A Haunting at the Mount Remarkable Hotel

- Part VII -

Conclusion + Ghost Stories.

At the end of my first post in A Haunting at the Mount Remarkable Hotel, I mentioned that there were several recorded deaths at the hotel. Each week I have supplied research on those deaths. Starting with watchmaker Dugald Wilson who fell into the basement, dying in the hotel that evening. Then Margaret ‘Maggie’ Salmon who suicided by poison in 1866. The next death was another suicide, that of August Fix who shot himself in an outlying building in 1908. In 1915 George Moran, son of the original owner, Thomas Moran died suddenly from a cerebral haemorrhage, and in 1931, the death of Irene Wight, followed by her husband Harry Castle Wight in 1932, who died ‘suddenly’.

So how do these deaths fit in with the local ghost stories?

The Mount Remarkable Hotel is alleged to be haunted by three (or more) ghosts. The first is a young woman who it believed may have drowned in the cellar. The second is thought to be the spirit woman and the third is a male who presents himself as a shadow person.
Owners have reported hearing people running through the unused upstairs section of the hotel. Poltergeist-like activity is also reported, with witnesses claiming to watch a bar stool topple over of its own volition, and cups from the pokies room being found on the floor in the morning during the opening of the room, which wasn’t there the night before.

I can find no corroborative evidence for death by drowning in the cellar. One would expect that such an event would require an inquest and that the inquest would be published in a newspaper. The second alleged spirit, without a description of what she looks like, could literally be anyone, but one could assume that the female spirit may be Maggie Salmon or Irene Wight.
The third alleged spirit that appears as a shadow person could literally be anyone, but again, one can make an assumption that the spirit may be Dugald Wilson, George Moran or Harry Wight. Without a proper description and a proper paranormal investigation done by professionals, it is hard to identify or conclude who any spirit is in any location.

Other alleged ghostly activity at the Mount Remarkable Hotel is poltergeist activity. With claims that cups appear in places they shouldn't be on opening the hotel. Often, things like cups left in a room are related to memory or misinterpretation. A person closing a hotel may think everything is away, having a brief look before locking up, then return the next day and be surprised when something is where it should not be, having missed it the night prior. However, there is always the possibility of a spirit moving things – there has been prior evidence of this in South Australia at the North Kapunda Hotel, The Port Admiral Hotel (Port Adelaide), and The British Hotel (North Adelaide).

Although I have linked ghosts to known deaths and made assumptions, this is unreliable and should not be regarded as evidence of the named people being ghosts in this location. If there are spirits haunting this hotel, they remain unidentified, and could literally be anyone who has passed through the building, or simply urban legends...

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2023