When I was at school in the late '70s and early '80s, the most popular school excursion was a trip to the old State Museum of Victoria, no doubt because of its free entry. I liked the old museum, mainly because of the old fashioned grandeur of some of the VIctorian exhibition rooms. There and was also something reassuring about seeing the same displays year after year. Another popular destination was Polywoodside. This old sailing ship always left me unimpressed; it made for a very dull excursion. Finally there was the Old Melbourne Gaol. We went there year after year and, like the museum, it was comfortingly the same every time. In those days, a few of the cells housed a dummy dressed up in prison uniform. They were not very life like, and the effect was stilted and not very interesting. However, one of the dummies stood out from all the rest. Every time we visited the gaol, my best friend Neil and I would head straight to the cell that housed this particular dummy. We would then have a hearty laugh because this dummy was the spitting image of Rowena Wallace. It was a male dummy, but he really did bear a striking resemblance to the Logie award actress; star of the Australian small screen.
The next place we visited was cell 17. It was always locked, and nothing could be seen through the peep hole. But there was something compelling about it; a feeling of melancholy and isolation seemed to take over as we stood outside the door. Maybe its location at the end of the row had something to do with the sense of forsakenness, but cells at the other ends did not have the atmosphere of despair we experienced outside cell 17. We would speculate over what might have happened in there to leave such a lasting presence. Oddly enough, we always thought the presence was a woman, even though we were told that section of the gaol had always been for men only. After several years, the school excursions came to an end. Memories of the spooky cell at Old Melbourne Gaol faded away. But I never forgot them. They remained part of the nostalgia of that period, along with Sunny Boys, Twisties and Choo-Choo Bars.
Recently, for my birthday, I felt like doing something a bit different. It was on a Saturday, so I looked about to see what might make an interesting change. Several years ago on a visit to England, I went on a very enjoyable Ghost Tour in York, run by the extremely gruesome Mr Andy Dextrous (if you go to York, you must do this tour). I am partial to a good ghost story, so I went in search of something similar. When I saw the advertisement for the Old Melbourne Gaol Hangman's Night Tour, I booked right away. The night of my birthday was suitably cold, dark and gloomy. I went with my friend Darren, and on the way into the city I told him about my school memories of the Rowena Wallace dummy and the creepy cell. I was curious to know if I would be able to pick it l after all these years.
The Hangman's tour was great fun. It started in the dark, with a candle flickering on the floor, throwing ghostly shadows up to the high roof and across the three levels of cells. The hangman played his part with gusto and brought to life the often terrible stories of life in the prison. There were some genuinely spooky moments along the way, particularly when we were all shut in a cell and the Hangman extinguished his candle. As we made our way to the gallows, I nudged Darren and pointed towards an end cell. I knew straight away that it was the one, and the memories of sadness Neil and I felt all those years ago came back. The door was open and In passing I finally got to glimpse inside. The tour ended at the gallows with a description of how the condemned spent their last night, and an explanation of the skill required by the hangman for a successful execution. If the rope was too short the condemned might die slowly from strangulation, rather than the desired snap of the spinal cord; too long and the witnesses might have been shocked by an unexpected decapitation. At the end of the tour a few lights came on, and the Hangman told us we could have a look around.
We headed straight for the cell (I also kept a half hearted eye out for the Rowena Wallace dummy, but I did not expect such an old fashioned museum display would have survived to the more interactive days of modern exhibits). It was a real treat to finally enter the cell. It was fairly dark inside, with only a gloomy light coming in through the low, narrow doorway. It was, like most of the cells, empty and nothing distinguished it from the others. But right away I felt a sense of sadness. Darren left almost immediately, saying he felt cold and unwelcome. I stayed for a while, pondering how an empty room could possibly contain a feeling; it really did seem too silly for words. But there it was: I had a real sense of foreboding, melancholy and resentment. Maybe I was just imagining it all, creating it in my own mind. That is, of course, quite possible. But I still could not get past the feeling that what I sensed came from the cell itself, and not from my own emotions. It was all very strange.
As I left the cell, a young couple came in. The woman asked me if I had seen the ghost.
"What ghost?" I asked her in surprise.
"The one in this cell" she said "we asked the lady who took our tickets if there were any ghost. She said the gaol is certainly haunted, and that a lot of unexplained activity came from cell 17. I saw you point to the cell when we passed it earlier, and thought you must have asked as well."
I told her about my experiences of this cell from over thirty years ago. It was all a bit spooky, and the young woman became nervous. Her boyfriend said he wanted to shut the door and stay there in the dark, but she would not have a bar of that. I left them to it. Later, on the way out, we passed the cell again. There were a few people waiting outside the now closed door. They were all quite tense and one of them said a young man was in there, on a dare, to stay in the dark for at least five minutes. As we passed through the gift shop, I spotted the hangman at the counter. I asked him what had happened in cell 17. He said they do not know, but confirmed there is no doubt something in cell 17. Visitors regularly report an unwelcoming presence, and experience sensations of loneliness, despair and anger. The hangman said the odd thing about it is that the presence seems to be that of a woman, and she does not like men. Some men have heard a female voice telling them to "get out" and felt pushes from unseen hands. I told him my story and he was not at all surprised.
He told me there have been attempts to identify the woman, but nothing has been found in the available archives. There is not even any proof that the cell was ever used to house women. Paranormal investigations have also failed to provide any information that might help identify the female presence.
Who was she? We will probably never know. But, unlike the long gone Rowena Wallace dummy, she will most likely still be there the next time I visit the Old Melbourne Gaol, even if it is not for another thirty years. For her time has no meaning, she is always there, waiting. Her sorrow, loneliness, and resentment exist in a frozen, unchanging moment of despair; forever contained within the walls of the forsaken, empty cell number 17.
