Nick Hopton

GAWLER South-born Allen Tiller knows some pretty scary stuff about his home town.

At the Gawler History Team’s monthly meeting last Thursday, as part of the SA History Festival, the paranormal expert and “sceptic” outlined to nearly 100 people at Zion Lutheran Hall some of the many haunts that dot Gawler and nearby locations.

In his presentation, Ghostly Gawler, Allen spoke about spooky goings-on at the Murray Street shop fronts known as the Piles building, housing Member for Light Tony Piccolo’s electoral office and Table Top Warfare.

The original buildings were constructed by James Pile.

“During renovations in 2019, for the new Table Top Warfare shop, several odd occurrences happened,” Allen said.

“Scaffolding used to paint and repair the walls and ceiling would move from where it was mounted against a wall, to be discovered a long distance away from where it was originally erected.

“Tools would disappear, only to be found in another room, and the sounds of footsteps, and sometimes murmured voices could be heard with no discernible source.”

Allen also spoke of Murray Street’s Exchange Hotel, which was first licensed in 1868.

On May 17, 1893, the hotel made national news after the suicide of R.F. Rankin.

Rankin, an intravenous cocaine and morphine user, was found in a room dead among syringes and tubes of cocaine.

A jury concluded Rankin possibly drank a bottle of cyanide. His death was listed as an “accidental suicide”.

“It is claimed a female house guest died upstairs and she is to blame for several of the ghostly goings-on inside the hotel,” Allen said.

The hotel is also claimed to be haunted the spirit of a little girl.

“It is not known who she might be, but she is often seen sitting on a bed in an upstairs room,” he said.

The Bunyip office has also been investigated for paranormal activities.

Allen said he and wife Karen’s paranormal investigation team, then called Eidolon Paranormal, were invited to investigate the office and printing area in 2011.

“We had a tour of the location, including the cellar, and no, (see photo) those are not ghost orbs, but mere dust,” Allen said.

“The basement contains a lot of the old printing tools from the beginning of the 1900s.

“Most of the paranormal phenomena reported to us seemed to be taking place upstairs in the offices. We headed upstairs and started recording EVPs (electronic voice phenomena)... we heard a couple of loud knocks during our EVP session, but they did not appear on the audio recordings. In their place, however, was the low-pitch sounds of a dog bark, which no one in the room heard at the time.

“The other active area was a downstairs office, where chairs have moved by themselves and the sounds of someone sitting at a desk writing have been heard by numerous witnesses.”

Allen, who discussed many other Gawler landmarks, ended his presentation with: “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I have not scared you too much, thank you for listening and ‘ghoul’ night.”

Gawler History Team chairman Brian Thom said people who could not attend Allen’s talk were able to go to gawlerhistory.com, and by clicking on the “videos” button, the whole address is there to watch.