Prisoners and the condemned
17 places
Old prisons draw large crowds, and at some of them real history and entertainment sit side by side. Eastern State Penitentiary, Yuma Territorial Prison, Bodmin Jail and Alcatraz all now welcome paying visitors, and several hold ghost tours or night events.
Behind the stories there are often real people. Selina Wadge was hanged at Bodmin in 1878, and Kilmainham Gaol's stories are linked to the leaders shot in its yard in 1916. Other tales have weak foundations: the National Park Service does not endorse the ghost lore of Alcatraz. When a name or date has no record behind it, we say so.
Where they are reported
Eastern State Penitentiary
Pennsylvania, United States
Faces of Cellblock 4 · Voices of Cellblock 12
Philadelphia's 1829 solitary-confinement prison, once home to Al Capone, now a ruined museum whose cellblocks are tied to faces, shadows and voices.
Great Salt Lake
Utah, United States
Jean Baptiste, the exiled grave robber
Utah's Great Salt Lake: water babies, a horse-headed monster, the whale hoax, Fremont Island's exiled grave robber and the Saltair resort ghost stories.
Whaley House
California, United States
Yankee Jim Robinson
Old Town San Diego's 1857 Whaley House, built on the ground where 'Yankee Jim' Robinson was hanged, is known for heavy footsteps and Whaley family ghosts.
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary
California, United States
Abie "Butcher" Maldowitz · Al Capone's banjo · The 1946 escapees · The presence of cell 14-D
The San Francisco Bay island prison (1934-1963), whose ghost lore of cell 14-D and Capone's banjo comes from books and TV. The Park Service doesn't endorse it.
Holyrood Palace
Scotland, United Kingdom
Bald Agnes
Holyrood Palace, the royal residence at the foot of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, where David Rizzio was murdered in 1566 and legend says his bloodstain returns.
Burlington County Prison
New Jersey, United States
Joel Clough
Mount Holly's 1811 stone jail, used until 1965 and now a museum: Robert Mills's reform design, the Joel Clough legend and the 2008 Ghost Hunters visit.
Goodrich Castle
England, United Kingdom
The prisoner of Macbeth's Tower
Ruined Herefordshire castle wrecked by the Roaring Meg mortar in 1646; legend says Alice Birch and her Royalist lover drowned fleeing and still cry in storms.
Kilmainham Gaol
Dublin, Ireland
The executed leaders of 1916
Dublin's 1796 jail, where the 1916 Rising leaders were shot. Restoration volunteers told of chapel lights and phantom steps; the museum sticks to history.
Yuma Territorial Prison
Arizona, United States
Death-row inmates · John Ryan of Cell 14
Arizona's Yuma Territorial Prison (1876-1909), now a state park: the real history, the pinching girl, Cell 14, the Dark Cell and its TV visits.
Bodmin Jail
England, United Kingdom
Selina Wadge
Bodmin Jail, Cornwall: 1779 prison where over 50 were hanged, said to be haunted by Selina Wadge, and site of Most Haunted's 'Kreed Kafer' hoax.
Old Charleston Jail
South Carolina, United States
Lavinia Fisher
Charleston's jail of 1802-1939, once home to pirates, Lavinia Fisher and Civil War POWs, now toured nightly as one of South Carolina's most haunted sites.
Penitentiary of New Mexico
New Mexico, United States
Cell Block 3 and 4 activity · The man in green
Old Main at the Penitentiary of New Mexico, scene of the 1980 riot that left 33 inmates dead, where visitors report shadows, voices and slamming doors.
Edinburgh Castle
Scotland, United Kingdom
Prisoners of the vaults
Edinburgh’s royal fortress, with well-documented sieges and a war prison in its vaults. Its headless drummer and piper have no old source that we found.
Ohio State Reformatory
Richland, Ohio, United States
West attic presence
Victorian Gothic prison in Mansfield, Ohio, closed 1990 and best known as a Shawshank Redemption location. We traced no ghost story before its 1995 takeover.
El Adobe de Capistrano
California, United States
Ghost of the jail cell
A San Juan Capistrano restaurant in two Spanish-era adobes, including an 1812 jail whose cell, now a wine cellar, is said to be haunted, plus a headless friar.
Tennessee State Prison
Tennessee, United States
Executed prisoners of the electric chair · Unnamed inmates and guards
Tennessee State Prison in Nashville: an 1898 penitentiary and execution site, closed in 1992, with ghost stories of clanking bars, screams and footsteps.
Central Unit
Texas, United States
Former inmates of Central Unit
Former Texas prison farm in Sugar Land built on a convict-leasing sugar plantation, closed in 2011 and probed by Ghost Adventures for inmate spirits.
