Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon

The Old Exchange stands at the foot of Broad Street, where Charleston’s harbour once ended. South Carolina’s colonial government built it between 1767 and 1771, to a design credited to William Rigby Naylor, as a customs house, public market and meeting place, and it also served as a jail. In 1774 confiscated tea was stored in the building, and Revolutionary leaders met there. After Britain captured Charleston in 1780, the army made the Exchange a barracks, and the basement became a military prison; a 2012 study documented at least 120 prisoners, with many more unnamed, and some British soldiers were also held. In 1788 the convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution for South Carolina met in the building.

The building’s later life was as an exchange and post office. The plaza just north of it was a site of enslaved people’s sales. Union shells hit it during the Civil War, and it was later abandoned. The Daughters of the American Revolution received it in 1913, and it served as an army headquarters in the First World War and as a canteen and Coast Guard post in the Second. In 1965 workers discovered the 1698 Half-Moon Battery beneath it. The building was listed on the National Register in 1969 and became a National Historic Landmark in 1973, and it opened as a museum in 1981.

The ghost stories belong mostly to the dungeon and to one upstairs figure. Tour companies and local hotels speak of the spirits of long-dead prisoners, including pirates, who are said to remain in the lower level: cold spots, voices, a feeling of dread, and shapes in the dark. The best-known legend is that of Colonel Isaac Hayne, a South Carolina planter and militia officer who, after swearing an oath to the Crown and later rejoining the rebellion, was captured and hanged on 4 August 1781. As South Carolina Educational Television tells it, he was led in chains past his sister’s house on his way to the gallows, and when she begged him to come back he replied, “I will, if I can.” Local retellings say his footsteps can still be heard.

Little of this is documented. The Wikipedia article on Hayne notes that several details of his capture and parole carry reliability tags, and the sources consulted for this entry do not say exactly where he was held. The Old Exchange’s own website presents its history, its dungeon tours and its pirate programmes without promoting ghosts; the haunting claims are repeated mostly by tour and hotel marketing. The real record is weighty enough: prisoners, patriots and enslaved people passed through its basement and its plaza, and the museum is where their stories are told.

Cold spots, disembodied voices, a sense of dread and shadowy forms in the dungeon, and footsteps attributed to Colonel Isaac Hayne. The reports come mainly from visitors and are repeated in tour and hotel marketing.

The lower-level Provost Dungeon, where prisoners were held, and the street outside, where Hayne’s footsteps are said to be heard.

The Exchange is a stop on Charleston’s Revolutionary history trail and appears in local ghost and legend features, including SCETV’s Ghosts and Legends series.