Looking for a hauntingly good time in Australia? Then I highly recommend spending an evening on a Ghost Tour of the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum. Located in the beautiful, scenic town of Beechworth, just a few hours from Melbourne up in the Victorian Highlands, the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum - later renamed the Mayday Hills Hospital - is the second oldest asylum in Victoria, dating back to 1867. The Asylum held a total of 1200 patients when full, and over 3000 patients died within its walls in the 128 years the hospital operated. Its doors closed in 1995, and since then has operated as a campus of La Trobe University, run as a hotel and conference center.

Adam and Sharon Wynne-Jenkins started operating Ghost Tours of the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum, with a focus both on the ghost stories itself but also the history of the hospital. Generations of their family have worked at the Asylum, and so they have numerous stories and lore of the hospital, patients, and workers to share.

Their Ghost Tours have become the most popular such tours on mainland Australia. Only the Ghost Tours offered in Port Arthur, in Tasmania, attract more visitors. Tours are offered every evening; on some evenings, as many as twelve tours are conducted.

Now, there are many reasons to visit Beechworth beyond a good scare at the Mayday Hills Asylum. (Beechworth happens to be one of my favorite towns in Victoria, and I constantly tell my husband that if we move to Australia, this is where I want to live.) But if ghost tours are your thing - or even if they are not your thing - I highly recommend spending an evening on one of these tours.

I won't spoil the tour by revealing all, but if nothing else, the history of the hospital and the way the guides bring to life the stories of the hospital are worth the tour itself. You get a chance to go into some of the older buildings, including the treatment rooms, some of the inmate rooms, and a truly creepy basement area, as well as see some of the beautiful grounds. You'll get to see the Ha-Ha Walls, too. These are walls built with a sloping trench on the inside of the Asylum, making them 9 feet tall to the inmates within, preventing escape. Outside, they seemed much, much smaller, creating the illusion that this wasn't effectively a prison.

To be admitted into the hospital was relatively easy - a relative and two doctors signatures (a single doctor signature after an amendment in 1951) was all it took. But to get out, it required 8 signatures. Thus many patients, once admitted, were never released. One of the stories talks about an 11 year old boy who died at the asylum at the age of 84.

Some of the stories are heartbreaking, and some sad and horrifying. And while we didn't see any ghosts, I will say that the tour left many of us definitely a little chillier than when we went in. I got an intense headache in one building that went away the second I stepped out, and one of the rooms in the basement left me decidedly uneasy. Was it a ghost, or just me getting caught up in the tour itself? Decide for yourself - take the Beechworth Mayday Hills Asylum Ghost Tour the next time you are visiting Victoria.