A ghost hunters guide to property: Where do our ghosts live?

When conjuring the haunted, it’s the scary, the run-down, and the deserted that typically captures the mind’s eye. We like to imagine ghosts and spirits exist in some distant otherworldly realm, yet the reality is they seem to enjoy our company.

Of the 296 haunted locations we documented, 72 (24 per cent) fall in the category of hotels, pubs, and restaurants. Melbourne's Hotel Windsor stands as one of the most popular examples. As Australia's only surviving grand 19th-century city hotel (built in 1883), it's infamous for the ghost of a woman in a lilac gown who appears on the grand staircase who is believed to be the spirit of Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba.

Pop culture has taught us to fear the haunted house, and with good reason as residential properties account for 45 locations (15 per cent). Monte Cristo Homestead in Junee, NSW, often called Australia's most haunted house, lives up to the reputation. Mrs. Crawley's ghost still roams the property where she spent her final 23 years in near-total seclusion after her husband's death. The homestead has witnessed multiple tragedies including a maid who fell from the balcony and a stable boy burned alive, earning its reputation as one of the nation's most actively haunted sites.

Public infrastructure holds particular appeal for ghost hunters. Roads, bridges, lighthouses, and stations that serve as sites of tragic deaths or unsolved mysteries offer the perfect combination of accessibility and eerie isolation. The abandoned Picton Mushroom Tunnel in regional NSW is among these popular locations, where visitors report seeing a girl's apparition in a white dress, hearing children's voices, and experiencing equipment malfunctions. Lemon Tree Passage Road, famous for its motorcycle ghost lights legend, has become so popular that it 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. 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.