Haunted Sydney

Tunnels, gaols, hospitals, cemeteries — even parkways. Sydney is the site of dozens of unique and terrifying hauntings, passed down through story as myths and legends. And behind the urban legends these sites and their associated spectres are recorded in history.

Join us at the Library on Hallowe’en night for a deep dive into the history and folklore behind some of Sydney’s most frightening sites.

This event includes a display of historical items from our collection selected by Library curators. The display will be available to view before and after the talk.

Dr Kirstin Mills is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Research in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. Her research focuses on Gothic and supernatural literature and its intersection with the historical, cultural, scientific and technological contexts from which it emerges. She is especially interested in why we tell these stories, and the way such 19th-century literature is adapted into 21st-century digital media to create new modes of storytelling about the ‘unseen’ world. She is co-editor of the journal Advances in Nineteenth-Century Research and her edited book Victorian Gothic and the Occult will be published with Palgrave.

Ben Pobjie is the author of Error Australis, Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts, Second Best and 100 Tales From Australia's Most Haunted Places, as well as countless articles about TV, sport, politics and the meaning of life scattered throughout the Australian media landscape. He lives in Western Sydney with a family of Funko Pops and an ever-increasing sense of dread.

Dr Peter Hobbins is a historian who is Head of Knowledge at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney. His extensive published work has included histories of medical research, venomous creatures, epidemics, aviation and maritime topics. He spent 3 years researching Sydney’s North Head Quarantine Station, leading to his book Stories from the Sandstone, which won a NSW Premier’s History Award. Peter’s essay about informal collecting, ‘Dumpster Diving in the Archives’ appears in the latest issue of Openbook.