Old Charleston Jail

The Old Charleston Jail stands on land set aside in 1680, at the city’s founding, for institutions serving “the poor, the sick, and the dispossessed” – a poorhouse, a hospital, burial grounds and, later, a workhouse where enslaved people were confined and punished. Built in 1802 as a four-storey prison crowned by an octagonal tower, it gained a fireproof cell wing by Robert Mills in 1822 and Romanesque Revival remodelling in 1855. The 1886 earthquake wrecked the tower and top floor, which were removed, leaving the battered, castle-like building seen today.

For 137 years it held the city’s accused and condemned: high-seas pirates awaiting the gallows in 1822; four white men convicted of aiding Denmark Vesey’s planned uprising that year (tradition places Vesey himself here, though no document confirms it); and, during the Civil War, prisoners of war including Black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts captured at Fort Wagner in 1863. Before the war, enslaved people awaiting sale were held in the yard. Most inmates who died here died of disease, but executions took place in the yard as well. The jail closed in 1939.

Its most famous prisoner is the subject of its most famous ghost story. John and Lavinia Fisher, members of a gang of highwaymen operating around the Five Mile and Six Mile houses north of the city, were arrested in 1819 and hanged in February 1820. Later legend made Lavinia America’s first female serial killer, poisoning guests at a murderous inn and going to the gallows in a wedding dress with a defiant last line. The court record is plainer: the Fishers were convicted of highway robbery, then a capital crime – not murder – and historians doubt that Lavinia killed anyone.

After decades as a crumbling landmark, and a ghost-tour favourite since Bulldog Tours began its haunted jail tour in 2004, the building was bought in 2016 and renovated at a reported cost of $15 million as an event venue and offices called Twenty-One Magazine. Ghost tours still bring visitors into its cells after dark, and paranormal TV has made it one of the best-known haunted buildings in the South.

Guides and visitors describe a woman in white – usually identified as Lavinia Fisher – on the stairs and in the cells, disembodied voices and moans, footsteps and footprints in the dust, sudden smells, touches, and equipment failing. Photographs taken on tours sometimes show shapes that visitors interpret as figures.

The ground-floor cells and hallways used on tours, the stairwells, the upper floors where the most serious offenders were held, and the yard where the gallows stood.

The jail is a staple of Charleston’s busy ghost-tour scene and has been featured by the Travel Channel and other television programmes. The Fisher legend has inspired books, including Bruce Orr’s Six Miles to Charleston, songs and countless “first female serial killer” articles.