Adelaide ghost tour guide and paranormal researcher Alison Oborn on keeping a rational head about the supernatural
Share and Follow

For paranormal researcher and ghost tour guide Alison Oborn, it all goes back to the dark.

“The age-old fear of the dark is deep in all of us,” she told nine.com.au.

“We all have that deep-down interest in what happens after death.”

Oborn founded and runs Adelaide’s Haunted Horizons, which offers ghost and “dark history” tours around the South Australian capital.
Alison Oborn (centre) and the team from Haunted Horizons in Adelaide. (Haunted Horizons)

She’s been a paranormal researcher since 1988, the same year she moved to Australia with her husband, but her own acquaintance with hauntings goes back much further.

Oborn said she lived in a haunted house growing up in England – not some grand gothic mansion, but “your everyday terrace house”.

“It terrified us,” she said.

“I was still sleeping with the lights on until met my husband in my mid-20s.”

Oborn admitted that these childhood experiences meant she was a “moth to the flame” when she started to undertake paranormal research as an adult.

Picton in NSW
Picton a small town in south-west Sydney has the reputation of being haunted. (Google Maps)

“I was always happy to keep a rational head,” she said.

“I was looking for a rational explanation for what happened, but – haven’t found it yet.”

What she did find was a passion and a career, one which she said is nothing like how it’s portrayed in films or on “ghost hunter” TV shows.

“Wherever you go there’s people, you’ll find hauntings,” she said.

But the practice of declaring one building or another “the most haunted” is generally just “good marketing”.

Old Adelaide Gaol, one of the locations where Alison Oborn’s Haunted Horizons group conducts ghost tours. (Adelaide Gaol)

“If something is haunted, it’s haunted,” she said.

“Saying something’s more haunted than somewhere else – how do you quantify that?”

And while her youthful fear has “mostly” transmuted into excitement, that “age-old” fear can still rear up

She said she had just returned from a trip to the US with a friend, where they had rented some famously haunted places to spend some time there.

“There were definitely moments there, when we were back-to-back, when we were holding on to each other,” she said.

”That fear of the dark, it’s just built into people.”

Eleven people are rumoured to have died in the house since it's construction. There are even reported sightings of a woman in a period dress walking towards its bloodstained steps.

This is Australia’s most haunted house

Her line of work and her field of research being what they are, Oborn naturally has a familiarity with skeptics – and it’s an attitude she encourages, noting she’s been looking for an “explanation” for ghosts for 30 years or more.

But instant dismissal, she said, is less easy to justify.

“I’m in these places seven days a week, basically,” she said.

“If you’re there every day, and there’s activity to be seen, you’ll see it.”

A ghost tour guide since 2004, she said all manner of people came along, and there was “no rhyme or reason” to who – if anybody – would end up having a paranormal encounter.

The Wakehurst Parkway is a major route on Sydney's northern beaches, which drivers have reported is haunted.
The Wakehurst Parkway is a major route on Sydney’s northern beaches, which drivers have reported is haunted. (Nine)

“We used to take bets, looking around at the group,” she said.

“We’ve seen skeptics spend the tour trying to justify or work out why something has happened to them, but they still leave not knowing.”

And then, she said, the “screaming young girls” who might seem primed for the paranormal, could go an entire tour without bumping into something in the dark.

“Science depends on an experiment being repeatable,” Oborn said.

“The paranormal is not repeatable. Believe me, I’ve been trying for 30 years.”

Ghost stories go back to the beginning of humanity, she said, when people would sit around campfires and tell stories in the dark.

They span cultures, have outlasted civilisations, and find new forms in every age.

In a scientific age, of quantum physics finding new ways to understand the universe, Oborn said it’s always possible an elusive explanation for hauntings will be found.

“But do we really want science to explain it all? Don’t we love the mystery, a little bit?” she said.

“There’s definitely something going on.”

Share and Follow
You May Also Like

Issues with Armaguard: Coles restricts cash withdrawal amounts and stops receiving cash deliveries from the currency company.

Coles has stopped Armaguard cash deliveries and reduced withdrawal limits in supermarkets…

Authorities had roughly a minute and a half to halt traffic before a bridge in Baltimore collapsed.

Within about 90 seconds, police officers who happened to be nearby responded…

Two Victims Discovered Inside a Truck Buried Beneath Collapsed Bridge in Baltimore

The two people, a 35-year-old and a 26-year-old, were found trapped in…

Death count increases in Moscow concert venue assault as another casualty succumbs in the hospital

That person was one of five still hospitalised in “extremely grave condition”,…

Robotic police canine receives accolades for preventing violence despite being shot multiple times

A robotic dog is being thanked by state police in Massachusetts for…

Yoorrook listens as a descendant of commemorated British settlers voices her wish for the destruction of their statues

The descendent of one of Victoria’s first settlers has called for monuments…

Celeste Manno’s murderer avoids life imprisonment

Victoria’s top prosecutor will not appeal the sentence for Luay Sako, a…

Fencing Installed Around Banksy Tree Mural Following Alleged Vandalism

It was nice while it lasted. An environmentally themed mural by elusive…