The Grand Hotel at Goomeri shines out from the darkness on a cold South Burnett evening.
(ABC Wide Bay:Ross Kay)

Kristy, one of the bar staff, says the hotel can be a bit unnerving when you're closing up at the end of a long shift.

"Occasionally ... you feel like there is somebody wandering around, especially when you're here by yourself it can be quite intimidating place to be on your own at night," she said.

"One night I was locking up, I had a couple of plates to drop, and I was the only one here. I went into the kitchen ... and it literally felt like there was someone right behind me breathing down my neck.

"I dropped the plates and spun around thinking there was someone there, but there was no one.

"There are never any nasty things that go with it - it's just that feeling that there is something else here. And most of locals all joke about it."

Some of the apparitions people have reported seeing include a foul-mouthed barmaid, and a woman who stands smoking at the end of the bed.

"We had one guy stay upstairs one night and he said he could see a woman at the end of his bed smoking a cigarette and he could smell the smoke ... so that was kind of scary stuff," Kristy said.

"One of our old cleaners ... she told us all to stay away from the staircase, we couldn't figure out why. A new cleaner has since fallen down that staircase, she believes she was pushed by something."

"We had [another] cleaner here too - she had a whole stack of chairs fall off the stage just out of the blue for no reason.

"I think a lot people that have been here have actually experienced something."

But whether the explanations are ghostly or otherwise, it hasn't yet stopped people from staying at the hotel.

"We've never had anyone leave but we have had people request rooms that are less haunted than others," Kristy said.

"Some people are more susceptible to it, other people just laugh at us and say 'whatever'. The blokes don't seem to notice as much, it's mostly us barmaids experience something where they thought 'I don't know'."

Weight on the chest

Tony, a caller to ABC Wide Bay's Mornings program, says he had a number of experiences he hasn't been able to explain.

"Fred Brophy's pub at Cracow, that is definitely haunted. I woke up in the night with this great weight on my chest... felt as though I couldn't breathe," he said

"It took quite a bit to wake up and there was this grey 'apparition', is all I can call it. It was there and when I sort of struggled to get my breath back it disappeared through the door that was closed.

"There are things we can't explain, I don't know what you're going to call them, but if you want to visit or stay at a haunted hotel, go out to Cracow."

Source: ABC Wide Bay, Ross Kay and David Dowsett, July 21^st 2015
Originally published as: Ghost stories from Goomeri hotel