This was by far the best of the ghost tours we did in Tasmania in terms of both the overall experience and the activity encountered.Alan, the guide, is passionate about his subject matter both the paranormal and the historical stories. He really seems to love what he is doing and that enthusiasm is bound to influence the experience. He was extremely flexible about time, not marching us around the locations according to a fixed schedule that would not be varied regardless of what happened. If it seemed like something was happening or might be about to kick off, he was willing to wait a bit, assuming that was what we wanted.

Then again, if we wanted to get the heck out of location, he was ok with that too. What was supposed to be a 1.5 hour tour ended up being about 2.5 hours (though we did not beat the 3 hour tour he had done recently.

Next time, I might have to try harder. ).The quality of tours seems to be as dependent on the make-up of the group you are with (including the tour guide) as it is on the base activity level of the locations visited.

We were lucky with this tour in that we were the only people on it. The other(s) had cancelled at the last moment. While one theory says that more people=more energy that the spirits can use to manifest, my theory is that the smaller and more focused the group, the more activity you are likely to see. Especially on touristy things like ghost tours.Assume, for the rest of this story, that there are bits of history of the area scattered throughout everything we were told.

While I absorbed the information, I really couldn't tell you now what I was told where in a lot of cases. If you want to know about the history of the area, look it up . or go to Richmond and ask Alan about it. The latter will be more entertaining.From the point of view of the paranormal, the tour started with the story some of Alan's own experiences living in the town. I love hearing first hand the story of people's experiences.

Firstly it has a lot more immediacy than the story of what was experienced by someone you've never met an indeterminate period of time ago. But perhaps as importantly, it gives me the opportunity to ask questions, both to extract more information and to evaluate whether the story I'm being told is complete rot, made up out of whole cloth from a book of old stories that the teller picked up in a second-hand bookshop.I asked a lot of questions. In fact, I did that through most of the tour. It was a wonder that he didn't strangle me by the end of it. It makes it really hard to tell a story if someone keeps interrupting you with questions and comments.

I assessed his stories about his own experiences as mostly true in essence. There was probably some exaggeration or emphasis that comes from the storyteller aspect of his personality and from telling the story multiple times a week. I'd love to sit down with him over a couple of beers (or a nice pot of tea as the case may be) and exchange stories in a more leisurely fashion.Anyway, before we moved off, he handed out torches and explained the two rules. Rule 1: Don't shine the torches into people's homes and Rule 2: Don't get run over.

Note: No lanterns. Torches. Like normal people.

On to Richmond bridge. Lots of stories about that place. I'm not going to go into most of them here. The relevant one, for later in this story, is that there is a point on one side of the bridge that animals will not walk past where, allegedly, the body of a convict is entombed in the stonework of the bridge under that point. Not much in the way of activity on the night.

I felt uneasy underneath the bridge but that could have been as much because there was a black opening next to me that fell away to the river and I couldn't see what was down there. or what was coming up from there as anything paranormal. Photos of the bridge show a few orb-like anomalies, but I am calling most of them water vapour (riverbank, overcast evening, humidity around 65%, rained later) or insects.

Up to Richmond Gaol. A great place, if you measure it in terms of suffering and so on that could well lead to hauntings. Unfortunately, you can't get into it at night. Alan has tried to get permission to take tours in there at night, but without success so far.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't intend to stop trying. We were standing there when I became aware that I was feeling dizzy. Now for me, feeling dizzy is the most often the result of one of two things.

Either my blood pressure has rapidly dropped or there is a lot of energy moving around me. Standing in a room with 20 people practising reiki simultaneously, for example, has been known to induce a similar feeling. Given the nature of the location, I decided it was better to err on the side of caution.

I had been standing facing the wall of the gaol, but moved to stand side on to it instead so that I would not be face on to anything coming out of there. Then I suggested to my guides that now might be the time for them to step in to protect me from anything negative, harmful or hurtful, if they didn't mind. Within 30 seconds, the dizziness disappeared and did not return. I can't say that I felt any emotion or threat attached to the dizziness, I just felt dizzy.

Caught one interesting light anomaly there. It was significantly brighter than anything else caught on camera that night, seems to be located in a position that does not have anything reflective to cause it and, when viewed closely, seems to have a halo effect. However, it is certainly possible that it is a raindrop. Because it is taken outside, I can't discount that possibility.On to the Congregational Cemetery.

We were going to walk into it. In fact, Alan and I were already near the first of the headstones when I heard my mother's voice from behind us saying "I'll just stay here if you don't mind." Now my mother usually loves to wander around cemeteries reading the headstones, so this was unusual. Then I heard my brother say something like "Oh!" when he reached the same point. Talking to him later, he said it was like something had washed over him, a feeling not dissimilar to what I had felt at Highfield.

Like walking through a wall of cold water, except it wasn't wet and wasn't precisely cold either. I felt nothing. I was completely fine with wandering around in that cemetery in the middle of the night.We left the cemetery at that point so Alan could tell the associated stories from the side of the road where my mother would be able to hear them without coming into the place. He'd just started telling the stories when he noticed that she was in tears. She said she could not explain it, that she just felt really sad.

We moved up the road a bit and to the other side to put a bit more distance between her and it and then continued. I should probably mention that by this point we only had one of the 3 torches working. The others had all stopped working along the way, starting at the gaol, if I remember correctly. By the end of the tour this last one was failing too.Later that evening, after she had calmed down somewhat, she was able to tell us what she had picked up. There was, she said, a man in that cemetery.

He was lost. He had been there for a long time. He was looking for something and had been looking for it for a long time, but what he was looking for wasn't there. He knew that, but he couldn't (or wouldn't) get out of that loop. And he didn't want our help.The next day my brother and I went into Richmond Gaol.

My mother flatly refused to enter the place after her experience the previous night. I was a little uneasy about it myself (which might say more about what a good job Alan did with his storytelling than the actual activity level of the location) but I wasn't letting that stop me and nothing happened while we were in there. Still, I didn't actually walk into any of the individual men's solitary cells, which is allegedly the most active area. Being somewhat claustrophobic, I chickened out and settled for standing outside the doorway of each and looking inside.

For some reason that I can't remember now, I also do not seem to have taken any photos of the place by daylight. It might have had something to do with the number of tourists wandering around. I remember moving out of the first few rooms quickly because we couldn't get near the displays for the press of people.While we had been doing this, my mother had gone to investigate the bridge by daylight. I do not think that any of us gave the story of the animals not wanting to walk past a particular point much credence but the very specific nature of it and precise identification of the location begged personal investigation and experimentation.

She reports that every time she reached the particular point, she felt violently ill. The first time this happened, she thought it was a result of suggestion and continued over the bridge, crossed the road and came back on the other side where she felt fine. She repeated this process 3 or 4 times in total, with identical results each time.After leaving the gaol, and without hearing about the above experience, my brother and I went straight down to investigate the same story about the bridge. We walked separately and slowly to the indicated spot, paying attention to any unusual sensations that might come up as we approached.

We stopped at the indicated spot and compared results. My brother's initial impression was that there might be something there but it wasn't particularly active or particularly strong. I had noticed that, when I got within about 4' of the indicated spot, I started to develop a slight headache which cleared once I had moved beyond the spot. The actual spot where the body is entombed is not, however, directly below the footpath.

It is a couple of feet out onto the road according to the story. Bearing Rule 2 in mind, we waited until the traffic cleared and no cars were in sight for as far down the road as we could see, and then we stepped simultaneously out onto a spot about 2' out onto the road."Oh!" I said in a most eloquent manner whilst looking (I'm sure) like someone had hit me over the back of the head with a housebrick.When we stepped onto that spot, I experienced what felt like a rush of energy coming up out of the road.

We looked at each other and stepped back onto the footpath. Standing in the middle of the road looking dumbstruck seemed like a stupid idea and a clear breach of Rule 2.Each of us then stepped separately onto (and back off) the active spot. There was still something there when we entered the area separately but it was nowhere near as definitive as when we stepped onto it together. Photo taking followed, for reference if nothing else as I fully expected to see nothing odd in daylight photos.

Revisited the cemetery. My mother stayed in the car. My brother walked over into it to see what he could feel. I got out of the car to take photos but stayed near it to be somewhere in the middle in case either of them needed help. My brother didn't pick anything up. My mother said that all she knew was that we weren't meant to be there.

(It was ok for other people to be there, just not us.) As usual, I felt nothing out of the ordinary but then I wasn't feeling all that receptive given the previous night's events.

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By: Chris Pointon