Fremantle Museum & Arts Centre - Formerly Lunatic Asylum

As it was when it was an Asylum & as it is today

The Fremantle Arts Centre is an historic landmark building in Fremantle, Western Australia. It was built using convict labour, the same convicts that built & lived in Fremantle Prison between 1861 and 1868 as a psychiatric hospital, initially called the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, and later known as the Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

The Asylum was only used as an Asylum for 40 years. There were a couple of suspicious deaths in the early 1900s and is rumoured to have been the reason behind it closing down.

Another place had been built in a different location with a nicer name, the Claremont Hospital for the Mentally Ill, and the patients were moved there from 1905 to 1909.

From 1909 to the outbreak of WWII in 1939 the old Asylum was a homeless women's shelter. In the war it was the HQ of the American forces in Australia "during which time the majority of the complex fell into disrepair".

After the war it was used for various other things until its restoration started in 1970.

Since then it's been the Fremantle Museum & Arts Centre. They've got half each, with the old cell and the haunted parts being mainly in the museum's half.

Many stories exist, ranging from the experience of cold spots, sightings, and unexplained images appearing in photographs. There have even been reports of actual physical experiences, such as being comforted or kissed when no one is there. Doors open and close without explanation, objects move by themselves, and some people have reported seeing strange lights. Witnesses have also claimed to see people moving about in the windows that are covered by display panels from the inside.

There are said to be at least 10 spirits lurking within the grounds.
One of these is said to be a former female inmate who became deranged with grief after her daughter was abducted. She is believed to have jumped to her death from a first floor window. The woman's ghost has apparently been seen throughout the building while she searches for her daughter.
Due to the countless spiritual encounters, the Fremantle Arts Centre is known as the most haunted building in the Southern Hemisphere.

The parts with the most activity are the old cell, an upstairs passageway in the museum part and the big painting studio upstairs in the arts centre part.

There is an endless staircase to get to the painting studio. Its reported the staircase induces feelings of dread in some people and is supposedly haunted by a former patient admitted in by her husband for no good reason and also a former warden.

It is also rumoured that there is a ghost who moves things in the storage room next to the studio.