Built in 1802 and established as the Charleston City Jail (now called the Old City Jail), the eerie, haunting old building that still stands at 21 Magazine Street in Charleston has quite a harrowing past. But that’s not all: prior to the construction of the Old City Jail, the four acres on which it sits served as one of the first official Potter’s Fields for the city. In 1698, long before the jail was built, the city began sending indigent residents or sailors or travelers who died with no family nearby over to be buried in unmarked, anonymity forever.
The Charleston Public Library has a detailed article about it here. According to the article, in 1746 brick barracks were built on top of those graves — and then in 1802, the jail was built.
All of this is to say that the jail, itself, and the purported 14,000 people who died while being held at the jail when it was in service between 1802 and 1939, doesn't even scratch the surface of the number of souls that died and/or are buried here in a nameless, forever oblivion.
Seen here in a photo taken between 1870 and 1890, at least seventy years after the jail opened for business, the structure was a foreboding real life apparition of things to come.
At that point, the jail had four floors. The fourth floor and the tall octagonal tower seen here were removed after the 1886 earthquake for safety reasons and were never replaced. An 1855 addition altered the building with a large, three-story octagonal wing to the rear. It still stands with the remains of the original first three floors of the jail.
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Over the years since the Old City Jail's closure in 1939 it has been mostly unoccupied. For roughly the last two decades Bulldog Tours has conducted ghost tours inside the old jail, walking through with flashlights in the dark and discovering paranormal activity throughout the building .
Television ghost hunt shows have spent the night in the jail and have heard the voice of one of the jail's most famous "residents," Lavinia Fisher. Fisher is recognized as America's first female serial killer. She died here -- along with her husband. So... that's two of the 14,000 souls that reportedly passed on the property.
It's also reported that some of the last old-time 19th-century high seas pirates were imprisoned here while they awaited hanging. Sometimes, hangings took place in the backyard of the prison.
Probably right on top of those unmarked graves the city began filling in 1698.
Other times, however, the interest was so great in seeing certain prisoners get hanged they were marched over to where White Point Garden now sits along the battery where they were hanged with a crowd of onlookers.
Others were simply marched up onto the gallows in the jail's back yard, tightened into the noose and down they went. But not all 14,000 inmates that died here were hung. The jail was riddled with disease. A sentence to stay in the jail was often a death sentence, even for the slightest misdemeanor.
In modern times, the jail was purchased in 2000 by the American College of the Building Arts, which occupied the jail until 2016. In 2003, Bulldog Tours began conducting ghost tours of the haunted structure.
The company has temporarily suspended tours of the Old City Jail, according to their website. And there's a reason for that. Until just this year, the Old City Jail remained the largest property in the historic district of Charleston that was not restored.
All of that changed in 2016, though, when the property was sold to a division of Landmark Enterprises, a local company that's been planning an extensive restoration of the Old City Jail. The efforts should keep the original structure's integrity intact while converting the space to offices and more.
The company's portfolio calls the project a "rehabilitation." No timeline for completion of the project has been announced, but the company has indicated the project has an enormous scope since the building is so dilapidated. You can learn more at this link.
As for those 14,000 souls — including the ones that reportedly have yet to pass over and remain on the property — well, any amateur or professional ghost hunter will tell you that construction only makes ghosts get much more active. And as for the unmarked graves of the indigent residents of Charleston as well as travelers and more that were buried in unmarked holes in the ground on this four-acre plot of land long before the jail was built? There’s been no mention of reinterring the remains that are still accessible.
Did you know so many people reportedly died at the Old City Jail or that long before the jail was built these four acres were one of the very first official public burial grounds established by Charleston?
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