Queensland Australia. The Brisabane law courts have a reputation for bring haunted. Ghostly sounds, spinning chairs and icy-cold gusts of winds is what is being reported by the security personnel.

Speaking to brisbanetimes.com.au, a female security guard at the court complex said she was certain ghosts roamed the building.
During night shift she often sees the chair in Court 21 slowly spinning as if someone was sitting in it.
“There’s no draught in there, no way that any breeze is causing that,” she said.

Full source: Brisbane Times

Unexplained whooshes of air rushing down corridors, a seemingly-possessed elevator and a judge’s chair that mysteriously spins in the night.

If you ask staff at Brisbane’s Supreme and District Court building – the place is haunted.

Security officers who patrol the court building’s corridors after hours say dozens of “spooky and freaky” incidents within the walls of the 40-year-old building have them believing in ghosts.

Even burly tradesmen called to do maintenance have high-tailed out of the place after what they believed was a supernatural incident in the basement.

And Brisbane historian Jack Sim says it’s not just nonsense: ghosts are attracted to gruesome places such as courts.

Speaking to brisbanetimes.com.au, a female security guard at the court complex said she was certain ghosts roamed the building.

During night shift she often sees the chair in Court 21 slowly spinning as if someone was sitting in it.

“There’s no draught in there, no way that any breeze is causing that,” she said.

Other court sources say Court 21 used to be the court used by an old judge who died from a heart attack and the spinning chair is his spirit haunting his old workplace.

Another worker says in Court 21 and next door in Court 22, the duress alarm repeatedly goes off and when the room is unlocked and checked out, there’s not a soul around.

One guard tells how two years ago two painters were in a sealed-off room in the building’s basement doing maintenance work when, they claimed, a gust of icy cold wind “whooshed” past them.

“They were quick out of there and never came back,” said a court source.

“They were convinced there was something freaky going on down there.”

One night as one security officer manned the front desk, he heard a nearby elevator ‘ding’ and then the doors open as if someone was about to get out on to the ground floor.

No one was in the lift, but moments later heard the hand dryer go off in the nearby public bathroom. Again, no one there.

“Then about a minute after that the exit doors just started to rattle rattle rattle, as if someone had grabbed the handles and was desperately trying to get out,” he said.

“It got me worked up all right. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

The worker said he often felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up while he was walking around the building on night shift.

“You get the feeling someone’s right behind you and when you turn around of course there’s nothing there,” he said.

“But I do think there are ghosts around here, for sure.”

Another court staffer often in the building after hours said portraits of old judges on the walls and plastic dummies dressed in 1800s clothes as part of an historical display on the second floor certainly did not help him to forget the haunted rumours.

“A few times those faces have given me a scare,” he said.

“Also one of the elevators, the one which goes to the basement, seems to be possessed with all its door slamming and doors staying jammed open, that sort of thing.”

Horror historian Jack Sim said he had heard many stories about the Supreme and District Court building being haunted.

A stop at the building, on the corner of George and Adelaide streets, is included in Ghost Tours he conducts in the city.

“The court building is such a dark place with so much drama and so much of our most gruesome criminal history has been played out there,” he said.  “It’s a place where stories of violence and horror have been heard and ghosts are often drawn to these sort of places. Their spirits get trapped there.”

Mr Sim, author of the book Haunted Brisbane, has interviewed several staffers who claimed to have witnessed ghost activity in the building, particularly in the basement.

He said the workers believed the ghosts belonged to prisoners who died in the cells of the original court building built in 1876.

The structure was burnt down by an arsonist in 1968 but some of the original basement cells were kept and form part of today’s court building, he said.

“It’s an amazing place in the history of Queensland,” he said.