In September 1934, the body of a woman was discovered in a stormwater drain on the outskirts of Albury, New South Wales, dressed only in her pyjamas and so badly burnt that she was unrecognisable.

The case gained media attention from around the world, however the Pyjama Girl - as she became known as - remained unidentified for a decade. There are still questions surrounding whether the eventual identification of Linda Agostini is actually correct.

"They put her body on display in Sydney for a long time for people to go look at it, to see if they could recognise it because they didn't know who she was," Canberra Times columnist Tim the Yowie Man says.

"It's believed that between Albury and Sydney, when it was driven up, they stopped to rest here and they put the body downstairs, not in the morgue but in a sub-basement which is even cooler.

"There's no written record of that but the number of people I've spoken to when it was the Institute of Anatomy and now the Film and Sound Archive, they say that sub-basement, they either feel something or in some cases they've seen the face of a young lady. Many believe that it could be her."

The Pyjama Girl is the most commonly sited ghostly face at the archives, according to Tim. And he should know - he hosts popular ghost tours at the institute. However, it's not the only spooky entity that has apparently set up shop in the 1930s building.

Every room seems to have a story to tell. People talk about a little girl who lives in the archive's theatrette - specifically under the stage. Before the gratings were removed from the front of it, audience members would say they could see a little girl waving at them from behind the bars.

During Tim's photoshoot in the theatrette no little girl presented herself, but with camera equipment refusing to cooperate it did add a certain uneasiness to the visit.

As Tim puts it, "things are always different here".

Sure, the uneasiness could be put down to an over-active imagination, but even one of the archive's employees says she's a believer since working within the building.

The National Film and Sound Archive is regarded as one of the most haunted buildings in the country, a reputation Tim says came from its previous life as the Institute of Anatomy.

"When it was the Institute of Anatomy there were many human and animal skeletons and remains stuffed in glass jars and put on display - quite gory stuff and so the place has an uneasy history," he says.

"There is one room at the front of the building that used to be a laboratory and in that laboratory, war wounds from World War I were brought out and they were studied in the 1930s and 40s...It's known as the most haunted room in the building and people go in there and not only feel uneasy but things start moving around.

"You'll be sitting at a table and the glass that you're drinking out of will move by itself and smash on the floor. Films in anti-gravity film canisters that line part of the room will come out and be chucked around the room.

"Something in there is not at peace, and it's thought because of all the terrible circumstances that those people associated with the war wounds have died from."

Downstairs, in what was once one of the capital's earliest morgues, is a meeting room where people have reportedly felt like they've been pushed.

"There's a story of an electrical contractor being pushed up against the wall by an unknown force," Tim says.

And then there's the classical music heard from the courtyard. As a film and sound archive, it's not an outrageous idea for music to be playing, but while walking around the archive at night with only one other person, Tim heard the music.

Investigating the source, the pair walked from one side of the building to the other, with no luck. When they reached the opposite side of the building, the classical sounds simply stopped.

"We later found out that when the building started as the Institute of Anatomy there was a fellow called Sir Colin MacKenzie, who was the man who founded it, and his wife, Lady MacKenzie used to have Canberra's first Friday night drinks in the courtyard," Tim says.

"She would have classical music playing in that corner where the classical music stopped."

But Canberra's haunts are not limited to the archive.

Hotel Kurrajong was former prime minister Ben Chifley's residence when he was in Canberra during the 1940s, and apparently he's still there almost 70 years after he had a heart attack and died.

"There are many people who say they see his ghost in the particular room that he died in and they've done it up in the decor of his era," Tim says.

"Interestingly, the only people who seem to see it are those who aren't looking for it.

"People go there like ghosthunters who are hoping to get some sort of evidence - and by evidence most people see the ghostly image of a man who is standing in a suit, pointing towards the direction of Old Parliament House - but almost all people who experience it are people who don't know about it. Guests who just happen to hire out the room or first-time employees like cleaners."

The ghost of a dead prime minister is quite possibly the most Canberra thing to enter the afterlife. Except maybe for the reports of a ghost roaming the Department of Health offices in August 1951.

Numerous publications, including The Goulburn Evening Post, The Age and The Queensland Times, describe how two cleaners - who unsurprisingly chose to remain anonymous - had repeatedly seen the ghost of a woman dressed in a long robe and a cardigan at night. Both say how the "vague and misty" entity would disappear as soon as they talked to it.

And then there's Florrie Blundell at Blundells Cottage in Parkes, who died in an accident in 1892.

There are two versions of the story - because what's a good ghost story without a few unconfirmed details? On a cold August evening she was either too close to an iron or an open fireplace, which caused her clothes to catch alight.

"Only a few people have claimed to see her in the dark under the tree but a lot of people say they smell a terrible odour like burning human flesh," Tim says.

"I guess people have ghostly experiences in different ways, but at Blundells Cottage people will often claim that they smell something unusual there.

"Quite a few psychic mediums say that she likes people coming there and learning about her, and that's the only way that she can manifest herself to say 'Hey, I'm here'."

It may come as a surprise that while Tim is not a sceptic, he also doesn't consider himself to be a 100 per cent believer either. He's not even sure if he wants to find evidence either way to get him off the fence .

What he's captivated by is the intrigue ghost stories create. Even during his ghost tours, there's a clear line between fact and the unknown, mixing information from the building's nearly 90-year history with stories about its rumoured inhabitants.

"Just like I don't want to find a yowie - believe it or not - I don't want to find a Tasmanian tiger and I don't want to find a bunyip, I don't want to find that ghosts are definitely real or definitely not. I think the fun is in the journey and wherever that takes me," he says.

It all started with a trip to Bungendore's Carrington Inn in the mid-1990s. Tim was in the dining room with a group of friends when he and his friends saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

"We saw this man run at superhuman pace down the main hall of the old building at The Carrington and then disappear through a locked wooden door," he says.

"That was one of the first experiences I had where I couldn't explain what I had seen. A couple of my friends saw it as well and I think it was something that hooked me into delving into it more."

Obviously, Tim's experiences haven't stopped there.

Just last year he was driving home from Lerida Estate - along Federal Highway next to Lake George - when he saw a man on the side of the road.

"There was no car in sight, he was dressed in period costume - it looked like he was from the late 1800s - he had a lantern and he was fossicking through knee-to-waist-high grass on the side of the highway," he says.

"I thought 'what's going on?' and I stopped, and looked back and he wasn't there. I don't know how I could explain that, but weird things seem to happen on that stretch of highway."

Aside from the lake's disappearing act - which gives it an element of mystery as it is - the site is reportedly home to the supernatural. Most notably, a ghostly hitchhiker.

Story has it that people pick up a young girl in white along the highway and give her a lift to her grandmother's house in Queanbeyan. When they arrive, the grandmother informs the driver that the girl drowned in the lake decades ago, and - of course - it's at that point the apparition disappears.

"There's the so-called phantom hitchhiker which is more an urban legend, I think, than a real ghost," Tim says.

"That happens all around the world, so I don't know if there's much truth to it.

"It just gets carried on through the generations. That's the sort of thing you notice about ghost stories."