MEGAscene • Issue 13 - 2018
SA PARANORMAL By Allen Tiller
The Adelaide Ghosts and Ghouls and Walking Tour Back in 2016 City Libraries history study in the council
I was invited by the Adelaide to undertake a world first into ghosts and hauntings area of the City of Adelaide.
Titled “Haunted Buildings in Adelaide”, the project encompassed inviting members of the public to come into the City Library and North Adelaide Library to express their own personal encounters with ghosts in the City of Adelaide. I then took those stories and investigated them, as well as a number of already well known Adelaide ghost stories, and investigated their history. In the first year, we had over 90 people attend, and at least 40 of those stories ended up being added to the libraries catalogue under the heading “The Allen Tiller Collection: Haunted Buildings in Adelaide”. In 2017 I returned to the library to turn those stories, and some new ones into 5 self-guided walking tours through the City of Adelaide. At the end of history month this year, we launched one of those tours, titled the “Ghosts and Ghouls and Self-Guided Walking Tour”. The difference between this tour, and other tours, is the City Library invited a professional sound recordist, Mr Anthony Frith, to record me speaking the tour stories. The tour is a downloadable, free self-guided walking tour which you can find via this link: https://www.cityofadelaide.com. au/explore-the-city/visit-adelaide/ maps-trails-and-guides/adelaideghosts-and-ghouls-walking-tour The tour starts at the City Library, so I thought I’d share with you all the starting story of the tour:
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A Ghost in the Library Harris Scarfe’s city store sat on this site previously to the current Rundle Place building. The Harris Scarfe’s building was constructed in 1917 and, in an unfortunate accident, a concrete worker fell into the foundations as they were poured. He was sucked down into the mix, suffocating and crushing him at the same time. It was deemed too difficult and risky to save the worker, and after the concrete had set, too expensive and labour intensive to remove his body – so he was left in the foundations. In 2012, McMahon Services were engaged to demolish the previous building and construct the new one you see today. As part of their plan, they decided to recycle as much of the original building materials as possible. The old steel, glass and concrete was stored, crushed or melted, and reused in the construction of the present building. Including the concrete in which the worker had died. So the remains of that worker, that were previously in the foundations, can possibly be found across the entire building today, and perhaps, that explains one of the hauntings associated with the building … but perhaps, more interesting, and relative to the city library, is another more modern death.