were too afraid even to walk up the wooden stairs to the verandah at the hospital as they could “feel” the ghosts within.

Each day one of the caretakers of the Village opens up all the buildings early in the morning, which is no mean feat with some 70 of them, and each evening the caretaker goes around and locks all the buildings. One of the caretakers had a wonderful and brave German Shepherd dog that followed her as she went on her rounds. At the hospital, she would go in one door and along the passageway to the other door, but the dog would baulk and refused to go in the building. It would run around outside the building and meet her at the other door – it was the only building that the dog feared to enter. Had the dog seen or heard a ghost at some stage?

In the old Lockup that is behind the police station are the photos of all the people hanged in Boggo Road Gaol, bar one, as there is no photo of that person available. The only woman hanged at Boggo Road has her photo there, but there is no story of any of the ghosts visiting that building. However, beside the Lockup, is the old morgue. There are no reports of ghosts there – perhaps because the people whose bodies spent time there, had died elsewhere.

The beautiful old homestead at the northern end of the Village, called Glenowen Homestead or Bauer House – both names form part of the history of the building, would no doubt have seen some deaths during its long history and there is a story that a security guard who was on duty for one of the Urban Music Festivals, heard a young lady enjoying a party in the locked building. It is believed that this was the ghost of someone enjoying the party atmosphere, but there were no persons of living human-kind in the homestead.

As many of the buildings have long histories, including the workers’ cottages at the southern end of the Village, there are no doubt many stories of the ghostly kind that may reveal themselves one day (or night!).