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Fright night in Launceston

OUR ghost tour moves towards the Colonial Launceston. It's a hotel now but once upon a time it housed pupils of the Launceston Church Grammar School. Every once in a while a photograph shows  spooky little nosepickers at the window, or an upstairs shape that might be a schoolmarm. The four Queensland tourists, led by  guide Paulene Hutton, are encouraged to try a photo. Poltergeists have already sabotaged my first camera but the trusty second is not to be denied. Click, click, click. We move on to St John's Anglican Church, rich in tales of construction mishaps, divine interventions and inexplicable apparitions. Here's where one of my snaps pays off. Caught in the top of the frame is, well, something. It's not completely dark, like the rest of the photo and I really can't remember what was there. There are dozens of logical explanations but let's ignore those, call it a ghost and be done with it. From St John's the tour wheels to the top of Prince's Square, where the deconsecrated Chalmers Church looms like Dracula's lair, but the scary stories are all about a house across the road. The statue of William Russ Pugh is a perfect prop for tales of great and grievous medical feats.   Pugh pioneered the use of ether in Australasia, popping a patient under in 1847. People  "put under'' in the basement across the intersection were not so lucky. Various vagrants fell victim to experimental lobotomy procedures and their ghosts are said to offer a chilling reminder to anyone brave enough to venture there today. On the topic of chilling, Prince's Square was once a popular place to watch a hanging. We assemble at the central fountain to hear that botched hangings and  dreadful crimes in the square have left a modern footprint _ it's still a scary place to be at night. It's also colder in the middle of the square, Ms Hutton says, than on the surrounding streets. It's St Valentine's night last week, one of those two-layers-of-clothing Tassie summer evenings, and there's no argument about cool temperatures from the predominantly Queensland audience. We leave the square and pause at the Jewish Synagogue in St John Street to learn of its connection to early Van Diemens Land and Ikey Solomon, the character featured in Bryce Courtenay's The Potato Factory. Most of the stories on the tour lead to a tale about a haunted building; other information is included because it's good historical fodder. As an overall experience, it works beautifully to entertain and inform. Our tour is moving towards its conclusion, with a finale in the old stables behind Allgoods. As doors close and darkness envelopes the tour, Ms Hutton brings her stories full circle, to the demise of a lovelorn tinker called Cyril. Frights, camera, action. It's enough to send a shiver down your spine.