Adelaide's notorious Z Ward asylum opens for after-dark ghost tours

Updated

New owners of Z Ward have granted the National Trust of South Australia a 10-week window to operate paranormal activity night tours and day time tours for residents to see all angles of the notorious site.

Z Ward was previously home to those classified as "criminally insane".

The National Trust has employed local tour operators with previously experience hosting tours of the Adelaide Gaol to run the night-time tours.

Tour group manager Alison Oborn took staff into Z Ward last night for preliminary investigations.

Your average sounds like your knocks or building sounds we tend to dismiss and ignore, but footsteps on the stairs are a little more interesting Alison Oborn

With rumours of at least one death within the walls of the asylum, and a history of what would now be deemed as horrendous treatment of patients, Ms Oborn said the night was fairly uneventful.

"We got a couple of interesting sounds," Ms Oborn said.

Several members of the group heard what they believed to be the sound of footsteps ascending the buildings steel staircase.

"Earlier during the day I was in here just taking some photography and heard what sounded like a key in a door lock turning."

Ms Oborn said the history of the building and their heightened senses from being there at night would influence people's imaginations about what they thought they had heard.

"Your average sounds like your knocks or building sounds we tend to dismiss and ignore, but footsteps on the stairs are a little more interesting."

Tours will be hosted from Monday November 17, and will be held several times per week for what is expected to be a 10-week period until renovation work commences at the site.

More than 500 people have already registered their interests in the tours.

"The public can now come in with us on investigation tours and sit in here with us and play with the equipment and see if we get anything happening," Ms Oborn said.

Tour proceeds will be used to create a fund which will be used to record the history of the building and those who were housed or worked within it.

"[We will be] cataloguing people's stories, who they were in time, and making their names mean something through the history."

The National Trust will also host history and photography tours during the day.

Topics: human-interest, history, law-crime-and-justice, mental-health, adelaide-5000

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