by Kelmeny Fraser
WORK to repair Brisbane’s City Hall could disrupt more than just its resident politicians.
The three-year repair job might also disturb its ghostly inhabitants, with rumours a photograph has emerged of one of its most talked about poltergeists, a woman in old-fashioned dress.
City Hall is expected to be closed late next year for an estimated $200 million restoration project.
Jack Sim, who runs Sunnybank-based business Ghost Tours, said there was no doubt City Hall was haunted.
“In the early ‘80s there were claims that Brisbane City Council had abandoned a whole section of City Hall because it was haunted,” Mr Sim said.
At the time, former Alderman Clarrie O’Sullivan told Mr Sim the section was quite run-down and had not been used for some time after a council worker committed suicide in one of the rooms in the 1940s.
“Over a long period of time the legend became that it was haunted by this man,” Mr Sim said.
“Nightwatchmen back in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s used to jokingly say there was a ghost up there.
“I believe there is some credibility in their story.”
But will renovation work send our ghostly friends scurrying?
“(There is) some evidence at City Hall that it doesn’t make any difference,” Mr Sim said.
“The third floor, that is where the ghost was claimed to be in 1980s, was redeveloped into a creche childcare centre and that didn’t stop the ghost. He kept making appearances,” Mr Sim said.
Mr Sim has dedicated a chapter to the goings-on in City Hall in his new book Haunted Brisbane.
State Library of Queensland Heritage Collections librarian Brian Randall said the story of a female ghost was the most persistent of the three ghosts said to haunt the building.
“The woman seems to be consistently coming up,” Mr Randall said.
One possible theory about her identity gleaned from Randall’s research was a story about a woman who drowned in a waterway on the site during early settlement, long before City Hall was built.
Opened in 1930, City Hall was built on inexpensive swamp land over a creek, leading to today’s problems of subsidence and water rot.
http://southern-star.whereilive.com.au/ ... l-haunted/
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