A Haunting at the Corio Hotel, Goolwa
The Corio Hotel, Goolwa was built in 1857. It is named after
the paddle steam-ship Corio, which sank on the nearby Murray River in 1857. The
Corio Hotel license was approved in 1850 and issued to William Ray on March
31st of that year.
The Corio Hotel also has adjoining shops that are part of
the hotel complex. The shops have been used as a saddler shop, blacksmiths, a
general store and a barber.
The Corio Hotel in Goolwa was alleged to be haunted by a female
ghost who hates other women. It is claimed that this spirit once held a woman
down on a toilet when she tried to stand up after finishing her business. The
woman stated that as she tried to stand up after using the toilet, she felt a
strong hand force her back down.
She freaked out as no-one was in the cubicle with her, or in
the toilet at all. Suddenly the hand let go, and she shot out of the toilet
into the hotel and ran out through the front door, only to tell her story later
when she had calmed down.
A ghostly woman was witnessed in the Corio Hotel in 1977 by
staff member Gary Crouch who described her in a witness statement as; “A short
woman with grey hair that had a bluish tinge. She was wearing a dress that hung
down loosely over her knees.”
Gary and his boss saw the ghostly woman head toward the
female’s toilets from the central games room. Thinking it was a person locked in
after closing, the two men went to ask her to leave, only to find no living
soul in the women’s toilets. The men checked the rest of the hotel, which had
been locked up for closing, to find nobody other than themselves inside!
The ghostly presence isn’t just centred on the women’s
toilets, it is also known to go about its business in the men’s! Male patrons
have reported toilet rolls spinning at incredible speeds of their own volition.
Other witnesses have seen the ghostly woman standing at the front bar when
staff have turned to serve her, she has vanished. The temperature in the room
is also said to drop dramatically in the apparition’s presence.
There once stood a blacksmith at the rear of the hotel, which today is part of
the bottle-shop. A bottle-shop worker once witnessed the apparition of a man walk through a wall,
where once there was a door, and off through the car park, through a fence,
disappearing as he crossed a road.
Allen Tiller is a paranormal historian, genealogist, author, and featured on the television show “Haunting: Australia”.
Allen is also the founder of Eidolon Paranormal, South Australian Paranormal
and the author of book and blog, “The Haunts of Adelaide: History, Mystery and
the Paranormal”.
Allen was awarded the 2017 “Emerging South Australian Historian of The Year
Award” as presented by The History Council of South Australia.
Allen has also been employed as “Historian in Residence” in 2016/2017 with the
Adelaide City Council Libraries and employed by the City of Port Adelaide
Enfield Council to write the
popular, “Ghosts of the Port Self Guided Walking Tour”
You can find Allen online at:
www.twitter.com/Allen_Tiller
www.facebook.com/AllenHauntingAustralia
https://www.facebook.com/TheHauntsOfAdelaide
First published in Megascene issue 16 2019
