Aradale : the making of a haunted asylum
- Authors: Waldron, David , Waldron, Sharn , Buchanan, Nathaniel
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- Description: First built in 1867, the remarkable Gothic structure of the former Ararat Lunatic Asylum, colloquially known as Aradale, has overlooked the regional town of Ararat for over 150 years. Throughout its history it has seen remarkable transformations in the history of Australian psychiatry and western society's treatment of the mentally ill, and it has participated in some of their darkest scandals. Today in popular press, the labyrinthine complex is commonly acclaimed as 'Australia's most haunted building' and is home to a flourishing dark tourism industry boasting tens of thousands of visitors a year. This book explores the history of the former asylum, and examines what is it that makes a place 'haunted' in the popular imagination, and what it is about hauntings that so invariably connects them with problematic histories.
Goldfields and the gothic : A hidden heritage & folklore
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Generations of Australians have grown up with the legend of Eureka and the familiar images of the gold rush in central Victoria. However, underneath these commonly known stories lies a stranger and darker past. As well as colonists, pioneers, soldiers and rebal miners, the colonial goldfields were home to spiritualists, secret societies, ghost-hoxers, bunyip legends and murderers. There are also the stories of those often forgotten in the goldfield histories - Indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, homosexuals, and the mentally ill. 'Goldfields and the gothic' is an anthology by local historians of the long buried legends, histories and folklore of the Victorian goldfields and their legacy today. Every historian has a collection of strange, buried pieces of history; this work begins the task of bringing them into the light.
Snarls from the tea-tree :Big cat folklore
- Authors: Waldron, David , Townsend, Simon
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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Shock! The black dog of Bungay: A case study in local folklore
- Authors: Waldron, David , Reeve, Christopher
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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The sign of the witch : Modernity and the pagan revival
- Authors: Waldron, David
- Date: 2008
- Type: Book
- Relation: Ritual Studies Monograph Series
- Full Text:
- Description: When I first wrote the dissertation that was reconstructed as this book, the arena of Pagan Studies and Wicca, as one of a plethora of New Religious Movements emerging into the cultural mainstream during the 1980s, was still somewhat a fringe area of study. Indeed, neo-Pagan revivalist movements, of which Wicca is the most predominant, were still very much the target of vitriol and scare mongering particularly by religiously inspired political conservatives. Republican congressman in the United State for example, after discovering that many self-proclaimed witches served in the U.S army at military basein Fort Hood made the claim, "We believe they are satanic and that they do not deserve to have any place in Fort Hood". Republican politician Storm Thurmond asked in the senate "What's next? Will armored divisions be forced to travel with sacrificial animals for satanic rituals?" "From Introduction"
- Description: 2003006683