Monte Cristo Homestead
Homestead Lane
Junee, New South Wales, Australia
Tel: 61 (02) 6924-1637
Website: www.montecristo.com.au
Monte Cristo is a late Victorian-era mansion that was built in 1884. The home sits high on the hill overlooking the New South Wales town of Junee and stands a testament to its builder's, Christopher William Crawley, financial empire. The mansion's religious name and grand stature are contrasted with a dark past that has led some ghost hunters to call Monte Cristo Australia's most haunted house.
Reginald Ryan has owned the Monte Cristo since 1963 and is an expert on the home's history. He knows all about some of the cruelty that went on at mansion. He said, "There was a girl pushed off the balcony. She was a maid and was pregnant at the time, and she died [from the fall]. One of the young boys that was working and boarding here didn't get up for work one morning, and the boss said, 'Come to work,' and the boy said he was too sick. The boss thought he was acting and set fire to the straw mattress, and the boy didn't get out in time and was burned to death."
The Crawleys had a history of treating their servants poorly—whether by cruel words, beatings, and possibly worse. After Christopher Crawley's death in 1910, his wife, Elizabeth Lydia Crawley, became a shut-in. She confined herself to an upstairs bedroom that she had converted into a chapel. She lived for 23 more years and only left the property on a handful of occasions the rest of her days.
Matt Bowden of the Australian Ghost Hunters Society (AGHS) visited Monte Cristo in 2001. Bowden said, "I experienced a few cold spots—especially in a room called the Drawing Room, where the lady of the house, Mrs. Crawley, would sit and sew. I experienced a cold spot in the corner of that room. At the time, there was a psychic on our tour, and she informed me that Mrs. Crawley was sitting in a chair next to where I was standing. I didn't see it, I couldn't exactly feel her presence as such, but I certainly felt a definite cold spot. I actually had a digital thermometer with me at the time—a piece of my ghost hunting equipment—and there certainly was a drop in temperature when I looked at the reading."
According to Ryan, there are at least 10 ghosts haunting Monte Cristo. Some psychics who visited the estate in the late 1990s for an Australian television show felt a woman who was murdered in the house was among the 10. Though no records of a murdered woman have been found there, it is possible that if something did happen, the Crawleys were held in such high regard that the local police probably wouldn't have asked too many questions. Other ghosts include members of the Crawley family and some of their many servants.