by Carla Caruso

A ghost story within North Adelaide Golf Course – part of Possum Park/Pirltawardli (Park 1) – is one of the tales in a new book.

Gawler paranormal investigator Allen Tiller is behind the title, Haunted Adelaide, which he independently published in July. Allen also voices the self-guided Adelaide Ghosts & Ghouls Walking Tour, a collaboration with Adelaide City Libraries.

As Allen writes: “There have been rumours of a black, misty form breezing through this corner of the Park Lands for over a century. Some believe the shadow is the ghost of a former hangman and that he haunts the area as eternal punishment for ending the lives of criminals.”

In 1838, Michael Magee became the first person hanged in South Australia after he shot the colony’s first sheriff. But it was a botched affair.

A crowd awaited eagerly to see the public execution in the Park Lands, according to Allen. “It is thought the tree [used] sat near the corner of Strangways Terrace and Mills Terrace.”

Michael’s crimes were read to the crowd. He proclaimed he had done some of which he’d been accused but didn’t agree with all the allegations. Somehow, during the execution, his noose slipped, and he managed to pull himself up to relieve the pressure. But the hangman used his own weight to pull him down again, ending his life. At this point, the audience had a change of heart.

“Screams of ‘murderer!’ came from the crowd, aimed at the hangman, who was escorted by police from the area,” Allen writes. The hangman’s ghost lingers, he says, with a sighting as recent as 2013.

As well as authoring several books, Allen starred on the reality TV show, Haunting: Australia. “I got to investigate several places on my bucket list, including the first ever paranormal investigation of the Adelaide Arcade,” he says.

Allen says ghost stories are “universal”. “The Roman foundation story, The Aeneid of Virgil, mentions the ghost of Creusa, wife of Aeneas, who is said to have founded Rome. [Roman lawyer] Pliny the Younger also wrote of a haunting of his house in Rome in 100AD. There are older stories, but these are just two examples. I find it fascinating that, in this day and age, there are still things we cannot fully explain.”

In between his paranormal research, Allen works as a library technician and is undertaking a history degree.