The Devil’s Room: the Haunting Grandeur of the Shamrock Hotel

In the heart of Bendigo stands a four-storey monument to 1800s opulence: the Shamrock Hotel. Since 1854, this grand dame of gold rush-era hospitality located on Pall Mall has survived fires, reconstruction, royal visits – and, some say, never truly been vacated of its earliest guests.

What began as The Exchange Hotel, catering to weary gold miners, quickly transformed into "The Shamrock" in 1855. With its lacework balconies, terrazzo tiles, and colonnaded staircases, the Shamrock wasn’t just a hotel – it was a statement. By the 1890s, it had been completely rebuilt into a towering Second Empire masterpiece under the direction of architect William Vahland, crowned with a mansard roof and wrapped in Victorian filigree. It was designed not just to rival Melbourne’s Grand Hotel – but to outshine it.

And yet, beneath all the grandeur, something lingers.

The fourth floor remains virtually untouched since the gold rush era. Unrenovated, unpolished, and eerily still, it carries the silence of another time. The rooms are heavy with history. Shadows move inexplicably, and disembodied voices drift down the hallway like smoke through floorboards. Phantom footsteps have been reported pacing between rooms, and lights are said to flicker without cause. The stories are so persistent that Paranormal Adventures Australia now run regular ghost tours of the fourth floor. According to Paranormal Adventures Australia’s Soula Raven Vaitsis:

“Upstairs has not been touched at all, it remains as it was... and the spirits still linger there.”

An early stop on the tour is The Devil’s Room. Late one night in 1884, a chilling scene unfolded outside the hotel when a housemaid, Jane O’Brien, hurled herself from a third-storey window. Witnesses leaving a Salvation Army service reported hearing a scream and the rustle of tree branches before Jane’s body fell from the elm near the hotel’s entrance. Miraculously, she survived, later telling those who rushed to help her, “They came for me, and they will come for me again.” Her words, and the ghostly circumstances of the fall, quickly stirred speculation among the gathered crowd.

O’Brien, described as nervous and superstitious, had been unwell for days, suffering from what was then called “hysteria” and confined to her room. The recent death of the Reverend JJ Stephenson from consumption to whom she had previously tended may have triggered her distress, and “religious mania”. Her leap from the window – over 30 feet above the ground – was broken by the branches of an elm tree, likely saving her life.

The Independent Newspaper reported that:

“The girl herself, who is unquestionably insane states that she got out through two rooms, which she called the “Devil’s rooms”, that the reason she got out was because she saw two furnaces and a girl standing near her, told her they wanted to burn her. She said “oh well, I’ll escape”, and got out of the room. She was looking for “the door”, and thought that she had found it when she toppled over the balcony onto the street.

We used KII meters and cat balls in this room, attempting to get answers from Ms O’Brien, but to no avail. Hopefully this means she has found peace since her moment of insanity. Or perhaps the size of our Saturday night group was simply too overwhelming.

Staff admit the hotel is categorically haunted, and locals confess to seeing figures appear in the unoccupied fourth floor windows. Many describe the bad feelings that arise from just being near the building.

Once nearly demolished in the 1970s, the Shamrock was saved by the state government and later restored at a cost of $2.5 million. Still, the top storey remains unaltered.

As I attempted to sleep that night in the Royal Princess Suite, voices carried in from the balcony, floorboards creaked overhead, and stories from the tour floated through my feverish mind. The Shamrock may no longer be the height of luxury, but it remains the most storied.

Read more about the Shamrock Hotel in Issue 11 of Unknowing.