Local author JJ Carpenter is a “history nerd”, who’s latest book is based on a psychiatric hospital in Goulburn, talks to ELIZABETH KOVACS about ghosts good… and bad.

Author JJ Carpenter says most Canberrans have six degrees of separation between them and Goulburn’s Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital.

More commonly known as the Kenmore Asylum, the institution opened in 1894 to temporarily accommodate 140 patients. 

Housing more than 1400 patients at its peak in the ‘60s, the asylum was closed in 2003, although restless spirits are said to have been trapped within its walls. 

Kenmore Asylum is the subject of JJ’s latest novel, The Haunting of Kenmore Asylum. 

Set across three separate timelines in the 1910s, 1950s and in 2021, JJ’s story follows Nurse Harriet, a nurse sent to Kenmore Asylum in 1910; Nurse Bonnie, a trainee nurse learning the ropes in 1950, and two young ghost hunters ,who explore the ruins of the infamous haunted asylum in hopes of going viral on YouTube. 

“I love history,” says JJ. 

“I’m a bit of a history nerd, but I’m more into personal histories and stories, and being able to capture that.

“Being so close to home, that was incredibly special.” 

JJ’s novel is preceded by her series The Corner of Her Eye, which explores Australian ghost stories. It was this series that inspired her to write about Kenmore. 

“I was looking into an old hospital south of Sydney and in my research, I found out that a lot of advanced dementia patients were sent there after Kenmore,” she says. 

“I went down such a big rabbit hole, it was so fascinating that I couldn’t stop the more I looked into it.

“One thing I love to do is make sure people know about our history.” 

JJ’s characters are inspired by real patients and nurses who attended Kenmore and she conducted interviews with former nurses.

“The first people to read [the book] outside of my family were the nurses,” says JJ. 

She says she was encouraged to showcase a different side to historical psychiatric care. 

“When you read asylum horror, it’s all about how evil the nurses and doctors are and how they are deliberately hurting all these people, but the meaning of the asylum is ‘safe place’, and that’s what I was trying to get at,” she says. 

“It wasn’t a safe place for a lot of people, but there were staff who really did try their best with what resources and systems they had to look after those people. 

“When I started talking to the nurses you could see in their faces how much they really cared about [the patients], and that really settled it for me, this was the story to be told from the nurses’ perspectives.” 

Exploring topics such as feminine rage and poor education in mental health, JJ says it was important to look at the ways people were treated at the time, including, but not limited to, husbands who would place their wives in psychiatric hospitals when they were tired of them! 

“Not all people are one way or another,” she says, in reference to whether all ghosts left at places such as Kenmore could be considered evil. 

“So why would we expect all of the spirits who are left behind to be malevolent or insane?

“Wouldn’t it be more like a reflection of humanity, as it is while we’re alive?”

Although JJ says she can’t define what makes a ghost – whether they are a sum of somebody’s memory, experience or ultimately, something else – she says she believes in them, as do many of the nurses who worked in Kenmore and other psychiatric wards and hospitals across Australia. 

“There’s a feeling that you get when you work there, almost like the building is alive.”

A section of the female portion of the asylum known as Ward 15 (also considered one of the asylum’s most haunted wards) burnt down in 2021, but JJ is sure that the spirits of Kenmore continue to lie in wait.

JJ Carpenter is at the Book Cow, Kingston, July 1. Tickets from humantix.