Aradale: The Making of a Haunted Asylum

by David Waldron

First built in 1867, the remarkable Gothic structure of the former Ararat Lunatic Asylum, colloquially known as Aradale, has overlooked the regional town of Ararat for over 150 years.
Throughout its history it has seen remarkable transformations in the history of Australian psychiatry and western society's treatment of the mentally ill, and it has participated in some of their darkest scandals. Today in popular press, the labyrinthine complex is commonly acclaimed as 'Australia's most haunted building' and is home to a flourishing dark tourism industry boasting tens of thousands of visitors a year. This book explores the history of the former asylum, and examines what is it that makes a place 'haunted' in the popular imagination, and what it is about hauntings that so invariably connects them with problematic histories.

170 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Dr David Waldron is an Associate Professor of History and Anthropology at Federation University, Ballarat, Australia, with a research focus on folklore and community identity.

He is the author of Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival (Carolina Academic Press, 2008), Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: a Case Study in Local Folklore (Arkana, 2010), Snarls from the Tea-Tree: Victoria’s Big Cat Folklore (Australian Scholarly Publications, 2013) and Goldfields and the Gothic (Australian Scholarly Publications, 2016)

David Waldron's passion is for story telling and folklore with an eye for the intersection of popular culture, community heritage and folklore intersect in the creation of urban legends and heritage. He also has a passion for the gothic, hidden and esoteric aspects of history. Those areas of heritage which fit outside our comfort zones and national myths.

Reviews

[Rachel Mete · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book during a night ghost tour of Aradale. It was quite different to what I expected. I had expected some ghost stories and a bit of history, but instead the book gives a reasonably comprehensive history of mental illness policy & the establishment of asylums within Victoria, Australia. As a mental health nurse, I found this fascinating and was intrigued by the history of Aradale & Ararat (which I often drive through).

The authors also introduced psychoanalytical theories (Jung and the shadow selves) to explain why the public are fascinated by both mental illness & ghosts. I found these paragraphs much less engaging and too much of a shift from the other purposes of the book.

The last chapter focuses on the ghost hunting culture, almost seeking to explain why it’s not real - which is odd given one of the authors runs the ghost tours. As a non-believer in ghosts, this didn’t bother me, but did make me wonder who the book is for given the title and the way in which I can across it.

I think this would have been a really good book with a much tighter editing process and a clearer purpose (there were three purposes - ghosts, history & psychoanalysis which just didn’t make it flow well for me). The book also drifted between being very academic to very conversational, and I think it would struggle to find its audience because of this.

[Amanda Witt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been to this place on a wet weekend sleepover where I got the idea to write a 'novella' style story of an institution that I set in Ireland.

Book tells the history of this place, discusses the early models of asylums and the local goldrush in the 1850's.
The final chapter focusses on the ghost tours that now operate.

[Kate Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a ok book