A PARANORMAL investigator recently visited Euroa to scope out local “haunts” for future ghost tours, including a house on De Boos Street, the Seven Creeks Hotel, the North Eastern Hotel, Polly McQuinns and Mount Wombat.

Euroa friends Amanda Watkins and Michael O’Connor joined the excursion with Shepparton investigator Clive Wooley of CASPA, which stands for “Country Assessment Study of Paranormal Activity”.

Ms Watkins chose the spots based on previous experiences, feelings and (in the case of Polly McQuinns) stories.

“I used to work at the Sevens,” she explained.

“When everything's nice and quiet, you see a few things around and hear things, [like] a certain door that squeaks when there's no one around.”

She would also see a shadow in a mirror, “like they’re walking past it”.

At the Northo, Ms Watkins said, “I just feel like there’s a young boy on the balcony” on the De Boos Street side.

She said the ghost of Polly McQuinn had long been rumoured to haunt the Strathbogie waterhole bearing his/her name, and as for Mount Wombat, it had “just always creeped me out”.

Ms Watkins’ first paranormal experience was at the Euroa Flour Mill when she was about 12, during work experience.

“You just felt like someone was watching you, and you could sort of see the shadow in the corner of your eye,” she said.

De Boos Street is a regular haunt for the Euroa resident.

Ms Watkins once saw a young girl there, wearing “old pressed white clothes” and surrounded by trees, but the girl and trees had vanished the next time she was there, she said.

Her friend, Michael O’Connor, has had fewer spooky experiences, but he once saw “somebody… where they shouldn't have been at the time” at the former Amaroo nursing home in Euroa.

The CASPA investigator, Clive Wooley, said the tour of Euroa and surrounds had been “fantastic”.

“The pubs were the main ones – we had feelings there; well, I had feelings,” he said.

Spirits tend to haunt pubs because “it was most probably their happy place,” Mr Wooley said.

“They go to that happy place, where they can feel like they can have a drink and have a good time.

“I'd say about 98 percent of the pubs have all got spirits in them.”

The ghost hunter claims to have investigated incredible incidents in the Goulburn Valley region.

“[At] this kindergarten in the GV area, the adults were watching the children, and the children were all playing… and you see this child hanging onto this other child's hand, and next minute he goes through the wall, and one child just hits the wall and doesn't go no further,” he said.

Mr Wooley said he could not reveal more because of confidentiality, claiming the selling price of a property plummets when it is said to be haunted.

“We went to a house where this lady's grandson wouldn't sleep in his room because of a policeman,” he continued.

“I thought, ‘gee, that's strange’ – then we did a little bit of homework.

“We worked out it was the grandmother's father, who was in the air force, and he was dressed in military uniform, so that made him look like a policeman.

“We just let the child know… there was a great grandfather coming to visit him to see if they're alright, so then he could move on.”

But despite the allure of these fantastic tales, it is unlikely Mr Wooley will host paranormal pub tours in Euroa.

Finbar Murphy, whose family owns the Sevens and Northo pubs, said he is “not really” interested.

“I've never felt anything there… I believe that people can interpret feelings that they have how they like,” Mr Murphy said.

“People are drawn to [pubs] because they're public buildings,” he added.

“No one's going to go knock on someone's house and say, ‘can I wander around and look for ghosts?’

“They can do it [at pubs] because it's a public house.”