Haunting true crime stories of the supernatural and paranormal
Forget Amityville, Annabelle and even the Connecticut home that inspired The Conjuring - the most haunted home that world-famous ghost hunter Lorraine Warren ever stepped foot in was a three-bedroom brick home in Gladesville, Sydney.
In his award-winning narrative style, James Phelps, author of the bestselling Australia's Hardest Prison series, will re-create the thrilling histories of some of Australia's most haunted places, including Aradale Mental Hospital and its horrifying 126-year history.
Featuring spine-tingling on-the-record accounts from those who have been at the centre of the hauntings, Ghost Stories exposes the secret and ghoulish history of some of Australia's most famous buildings.
'Pentridge was a place of murder and mayhem. A bluestone hell. The worst prison Australia has ever seen.' Andrew Kirby, former inmate
Welcome to Pentridge, Australia's most infamous prison.
In the long-awaited return to his bestselling true crime series on life behind bars, James Phelps has finally turned his attention to HM Prison Pentridge - the bluestone behemoth that was home to Victoria's worst criminals for more than a century.
Beginning with a gang of guards and a handful of convicts, for more than 145 years Pentridge housed a who's who of Australian criminals and Melbourne's underworld including Ned Kelly and Mark 'Chopper' Read.
From solving the mystery of Ned Kelly's missing skull to the shocking truth about who really cut off Chopper's ears - Australia's Most Infamous Jail includes true and uncensored accounts of inmates (including a convicted serial killer, a mass murderer and the real Romper Stomper), guards, archaeologists and even a former governor-general. This is gritty, true crime storytelling, on steroids - about what life was really like behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge.
The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich.
On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers ...
Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence.
This is the untold story of how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I.
The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich.
On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers ...
Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence.
This is the untold story of how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I.
Australia's Number 1 True Crime Writer on Australia's Greatest Gold Robbery.
On 15 June 1862, a gang of bushrangers held up a gold escort at Eugowra, just east of Forbes, NSW. They escaped with a pile of cash and 77 kilograms of gold, worth about $10 million today. It remains the largest gold robbery in Australian history.
In this riveting re-creation of the events, James Phelps finally tells the full story of how Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall, John O'Meally, Johnny Gilbert, Henry Manns, Alexander Fordyce, John Bow and Dan Charters planned and executed the robbery - and what happened to all that gold. Australian Heist is a thrilling, fast-paced and thoroughly modern take on one of the most extraordinary episodes in the nation's history, by Australia's number-one true-crime writer.
Australia's Number 1 True Crime Writer on Australia's Greatest Gold Robbery. On 15 June 1862, a gang of bushrangers held up a gold escort at Eugowra, just east of Forbes, NSW. They escaped with a pile of cash and 77 kilograms of gold, worth about $10 million today. It remains the largest gold robbery in Australian history.
In this riveting re-creation of the events, James Phelps finally tells the full story of how Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall, John O'Meally, Johnny Gilbert, Henry Manns, Alexander Fordyce, John Bow and Dan Charters planned and executed the robbery - and what happened to all that gold. Australian Heist is a thrilling, fast-paced and thoroughly modern take on one of the most extraordinary episodes in the nation's history, by Australia's number-one true-crime writer.
James Phelps explores all the questions that we can only barely imagine the answers to about Australia's toughest jails. This is a brutal and honest account of life inside Australia's toughest jails, and all is not as you would expect. Do women rape each other? Do guards really trade 40-cent phone cards for sex? And do you think the most dangerous inmate in Australia is a man? This is the most comprehensive ever account of women's prison life yet. You will hear about rapists, drug dealers, fallen celebrities and Australia's most feared prisoner: the self-mutilating murderer, Rebecca Butterfield.
Award-winning author and journalist James Phelps profiles Australia's most notorious criminals: these are true accounts of Australia's hardest inmates, in their own words. From Martin Bryant - perpetrator of our country's worst massacre at Port Arthur twenty years ago, to alleged hitman and undisputed hardman 'Goldie,' feared by both prisoners and guards alike, Phelps tracks the rise of ISIS gangs, the lethal underground drug and tobacco trade and the threat of contraband phones. From the shiv fights and brawls to the white-collar criminal beat-downs, this is an account like never before.
An unprecedented spate of murders in the 1990s earned Goulburn Jail the ominous name 'The Killing Fields'. Inmates sentenced or transferred to the 130-year-old towering menace declared they had been given a death sentence. Serial killer Ivan Milat, the 'Terror Five' militants who plotted attacks across Sydney in 2005, Brothers 4 Life founder Bassam Hamzy and gang rapist Bilal Skaf are just a few of the inmates inside Australia's most murderous prison - meet them all here in Phelps' bestselling book.
