Five Places In Australia You Should Probably Stay The Hell Away From

We’ve been possessed by OUTCAST, the new series from the creator of  The Walking Dead on FX. You definitely, absolutely should not watch it.

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When we talk about travel, we’re generally speaking about places you just have to visit: the fancy hotels, pristine beaches and fun-filled cities that keep you well-stocked in Kodak moments and happy memories for years to come. There are, however, other kinds of travel for the ghoulish or easily bored; the sort of people who put The Amityville Horror on “to relax” and who probably have a red or black feature wall in their house.

And while you might think that the rest of the world has the patent on scary travel destinations — from bloodcurdlingly high rollercoasters and theme parks full of demonic clowns to “no fences” safari parks — Australia has a more than decent range of terrifying places to visit as well. Here are a few of the worst best:

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Melbourne Zombie Shuffle

Now in its eleventh year, the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle is the country’s most alarming public parade. And while you might sniff “so what? They’re just costumes,” there’s something hugely alarming about being surrounded by thousands of members of the walking dead. (Especially when those adorable zombie toddlers and dogs turn up for their annual dose of fake blood.)

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Monte Cristo Homestead

Though there is no shortage of ghost tours around Australia, none come close to the Monte Cristo Homestead in Junee, NSW — an unassuming estate which bills itself as “Australia’s Most Haunted House”. This is the site of a number of genuinely awful events over the past 100 years: a boy died in a fire in the stables, a maid fell from the balcony, and in the 1960s a gardener was fatally shot by a young man who was reportedly obsessed with Psycho. Those who stay overnight (yes, it has a B&B) have often reported visions, strange lights and ghostly presences in its rooms and hallways, and it’s even been used as a filming site for a local horror movie.

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Horror Movie Campout

What could be better than getting together with a few friends to watch some horror movies? Getting together with a few hundred friends, all dressed in terrifying costumes, in the middle of nowhere, to watch some horror movies at an outdoor cinema. This is the order of events at Horror Movie Campout: an annual festival of horror flicks that taps back into the most terrifying memories you have of telling ghost stories at school camp. If you’ve never been to an event featuring roaming “immersive scare actors” (a fixture at the Halloween theme parks of the US like Knott’s Scary Farm and Halloween Horror Nights), now’s your chance.

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Hanging Rock

Of course, the events of Joan Lindsay’s book Picnic At Hanging Rock and the accompanying film adaptation by Peter Weir were fiction. There is, however, something genuinely, metaphysically spooky about the rock formation where they were set. Maybe it’s always been that way. Maybe it’s a result of decades of culturally-enforced superstition. It could have a lot to do with the fact that, if you get separated from the rest of your party while on a walk there, there’s inevitably someone a few kilometres away yelling “MIRANDA!”

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Paracon Australia

Did you know Australia has its own paranormal convention? Yes, for those of you who’ve been studiously reading your dog-eared copy of Tobin’s Spirit Guide since Ghostbusters came out, this is the place to be. The annual conference was just held over the weekend at Katoomba’s Carrington Hotel, in the picturesque (and spooky?) Blue Mountains. It covered “UFO research, ghost-hunting theories and methods, Cryptozoology (Yowies and Bigfoot), mediumship, psychic phenomena, ET contact and much more”.

It’s not yet known if any paranormal occurrences occurred during the convention, but nothing says ‘perfect location for a series of sudden and terrifying unexplained events’ than a national gathering of paranormal experts.

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Feature image via Horror Movie Campout/Facebook.

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Stay safe by avoiding OUTCAST, the edgy new series from Robert Kirkman, which airs Saturday nights on FX. Possession is just the beginning…