Step inside one of the oldest preserved cemeteries in the world, which dates back to the 1850s and was once used to bury mental asylum patients – with the space leaving TikTok users emotional.
Dubbed Goodna Cemetery, it is believed to have been a resting place for people who were admitted and died at Woogaroo Lunatic Aslym, later renamed the Brisbane Mental Hospital.
The eerie graveyard in Queensland, Australia, has a tragic history with no definitive information about what happened to the bodies of those buried there.
Rather than names, gravestones are unmarked or have numbers, and rumour has it there were over 2,300 burials up until the hospital closed in 2001.
Pete Davidson, 39, from Brisbane, recently explored the cemetery alone and shared a video of the ghostly space on TikTok (@australianarchaeology), where it has since gone viral with over 165,700 views.
While at the site, the photographer and videographer cleaned some of the gravestones and became interested in the history of the hospital.
Although he enjoyed his visit, he also described the scene as very “sad”.
“Around the mental hospital memorial it is truly one of the saddest presences I have ever felt,” Pete told Jam Press.
“I have spent a little time here and the feeling is lost or empty.
“I don’t know if this is something I have manifested in my own head, knowing the history, or if there is something more spiritual about the area.
“I also found, whilst doing research, that there were numerous people in the Ipswich/Brisbane area that had family admitted to the hospital.
“If these people died whilst being treated there, there was only a few graves that could be located, I presumed they were buried on the grounds, at the cemetery that was later relocated.”
TikTok users were stunned by the footage of the space, with one person even sharing a personal connection to the asylum, commenting: “My Great Grandma died there.
“I believe hers may have been one of the bodies that was exhumed. I’ve never seen this before, so thank you from my heart.”
Someone else added: “This is so sad. Not only did these poor souls have a tortured life, but to be cancelled as a person and not given their names just numbers.”
Another person wrote: “It’s sad that no one thought that’s these people were important enough to keep records of there movements.” [sic]
“Many of them probably didn’t have mental illness as we know them today,” added someone else.
A fifth person, who has been to the site themselves, wrote: “I’ve been to the Asylum at night many many years ago.
“Definitely some bad energy there.”
The mental asylum had numerous owners over the years but has now been acquired by West Moreton Health, and functions as a centre for mental health, dubbed The Park.
During his urban explorations of cemeteries, Peter, who also has a YouTube channel called Australian Archeology, often comes across unusual findings such as a locket from 1830, children’s toy cars and even old unopened beers given as mementos to the dead.
He said: “I come across unusual things in cemeteries all the time.
“Mostly, these items are keepsakes that the family has left on or around the grave, but over time these have been broken or degraded. Sometimes these items are inside an imortelle – which is a round glass container which looks like an upside-down bowl, inside a cage.
“Families would use these to house things of the deceased or items to symbolise their memory, such as dove ornaments, little statues and cloth flowers.
“You would have these in the UK as this was a very popular tradition during the Edwardian and Victorian period in England, which consequently came to Australia with the exportation of convicts.
“I have found other items such as an old locket with a picture of the deceased inside from 1830, children’s toy cars and even old unopened bottles of beer.”
Peter always respects the sacred spaces he visits and is sometimes approached by people on TikTok sharing their own family history of the spaces.
He said: “It’s mostly the unique stories that I’m interested in, through TikTok people have asked me to clean their distant relatives headstones and have shared their family stories with me along the way, some stories are unusual, some are just plain bizarre and some are just truly tragic.
“I have found stories of war in WWII where two brothers from a small town in outback Queensland were killed together in the sinking of Hospital Ship Centaur, by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Queensland.
“On a lighter note I found stories of several families that left everything behind in their native Germany and Poland, to settle in small townships west of Brisbane.
“These families flourished and to this day still have descendants living on the family farms, on streets named after them.”
The photographers recommends that others visit their local graveyards too.
He added: “Learn about the history and learn about the people who walked before us,
“Only by knowing about our last can we learn and shape our future.
“Particularly with sites like the mental hospital memorial – there are a lot of lessons to be learnt and individual stories that deserve to be told.”
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