One of Ballarat's oldest and most prestigious hotels continues to lure a diverse range of clientele thanks to an intriguing past brimming with mischief as well as tragedy.
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Craig's Royal Hotel on Lydiard Street is said to host a range of paranormal phenomena - enough to make it the site of an upcoming 'paranormal sleepover' run by the ghostbusters at KynetonParanormal.
Senior history lecturer at Federation University Dr David Waldron told The Courier the "extraordinary" 170-year-old hotel was indeed the setting for some of the city's most famous folklore.
The best-known ghost story is that of former hotel owner Walter Craig, who is said to haunt the halls to this day.
The story goes that Mr Craig, who was heavily involved in horse racing, had a mysterious dream about a jockey winning the 1870 Melbourne Cup on Craig's horse 'Nimbleboot' while wearing a black arm band.
"The black arm kept coming to him," Dr Waldron said.
"Then he died before the race, but as he predicted, Nimblefoot won the Melbourne Cup that year.
"So there's a story of the place being haunted by the ghost of Walter Craig coming out of that.
"It's been around and discussed in the papers for a long, long time, almost since 1870.
"People would talk about seeing a gentleman in 19th century clothes that'd disappear when you approached or seeing a shadowy figure walking the halls at night, that kind of thing.
"I think it just connects us back to that tragedy of him dying comparatively young and of course dying just before he won the Melbourne Cup - he missed his moment of triumph."
Then there's the story of teenage servant Winnifred Crabb, whose name is etched into a hotel windowsill.
It's said if you stand in the right spot and look out the window to the Royal Bank across the road, Winnifred herself will stare back at you.
Spooky, considering she's said to have died in 1887 after the lover that impregnated her - the young son of the bank manager - refused to support her in raising the child.
"People say she overheard the bank manager talking to his son and his son saying he had no intention of marrying her, she was just a fling on the side and he'd marry the proper lady he was supposed to," Dr Waldron said.
"So she committed suicide, but you can still see her face in the window."
While Mr Craig's story is based on true events, Winnifred's story is harder to verify.
Dr Waldron said variations of the story appear in many historical locations, suggesting it is more likely a symbolic tale, used to highlight social issues of the time.
"When I've looked into it, Winnifred Crabb was actually the daughter of one of the hotel employees and I think she was probably a bored teenager and the story's just grown through Chinese Whispers.
"I think the point of the story is more a statement of an issue that, particularly poor, women have always had to face: if you become pregnant out of wedlock and disgraced, that's the end of your life in those days."
Dr Waldron's favourite Craig's Hotel story isn't a ghost story at all.
The Shenandoah Pirates and Buccaneers Ball was a raucous gathering in 1865, where Ballaratians cavorted with American Confederate Army officers, causing the Victorian colonial government major embarrassment as they undermined British neutrality in the US Civil War.
"Cornelius Hunt, the crew's second in command, wrote in his diary 'Never a greater time has been had by a man than was given to me by the women of Ballarat'," Dr Waldron said.
"The officers had to keep a close eye on their gold buttons because the Ballarat ladies were snipping them off and wearing them on chains around their necks."
Subsequent owners have embraced the scandalous event as an annual tradition until recently.
The hotel remains a fixture of Ballarat, hosting popular high tea events, as well as many high-profile guests - formerly including British royal family members and famed American writer Mark Twain.
"It's certainly the grandest early hotel we can still visit today," Dr Waldron said.
"It keeps us in the present connected right back to the earliest days of the city - as far at least colonial occupation goes."
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