ARE the tuberculosis sufferers who were patients at the Imperial Hotel 120 years ago still there today?

 

Staff at the Picton watering hole have called in a specialist ghost researcher to monitor the unexplainable encounters they have had at the hotel.

 

Bistro manager Karl Klein said he was the biggest sceptic of all until he had two encounters recently.

 

``One day I was doing paperwork and I jumped and turned around because I felt someone looking over my shoulder but nobody was there'' he said.

 

``Another time I was in the bottleshop and looked up at the balcony and saw a white curtain move and thought somebody was opening the door because we have no curtains. Again, there was nobody up there.''

 

The Imperial Hotel was built in the 1860s and was a hospital for tuberculosis sufferers in 1877.

 

Mr Klein said a medium visited the hotel many years ago.

 

``She walked halfway across the top floor and then walked out very fast,'' he said. ``When she got downstairs she said: `They're all over the place up there and on the balcony and they're all wearing white'.''

 

Mr Klein said he believed the hotel was haunted by patients who died in the 1870s.

 

``In the old days they brought them out on the train and then through the tunnel that connects Picton station to our cellar underground,'' he said.

 

``That's how they got them in when they were sick because they didn't want to contaminate anybody.''

 

Other staff members have had similar encounters.

 

Tanya Klein, Mr Klein's wife, says she has felt her hair being pulled, and Ann, their daughter, has had a door shut by itself behind her.

 

``That door is very hard to close and I know that it would not shut by itself,'' Mr Klein said.

 

``And our chef Tony said that one day he scratched one side of his head and then felt something scratch the other side of his head straight after.''

 

The ghost researcher will soon visit the hotel with special equipment as part of a documentary.