24/05/2026
WHAT ARE WE DOING THIS WEEK
This weekend sees us heading back to Canberra for two night of investigations at Old Parliament House. This is always such a brilliant site to investigate. Firstly it's HUGE and we do get to go into a number of the rooms with our participants.
One of the rooms is the Senate Chamber. This is where I work with the bionic ear. At night the room becomes very still and people often describe the feeling that someone is watching from the shadows of the galleries above.
Old Parliament House itself opened in 1927 and remained Australia’s seat of government until 1988 when Parliament moved to the new building on Capital Hill. For more than sixty years the Senate chamber saw political battles, wartime decisions, personal rivalries, scandals, exhaustion and enormous pressure.
The Senate chamber was designed with red tones inspired by the British House of Lords. Even now the old leather chairs, dark timber and low lighting gives the room a heavy atmosphere.
It feels powerful and for some people even overwhelming.The low light can trick your eyes.
Staff who worked there over the years often spoke about hearing footsteps after hours, doors opening on their own and sensing movement in empty corridors. Security guards and cleaners have also reported odd experiences, particularly late at night when the building is empty.
One story that still circulates involves the sound of a man coughing or clearing his throat in the chamber when nobody is there.
Others have described seeing figures standing briefly in doorways or in the upper gallery before disappearing. We have witnessed this ourselves!
There is also the simple fact that Old Parliament House absorbed decades of human emotion. Those moments matter when people talk about hauntings, because locations linked to intense emotion often become the focus of ghost stories later on.
Old Parliament House has built a reputation among paranormal investigators over the years because the experiences reported there are consistent.
Our previous guests have talked about footsteps, shadow figures, sudden cold spots, being watched, touched and last time I was there I saw what looked like a figure trying to manifest behind one of our guests. When I asked that person whether they felt anything (without telling him why I was asking) he reported seeing a shimmer from out of the corner of his eye and he felt the energy of someone behind him. YES!
For a place built on power, pressure and personality these are certainly the right ingredients for a haunting! I'll talk about other rooms we investigate in future posts.
Have you ever been to Old Parliament House?
