108. Australia's Most Haunted Prisons

Does the devil stalk the Isle of the Dead near the Port Arthur Prison? And what supernatural force keeps people out of cell 17 at Old Melbourne Gaol? TW: references to child death Port Arthur Ghost Photo Referenced: https://www.reddit.com/r/ParanormalEncounters/comments/1b80att/just_got_back_from_port_arthur_ghost_tour_and/#lightbox Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/portarthurprison Subscribe on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspoundingfor bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to bonus episodes and more when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=enand Instagram https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I've always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate, and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945.

• 0:43Kaelyn Moore?

  She shared it with her friends, and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those "constant comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment. Curiously different, impossible to forget. This episode is brought to you by Rover. Every pet parent has the document. You know the one. The overly detailed, slightly unhinged list of everything a sitter needs to know about your pet. On Rover, you can browse sitter profiles and read verified reviews from other pet parents to find someone who genuinely gets your pet. You can even do a meet and greet beforehand so you know that it's the right fit before you commit. I have had wonderful experiences with Rover.

• 1:28Kaelyn Moore?

  The biggest one that comes to mind is when my dog Fitzgerald needed to stay somewhere. I was traveling with him, and I had something to do for a full day. So I found a sitter on Rover, and he had the best time. He played outside in a big backyard all day with a couple of other dogs. I got pictures the whole time. Getting photo updates while you're away turns panicked texting into real peace of mind. Exclusively for new users of Rover, use code HEARTSTARTS20 for a $20 discount off your first booking. Valid only on eligible bookings. Offer expires January 24, 2027. Terms apply.

• 2:03Kaelyn Moore?

  On a warm day on the southern tip of Tasmania, a blogger named Leoni meandered down a path towards the crumbling remains of an abandoned prison. Her young son held her hand in his and he kept squeezing it. Leoni could tell he was a little scared, but this was an important piece of history, she told him. This was Port Arthur. "What's that then?" her son asked and pointed out into the distance. A tiny, black dot sat just beyond the coastline. It was a small island just off the coast from where the prison was, and the side of it was enough to elicit a shudder. Crooked, lichen-colored gravestones poked out of the earth. Beneath its soil, hundreds of corpses were buried.

• 2:48Kaelyn Moore?

  It was what was known as "The Isle of the Dead." See, Port Arthur wasn't just some bucolic historic town like Leoni had told her son. It was the site of one of the darkest prisons in Austrian history, and it had once been homed to thousands of exiled prisoners. And today, it was said to be very haunted. But she didn't want to tell her young son that. He was already scared enough. Leoni watched as he wandered around beside her, exploring the old buildings. But something changed in him when they got to one of the houses on the grounds, called "The Parsonage." The Parsonage was an orange residential home

• 3:30Kaelyn Moore?

  that used to house the settlement's reverend back in the 1800s. Leoni didn't get a chance to see the inside, though. Her son stopped right at the entrance and refused to go any further. It was weird, but he was a kid. Kids can be fickle. Except, he seemed to be unsettled after that moment. His eyes filled with tears, and he kept his fists clenched at his side as they continued their tour. He wouldn't go inside any of the other buildings either. And when Leoni asked what was wrong, all he could say was that he felt angry. The thing was, her son wasn't an angry kid.

• 4:14Kaelyn Moore?

  The thought crossed Leoni's mind, that it seemed as if something had inhabited him, taken him over, almost. But, no, that's a silly thought. And she shook it off. The two kept going until they got to a circular shaped structure. The building was strikingly elegant and symmetrical with a core central hall and a few wings branching off from that. A sign told visitors this was the separate prison, a wretched place where prisoners would be kept in almost complete isolation and often were deprived of light and sound as a form of psychological punishment.

• 4:58Kaelyn Moore?

  And as Leoni approached, she heard a low guttural growl coming from behind her. It was her son. He was pacing outside of the prison, growling with a frenetic energy that caught the attention of other tourists. What was going on with him? This was so unlike him. Through clenched teeth, he explained that he was trying to keep the mad in. Yeah, it was time to go, Leoni decided. She didn't know what was happening to her son, but something was wrong. Right when they left the grounds, though, something even more unsettling happened.

• 5:42Kaelyn Moore?

  He completely relaxed. The tension left his body and he exhaled with relief. According to him, the anger was all gone. And that brings me to today's episode because Leoni's son is not the only person whose body became possessed by something when they crossed the threshold into the abandoned prison of Port Arthur. Some even say that this is where the devil lives on earth. It's common knowledge that this place has a tragic past, and today I want to share that dark past with you, but I also want to tell you about all the ghosts that remain there.

• 6:28Kaelyn Moore?

  This is Heart Starts Pounding and I'm your host, Kaelyn Moore. I have a really ghosty episode for you guys today. Stories surrounding two relics of Australia's brutal prison system. The Port Arthur penal colony and Old Melbourne jail. I also want to say just upfront that some parts of this episode are tough. We're going to discuss confined spaces, sensory deprivation, infanticide, and execution. So that's why it might be nice to actually start on a lighter note and shout out one of you guys. Remember, you can always send me your morbid and macabre facts about yourself. Like if you work in a haunted building or if, say, John Wayne Gacy performed at your third birthday party.

• 7:11Kaelyn Moore?

  I prefer if you send these to me telepathically, but if you have to, you can leave them in comments and reviews. Today, I want to shout out one of our listeners who wants to go by the name Beetlejuice. And they let me know that they're actually the little Victorian child that used to own Gordy, my monkey doll. Thank you for letting me know that. I'm sure Gordy is thrilled to hear from you. Or not, it's really hard to tell what he's thinking through those cold, dead eyes, but I can only hope he's excited.

• 7:45Kaelyn Moore?

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• 8:30Kaelyn Moore?

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• 8:47Speaker 01

  The Unsolved Mysteries podcast is back. I'm Jordan Murphy, and each week I'll take you inside a new investigation. It could be an unsolved murder, an unexplained disappearance, the search for a wanted fugitive, any mystery that still needs answers. We'll follow every new lead, every break in the case, and the moments when a mystery is finally solved. Because after all these years, one thing hasn't changed. Someone, somewhere, knows the truth. Listen to and follow Unsolved Mysteries. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 9:17Kaelyn Moore?

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• 9:58Kaelyn Moore?

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• 10:20Kaelyn Moore?

  So Port Arthur was a penal colony on a peninsula at the southern tip of Tasmania, an island off the coast of Australia. The area is surrounded by sea and massive cliffs. It's very stunning, the kind of place you would want to take a vacation. And it was gorgeous in the 1800s as well. So gorgeous, actually, that Britain decided it was going to fill it with prisons. A little history on the Australian prison system, but it began around 1788. At the time, penitentiaries across Britain had this big overcrowding problem. And to fix it, they came up with the bright idea To just ship their prisoners off to Australia, which was one of their colonies at the time.

• 11:02Kaelyn Moore?

  Around 160,000 convicts were exiled during this period, and most were sentenced to hard labor to build infrastructure in the developing area. A lot of prisoners actually stayed in Australia when their sentences were over, which had a big influence on the country's population. Something like 20% of all Australian citizens are descended from convicts. And if you are, please let me know. That's a really fun fact. I know one of my Australian listeners has to have crazy convict grandpa lore. But at the time, Port Arthur was a perfect place to put a prison because of those cliffs. They made it really hard for any of the prisoners to leave. What was an escaped convict going to do? Climb down the cliff and swim through the shark-infested waters?

• 11:47Kaelyn Moore?

  And thus, Port Arthur was created. So the first boat of convicts arrived in 1830, and they were basically there to increase timber output to build ships and houses. Upon arrival, they were usually put in chains that they had to wear around the clock, even while they worked. But here's the thing about Port Arthur, and prisons in Australia in general, that made them really disturbing. Because it was so isolated, Port Arthur was able to run sort of human experiments. British officials wanted to figure out the best way to rehabilitate prisoners,

• 12:27Kaelyn Moore?

  and they were willing to try all sorts of dark and twisted methods to do so. And that's why a building called the Separate Prison was built. The part of the prison where Leonie's son started growling and trying to keep the mad in. Yeah, there's a reason for that. One of the first prisoners sent to the Separate Prison was a man named Mark Kelly. Mark was incarcerated for burglary at another penal colony, but was then sent to Port Arthur. He was the kind of guy that disliked authority and got antsy when he got hungry. I mean, same. After his arrival, he got into a fight with some guards over his food rations,

• 13:11Kaelyn Moore?

  and he was tossed into the separate prison. It was where they put the convicts that they wanted to teach a lesson to. The design of this separate prison was actually modeled after a place called Pentonville, an experimental penitentiary in England that was built a few years prior. So Pentonville was designed to rehabilitate prisoners through something they referred to as, quote, "isolation and moral growth." Essentially, they believed that if prisoners spent enough time alone and had limited access to other sensory inputs like sunlight and noise, then they would be forced to reflect on their crimes, and that would rehabilitate them.

• 13:56Kaelyn Moore?

  But what did this look like in practice? Well, Mark was kept alone all day, every day, in an isolated cell, a small concrete box reminiscent of being walled alive. Inside, there was a hammock, a Bible, and a toilet bucket. There was a small window that let some light in, but it was actually too high up for him to see anything out of. The few times a week that Mark could leave his cell, the guards would throw this thick hood over his face so that he couldn't talk to or even see the other prisoners. He could tell that there were other prisoners around him, but he never saw them.

• 14:37Kaelyn Moore?

  He didn't even know that they too were wearing the same thick hoods. And this lack of human contact was really tough on prisoners. Today, we know that this level of isolation can increase anxiety and depression, but back then, they really thought that they were helping the prisoners. But maybe strangest of all, of everything Mark experienced, he actually realized that he couldn't hear anything while he was there, and at first, he thought that his hearing was going. But then he realized that this was intentional. See, the guards weren't just trying to isolate. Prisoners, they were trying to sensory deprive them.

• 15:20Kaelyn Moore?

  No sights and no sounds. So what they did was they laid down mats on the floors so not even footsteps could be heard. And prisoners were not allowed to make any noises. No singing to yourself, no humming, coughing and sneezing even got you in trouble. On the chance that you did make a sound, you would get sent to solitary confinement. And those cells were even worse. They were padded and windowless, so they robbed prisoners of both sound and light. Depending on what you had done, your time in those black pits could last anywhere from hours to months. And again, they thought that this would really heal prisoners.

• 16:05Kaelyn Moore?

  But the level of sensory deprivation was actually just psychological torture. And it was driving all of the prisoners slowly mad. So Mark wasn't really a violent guy. He was in Port Arthur, remember, for a nonviolent crime. But he started being prone to more outbursts the longer he was there. And the same went for a lot of the prisoners around him. On one rare occasion where Mark actually got to see someone, Mark was at the doctor's when he brutally attacked the man tending to him. But that was so unlike Mark. Could it really be that this system built to help these prisoners was actually making them worse?

• 16:48Kaelyn Moore?

  After Mark attacked the doctor, he was banished to grave digging duty over at the Isle of the Dead, the island filled with the bodies of prisoners who died at Port Arthur. But honestly, anything was better than being trapped in that nightmare. There on the island, he spent all day alone, digging graves for the men that he had never even seen the faces of. Except for one grave, there was one single grave on the island that wasn't for a prisoner. It was for an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman who died in 1833. In some ways, she was the only reminder in the entire area that people had lived here once.

• 17:30Kaelyn Moore?

  It was actually this beautiful community before the British built this horrible prison on top of it. One evening, just after the sun had set, Mark was scrubbing lichen off of the graves when he heard rustling coming from behind him. At first, Mark thought it was just his brain imagining sounds again, like he used to do inside of the separate prison. But then he heard it again. It sounded like footsteps on the dry brush coming towards him. He turned around to see who it was, and he froze in place.

• 18:08Kaelyn Moore?

  Standing about 15 yards from Mark was the shape of a man, but his face was inhuman. Cold, emotionless eyes were deeply sunken into the figure's face. Its jaw hung slack and at an odd angle, as if it were broken. The skin of the creature seemed to be decaying, right off of the bones. And for a moment, Mark thought it looked like one of the bodies had crawled out of the graves and was standing there, just staring at him. But before he could say anything, the figure smiled and reached for him.

• 18:50Kaelyn Moore?

  One of the guards back at the prison remembered the sight of Mark running towards him, a terrified look on his face. He broke the rule of silence to tell them that he was sure he saw the devil lurking in the graveyard, and he begged the guard to let him leave the settlement. But the guard was skeptical. Could it have been the months of isolation that broke his mental psyche? Or was it that the devil really did stalk the grounds of a place as horrid as Port Arthur? Well, it seemed like officials at the prison thought it was his deteriorating mental state. It was so common for prisoners to go mad at Port Arthur that an insane asylum was built next door in 1867.

• 19:35Kaelyn Moore?

  Prisoners with depression or who otherwise were deemed mentally unwell were sent there. Mark, however, was not allowed to go to the mental asylum. They needed him to work on the graves, and they forced him to go back to the cemetery, where each day he would dig graves while the figure stood and watched, a crooked smile splashed across his decaying face. And it wasn't long before Mark was the one being placed in a grave. So, over the years, it has been suggested by some that Mark didn't go mad, that he really did see the devil out there on the Isle of the Dead, and that a malevolent force is still on the grounds today.

• 20:20Kaelyn Moore?

  Port Arthur eventually closed in 1877. Britain stopped shipping off their convicts years earlier, and the decrease in population put a damper on the settlement's work production. Eventually, it couldn't sustain itself any longer. And after its closure, the area was broken up and sold off in pieces, and the town was renamed Carnavon. But this story makes me wonder, what took over Leoni's son? Some believe that he was possessed by the same madness that had possessed the men who once lived at Port Arthur. But others believe that it really was the devil. Let me tell you about a few other ghostly encounters from the closed prison, though, and I want to see if you can make sense of what's lurking there.

• 21:07Kaelyn Moore?

  Today, Port Arthur is open for ghost tours. And if you go visit, you can basically expect to have a paranormal experience. Most people who go will say they hear things like muffled footsteps or disembodied cries from the depths of some of the abandoned buildings. You can walk down the halls of separate prison, down the cement corridor, past the individual cell blocks, where you may hear the faint sound of footsteps pacing back and forth. You may even hear a scream coming from the other side of the hall, reminiscent of a prisoner who just hit their breaking point and was about to be carted off to the insane asylum next door. But it's not really the sounds that most people are afraid of.

• 21:52Kaelyn Moore?

  Sometimes, it's what they see that keeps them up at night. There was one Reddit user who snapped a photo of the prison entrance in the dead of night. The photo is dark. You can kind of see the front window of the building in it. And there's a light coming from an alleyway that sort of illuminates the side of the building. But it's really hard to tell what you're even looking at. It wasn't until the user decided to brighten the photo that they really saw what was lurking there. In the enhanced version of the photo, the building comes into full view, but there's still areas of total darkness in the corners. And in one of those areas, off to the side,

• 22:34Kaelyn Moore?

  coming out of the shadow next to the building, was a haunting, pale face. And it is unmistakable. You can see the outline of a nose and lips, and clearly see one wide eye staring straight at the camera. The other eye is hidden in darkness. It's honestly one of the eeriest photos from someone claiming to have proof of the supernatural that I've ever seen. And that's just the entrance of the building. Inside of Port Arthur, two areas tend to be the most haunted. The first, of course, is the separate prison. One night, a WWII veteran was taking a tour.

• 23:18Kaelyn Moore?

  He walked through the dark corridors, listening to the guide Wax-Poetic about footsteps and shadowy figures and whatnot, when all of a sudden, the vet split off from the rest of the group. Alone, he drifted towards a cell. It was shockingly small, hard to believe that anyone could live there for a night, let alone weeks or months on end. To get a better look, the veteran stepped inside. And as soon as he did, a jolt of despair shot through him, making his vision swim. He swayed on the verge of passing out. His legs went weak, and he crumpled to the ground,

• 24:00Kaelyn Moore?

  frozen in place as horror ripped through his bones. All he could do was pull his knees to his chest and wait for help to arrive. The guide later found him that way. And once again, it was like he was being overtaken by something. Like, the madness that Leonie's son was trying to keep away was also overpowering him. And that, to me, is what is so scary about Port Arthur. Yes, it's creepy to hear footsteps coming down a corridor, or to see a figure out of the corner of your eye, but it's the amount of people who feel like they've been hijacked by something evil or mad that really scares me.

• 24:45Kaelyn Moore?

  It's one thing if the haunting is happening outside of you, but what happens when it's coming from inside? And that brings me to the second most haunted area of Port Arthur: the Parsonage. So the Parsonage was where the Reverend lived. And remember, Leonie's son couldn't even go inside. He just stayed outside pacing. That leads me to believe that whatever is happening inside of that house is evil. During restoration efforts in the 1980s, a building team of three were staying at the Parsonage. And during their stay, they mentioned that they would hear banging noises coming from the roof, but they couldn't figure out what was making the sound.

• 25:28Kaelyn Moore?

  One night, one of the workers was headed to his room after a long day, probably excited to flop onto his bed and rest, but someone was already in there. It was a woman. The man looked straight at her, but the edges of her outline were blurred, like someone had run over her with an eraser. She had a gaunt, pale face that was obscured by a shadow. Honestly, she sounds a lot like the image that the Redditor caught on camera. Before he could scream, the air in the room turned ice cold and the curtains flew up. And after that, it seemed like she was gone.

• 26:12Kaelyn Moore?

  Then, one night, another builder was asleep when a bad feeling woke him up. Something was pressing on his chest so hard he couldn't breathe. His eyes shot open as he felt a pair of invisible hands wrap around his throat and squeeze. He thrashed, trying to get the unseen thing off of him. And he must have managed to scream because his coworkers ran into the room to see him flailing around. They tried to help him, but they couldn't see what was hurting him, and he couldn't either. All he knew was that it was squeezing the life out of him, second by second, until it just let go.

• 26:56Kaelyn Moore?

  People have long speculated who the entities inside of Port Arthur are, especially the woman, but no one is for sure. Some have suggested that she might be the ghost of the lone Aboriginal woman buried on the Isle of the Dead, refusing to leave, though she and her people were forced out 200 years ago. I'm not sure it's her entirely, but it's an interesting thought. To me, whatever is there feels too evil to be human. Maybe it really is the devil, like Mark Saw on the island. And if it is, and it's open for tours, are you brave enough to go and find out for yourself?

• 27:41Kaelyn Moore?

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• 28:24Kaelyn Moore?

  To learn more about PreNuvo and get $300 off your whole-body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/hsp and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan, packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4.

• 29:07Kaelyn Moore?

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• 30:43Kaelyn Moore?

  Next, I want to take you up to Melbourne, to the Old Melbourne Jail, also said to be one of the most haunted places in all of Australia. To start, let me tell you a story. So it was near the end of a long shift for one of the guides at the museum inside of Old Melbourne Jail. You know, that part of the day when the finish line is closed, but there's still far too much time left. So the minutes feel like they're ticking by at a snail's pace. The guide was hovering by the entrance when a woman approached. She was interested in the jail, or morbidly intrigued is probably a better way to say it. She thought that the place was creepy, maybe because she was extra sensitive to old places. She was a psychic, she told him.

• 31:27Kaelyn Moore?

  Right, so the jail was over 100 years old, and there was no shortage of supernatural stories about the place. It definitely attracted a lot of people like this woman. And maybe on another afternoon, this statement would have generated an eye roll from the guide, but today, it gave him an idea. He was bored, so he told her to follow him. And the two headed down a long stone corridor with metal walkways running its entire length, just above their heads. The corridor was lined with death masks, which were molds of the dead faces of prisoners who were executed on the grounds. They plodded over the cold, thick slabs of stone until they reached the end of the corridor,

• 32:10Kaelyn Moore?

  which hit against a network of other hallways to create a grand central hall. This heptagon-shaped cone extended up three floors to a skylight above, an opening that once allowed the guards of the jail's heyday an expansive view of the prisoners below. The guide led the woman to a flight of stairs, and beneath the metal steps was a large wooden door. It was nondescript, other than some scuff marks on the side. Mostly, it looked like a piece of cast-off debris gathering dust. And the guide took the woman's hand, and he laid it on top of the scuff marks. He wanted to know if she picked anything up. He figured that she would just say something wrong, like,

• 32:54Kaelyn Moore?

  "Oh, this was a door from the cell where so-and-so died," and so on. But that's not what happened. As soon as she touched the wood, her head shot back and her mouth fell open in horror as a scream ripped from her throat. "People falling," she wailed over and over and over again. And the guide was shaken to his core because those scuff marks, those were made by the feet of desperate people kicking rapidly to save themselves in their last seconds of life. That piece of wood was the trapdoor of the Old Gallows.

• 33:37Kaelyn Moore?

  Old Melbourne Jail opened in 1845 to welcome criminals from all walks of life, men, women, and sometimes children. It didn't seem to take a lot to end up there. There certainly were a fair amount of violent offenders, like famous gangsters and brutal murderers. But a lot of its occupants were just arrested for being poor. And I mean that literally. At the time, a term called "vagrancy" was used as kind of a catch-all offense that made it illegal to be unhoused or unemployed. Unmarried women, or those who were orphaned, disabled, or deemed "lunatics", often found themselves unable to find work and were trapped in a cycle of poverty,

• 34:21Kaelyn Moore?

  one that would inevitably lead them to the jail. So if you were to walk down the corridor of the prison, you would see a long hall with locked doors on either side, just like in Port Arthur. But Old Melbourne Jail had multiple floors. The floors that the prisoners were housed on determined just how severe their rehabilitation program would be. Those who were in for lesser infractions or who were nearing the end of their sentences were on the upper levels of the jail's blocks. There, the cells were bigger and they housed multiple prisoners. Many of the inmates would- Work for the prison, making uniforms, doing laundry, or breaking stones for roads. Some were even paid for their work.

• 35:06Kaelyn Moore?

  The lower the levels, the rougher the conditions were. The ground floor being the worst of all. Those cells were for prisoners who had committed more serious crimes. And their accommodations were designed to keep them contained and isolated. The walls were two feet thick with immovable hinges on the doors, which were offset from the walls so that prisoners couldn't see into each other's cells. Some inmates were given a thin mattress and a blanket, while others slept on boards on the floor. Again, the rooms did have a window, but it was so high on the wall it was impossible to see out of. And like Port Arthur, Old Melbourne Jail was modeled after Pentonville Prison,

• 35:49Kaelyn Moore?

  and it used the silent system method to reform its prisoners. But whereas Port Arthur just had the separate prison dedicated to this, Melbourne's entire prison followed these principles. No one was allowed to speak, no matter what floor they were on. Inmates were kept in their cells for 23 hours a day, under the watchful eye of the guards. They even ate their meals in there. For a single hour, they were either taken to the exercise yard, church services, or their weekly bath. But they had to wear a canvas mask so they couldn't communicate with their fellow prisoners. But unlike Port Arthur, Old Melbourne wasn't just using experimental prisoner reform methods.

• 36:33Kaelyn Moore?

  They were also using experimental medicine. So, a decent amount of incoming prisoners would go through alcohol withdrawal upon being admitted, and they would often cry out and break the very strict no noise rule. But the jail thought they had a cure for this. Prisoners would first get doused with cold water, and then they would get sewn into a blanket. Next, they would be brought outside with that same hood over their face, and they were left out in the blistering sun for hours. Then, they would- Be forced to vomit to get everything out of their system. And last, they would be covered in leeches to get all the toxins out of their blood.

• 37:17Kaelyn Moore?

  It was an excruciating process that people were going through while they were actively withdrawing from alcohol, and some didn't survive this supposed cure. If you were in this prison, you would sit alone in a cell all day, nothing but your thoughts to keep you company. Maybe sometimes you would hear the wail of someone detoxing, but there was one sound that you could count on hearing. Outside the small window at the top of your cell, there would be the sound of a trapdoor opening at the same time every day. It was the gallows.

• 37:57Kaelyn Moore?

  Throughout its operation, the jail hung 133 people, far more executions than ever occurred at Port Arthur. And one of the worst people executed at this jail was a convicted murderer named Francis Noor. So Australian society was tough on women in the 1800s, but unmarried mothers had some of the worst experience of anyone. Having a so-called illegitimate child was basically a death sentence. Women would be banished by society, unable to work with no support system. So, an answer to this was devised. A practice called baby minding, or baby farming, sprang up.

• 38:40Kaelyn Moore?

  Basically, single, pregnant women would pay someone else to raise their babies until they were older, and then the child could go back to the mother under the guise of being a niece or nephew. It was kind of a fix for those who could afford it, but it could also be really dangerous. Children separated from their mothers were at risk of malnutrition, and sadly, many were mistreated or neglected by those who were supposed to be taking care of them. And that's where Francis Noor came in. She was a baby minder, but she had her own idea about what should happen to these babies.

• 39:21Kaelyn Moore?

  The mothers weren't aware of this when they were handing their children over to Francis for safekeeping, but she was killing a lot of these babies that she was paid to look after, and it eventually earned her a death sentence.

• 39:36Kaelyn Moore?

  On the day of Frances's execution, prisoners heard the bang of the gallows door echoing through the prison, and the whoosh of Frances's body plunging through the air. And after that, there was silence. One moment she was there, and the next, she was gone. But then, a shriek pierced through the cells. And this had never happened before, where the prisoners heard screaming after a hanging. And many assumed that this must have been Frances herself, now an undead ghoul, filled with fury and grief over her death, upon seeing the sight of her dead body at the bottom of the gallows. And this is where the legend of Frances began.

• 40:21Kaelyn Moore?

  Her ghost haunted the prison, and inmates swore they could hear her wailing at night, screaming at the sight of her crumpled body. And, in reality, the screaming sound that the prisoners heard was actually the prisoner's matron, who was disturbed at the sight of a woman being hanged, something that didn't happen often. But this set off a long tradition of ghost stories coming out of the jail. At some point, after the jail closed in 1924, a university moved into some of its old buildings. At night, employees would walk around the grounds just to make sure everything was closed up. On one especially chilly night,

• 41:03Kaelyn Moore?

  a staff member was meandering around the outside, drifting through the dark shadows of the historic pathways. And they went over to a spot where the jail's old hospital yard used to be. They started feeling something strange, like a gentle shiver, hair raising on their arms. It was kind of this feeling of dread that washed over them. And then, some kind of unseen presence told them that they weren't alone. They watched as a mist rolled in that covered the yard like a gentle cloud cover. And there was a distinct chill in the air, one that got worse and worse and worse,

• 41:49Kaelyn Moore?

  until something appeared in the shadows. And there, across the old hospital yard, was an ethereal figure. It looked like a man with a gaunt, sad face reminiscent of a death mask. He had a bulbous nose and thick eyebrows, and he was hovering just above the grounds. The employee ran away, and the next day they told their boss what they had seen. And he got this look on his face, like, "Oh, you finally saw the ghost." It turns out, more than one person saw this specter over the years, but no one knew who it was or what it wanted. That is, until 2002.

• 42:33Kaelyn Moore?

  That year, excavators were taking an archaeological survey of the area when they hit something in their dig. They moved some of the dirt away, and they could see bones at the bottom of this ditch. They were in the hospital yard, and that's actually where the overflow of hanging victims were buried, once the original burial yard had filled up. But what surprised the archaeologists was that these remains were far away from the others, and they were at this weird angle. So the body was parallel to the wall that surrounded the grounds of the hospital, while all of the other ones were at a right angle.

• 43:15Kaelyn Moore?

  Which begged so many questions, like, what was he doing there? And why was his body in a different position than the others? And of course, who was he? Well, one of the employees who saw the specter was going through old hospital records one day when they saw a drawing that they recognized. It was of a man with the same bulbous- Nose and thick eyebrows as the specter that had been floating in the yard. And underneath the drawing was a name. Arthur Oldring, a convict executed at Melbourne jail after murdering a woman and her daughter. The only thing they could never figure out was why he was buried so far away from the other prisoners

• 44:00Kaelyn Moore?

  and why at such a strange angle. After he was found, Arthur's body was actually reburied in another cemetery. And once he was moved, no one saw that mysterious misty figure ever again. Maybe Arthur found some kind of peace by being reburied, though the jury's out on if he actually deserved it. But his removal didn't mean that the jail was cleared of its restless spirits. Not even close. On a typical day at the jail's museum, a visitor arrived, excited to dig into its history. He walked all over the cell block, reading every plaque, soaking it all in. He had been there for hours when he got to cell 17.

• 44:43Kaelyn Moore?

  It was on the jail's middle level, far in a back corner at the end of a walkway. And it had a thick door and an even thicker entryway. The man peered inside, noting the window on the wall, the cracked yellow paint that exposed the stone and cement mixture beneath it. And he was about to step in for another look when he realized he couldn't. Something was stopping him, like two hands had pressed against his chest, barring his entry. He tried two, three, four times, but he couldn't get in. Something wasn't letting him into that cell.

• 45:25Kaelyn Moore?

  And this comes up a lot with cell 17. Reports from visitors and guides range from changes in temperatures and strange smells to invisible hands physically pushing them out of the cell. That usually only happens with men, though. While women are actually allowed into the cell, but when they're in there, they're attacked by an unseen. Some people say they've seen an apparition lingering in front of its door, and one student actually claimed that the cell was crowded with people when he walked by, when in reality, it was totally empty. In 2003, a group of ghost hunters claimed they recorded a woman's voice saying,

• 46:08Kaelyn Moore?

  "Help," and then, "Get out." No one knows what happened in that cell that might have caused this anguish, but the jail has been closed for 100 years now, and Cell 17's spirit does not seem to be going anywhere. It's resilient, you could say, just like the prisoners that lived there were. You had to be, to spend hours and months and years locked up in a dark, quiet space with only your thoughts to keep you company. And come to think of it, maybe the ghosts of the jail appear to us for a different reason than bitterness or retribution. Maybe after being deprived of human connection in one life, they're just grateful to share a moment with another soul.

• 46:53Kaelyn Moore?

  And so, I ask all of you this. The tours are open for both of these places, and are you brave enough to go keep them company? Well, that's all I have for you today. I'm sure our local ghost jinx loved hearing tales of other ghosts. Join us next week for a story of a serial killer dentist. If you're already scared of going to the dentist, you just wait. I'll catch you here next time. And until then, stay curious.

• 47:28Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Amanda Olson. Additional research and writing by Kate Murdock. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jordanigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. You can listen to Heart Starts Pounding anywhere you get your podcasts, including the free Odyssey app. This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding.

• 48:12Kaelyn Moore?

  What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. Do you want more darkly curious stories in your life?

• 48:56Kaelyn Moore?

  Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heart starts pounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.