Ghostly group hunts haunting happenings
WE don’t need ouija boards or priests to spot ghosts anymore.
We can go online and watch a group of Gold Coast women who have started their own spirited ghosthunting operation.
And they have the scary stories to prove it – including, they say, having stones mysteriously thrown at them in an attic when they investigated the Historic Rivermill at Mt Nathan just outside of town.
Haunted Down Under comprises Briar Ford, whose role in the group is location manager and historian, and tech manager Nadine Menezes, production manager Caitlin Stewart, psychic Hailey Lilly and investigator trainee Steph De Cicco.
But this troupe doesn’t seek to ghost bust – they want to ghost hunt and share it with the world.
“We all had experience over a few different paranormal groups in Australia and we realised we liked doing the same thing,” Ms Ford said.
“We’d worked with companies doing tours and private investigations at people’s houses and we decided we wanted to do more production-based live investigations where people could watch us online as we work.
“We would like to expand and be able to do it full time and travel. We’ve all got haunted places worldwide we want to explore.”
The group is self-funded, but the goal is to be paid one day to investigate the paranormal.
After six months the group has amassed more than 10,000 online followers and has reached up to 17,000 at one time with live video streams.
The women have immersed themselves in local paranormal activities, investigating Coast’s
They’re cases.
“We recently did an investigation at the Historic Rivermill that we caught on camera,” Ms Ford said. “It has a really rich history, it dates back a long time, but also there has been a death there that wasn’t too long ago.
“While we were there we had stones thrown at us and sometimes when it’s outside you can put it down to the environment, but we actually went up to the attic and even had stones thrown at us up there.”
Despite only operating for some of the Gold most haunted digs. happy to take on a short time, the group’s fame has spread. They now have an offer to stay at the infamous Old Beechworth Gaol, which housed members of the notorious Kelly Gang including Ned Kelly himself in 1880.
“It’s the last jail Ned Kelly was kept in before he was transferred to be executed,” Ms Ford said. “They run ghost tours and do overnight stays.
“We’ll do a live investigation for the first part of the night, we’ll set up different equipment we have, see what we can find.”