Fright night: The many ghosts of the National Justice Museum

The City Gaol and courtrooms… It’s here that countless criminals were sentenced and executed. With a long history as a site of punishment, imprisonment, and death, it’s no wonder that a few souls might still be lingering, to the extent that the museum has been named one of the most haunted places in the UK.

“Within my first week of working there, I had a paranormal experience,” says Lauren Williams, Hospitality and Events Sales Manager at National Justice Museum. “I was in the corporate kitchen, which is an area back of house and had my hair in a ponytail, and someone pulled my hair. I was in the middle of the room on my own. It was quite a yank and very odd.”

“I understand why, as people have been executed on the front steps. There were terrible conditions in parts of the jail, and a lot of history with it being a court for 650 years. It’s a bit of a dark place to work.”

The terrifying history of the place suggests that the hall was first used in 1735, while the caves and the network of tunnels date back to 600AD. The jail is thought to stretch back to 1449. However, the hall was used from 1905 to 1985 as a police station, with the courtrooms closing in 1986. 

One of the more horrific bits of history is the public hangings that would attract huge crowds in front of the building on the steps until 1864. The last public execution in Nottingham was in 1864, but it seems private hangings continued into the 1900s at the House of Correction and then from 1894 at the Bagthorpe Gaol, now HMP Nottingham.

The last public execution on the front steps of the museum was of 29-year-old Richard Thomas Parker. A butcher in Fiskerton, Parker was declared bankrupt in public in 1862.  After attending a cricket match, he came home drunk and violently argued with his father. After Samuel Parker stormed out, his wife, Elizabeth, ran out to warn him that Richard had a gun. Richard fired from a window and shot both his parents. Samuel recovered from his wounds while Elizabeth did not. Parker was tried at the courts at Shire Hall on Monday 25 July 1864, by Mr Justice Blackburn and sentenced to death. Despite his claims that he had been drunk at the time, he was hanged in front of an ‘uproarious crowd’ of 12,000 people. His body was then buried within the prison exercise yard. 

With this information, it’s interesting to note that when the gaol became a museum in 1995, a caretaker, Ernie Wilkinson, reported: “My favourite ghost is Sam, that's what we call him. He's around all day. He's a little grey-haired old man. He’s been seen by wardens from Lincoln Prison, and when we had a builder in he saw Sam walk across the yard and straight through his car. Then there's the one seen in the exercise yard, he's a youth of about 19 or twenty wearing a sackcloth who appears to be writing on the wall. He gets more friendly each time I see him.”

Could it be the ghost of Richard Thomas Parker? Although the age almost aligns, we may never know.

Surprisingly, it’s not the front steps that are the most haunted, according to staff, paranormal experts and visitors to the museum. The entrance hall has had cleaners refuse to work there as some have reported seeing a well-dressed Victorian man, along with an old lady and a soldier. The courtroom has had reports of knocks in response to questions, along with screams and groans. All of which were thought to be prisoners or their families upon hearing their fates.

Lauren confirms that there are areas she refers to as hotspots due to the high number of reports made.

“The women’s laundry and the sheriff’s dungeon, which is like a cave dungeon that goes down five floors and is cut into the rock face. We have one cell, which is called the dark cell, in the Georgian part of the building. It was used as an isolation, a punishment within the prison for prisoners who misbehave. It's a small cell and pitch black, which is not a nice place to go in,” Lauren explains. 

It wouldn’t be Nottingham without caves underneath the building, and it's no surprise that the museum has some of its own. These are one of the more haunted areas where things have been thrown across the room, including stones aimed at visitors.

“What’s reported the most are physical things like stones being thrown, like small gravel stones. It's the cave area and a lot of people feel a presence that is like a feeling of despair, anger, frustration and quite negative feelings,” Lauren says.

The building also attracts a number of paranormal investigators who bring with them a number of different materials for reaching the spirit world. 

“We hire the museum out to different paranormal companies. We have regular clients who come back year after year, or do several a year. As they are run by themselves, a lot of the experiences that happened are kept within the museum. Sometimes they call me up to say they were in the dungeon and someone felt they had been grabbed. They do tend to keep coming back,” says Lauren.

“Years ago, we were on Most Haunted, but recently, we have had a lot of paranormal YouTubers come, particularly from America if they are touring the UK.”

If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember Most Haunted. A TV program that ran from 2002 to 2010 and made its host, Derek Acorah, into a celebrity (the Nottingham episode is in season 15 of the show). It inspired former LeftLion editor Ashley Carter to spend an evening at the museum watching the episode in pitch black with fellow writer, Emily Thursfield, in 2020.

Visiting the same rooms featured in the show, Thursfield wrote: “I expected the episode to be the catalyst for frights during this experience, but at fifteen minutes in, I realised the opposite was true. The building is genuinely terrifying, and when stripped of light and the presence of the public and staff, it hosts a really creepy atmosphere. It feels like it holds the weight of all of the horrible things that have happened there.”

LeftLion staff aside, does anyone actually spend the night in the place?  

“That’s what the paranormals do. They hire the venue from 9pm, then they normally leave around 2am or 5am. They investigate the full site all night. It's such a huge site, as we have two Victorian courtrooms that have a huge presence. I don’t think much sleeping is done as you are there to investigate at night,” Lauren confirms.

In fact, one such sleepover, a fundraiser for Marie Curie Cancer Care, in 1995, reported ghostly apparitions in the early hours. Those attending the ‘spookathon’ reported seeing a mysterious lady attempt, and fail, to open a door in the grand jury room at 4am. Another saw a woman, a small boy and a man at the same time. A law student from Nottingham University said he had put his ear to the floor of a room and was able to hear a muffled conversation taking place below. However, he couldn’t hear what was being said. 

There are other options besides the overnighters for those who want a piece of the action without having to stay over. From September, the museum will host ghost tours, called Ghost of the Gaol, where you can retrace the steps of those who were locked away. There are also (for those without chronic anxiety) ‘fright nights’ called Dead Man Walking, on offer, complete with jump scares and disturbing encounters in the dark… all of which sound like a scream.

With such sightings, it stands to reason that some staff might feel a bit uneasy about working there. Thankfully, Lauren’s experiences didn’t put her off, as she has now been with the museum for eight years, but she does respect how others might feel.

“I heard rumours before I started that some builders, when it was being turned into a museum, turned around and said they weren’t coming back. I don’t have people refusing to work as such, but some staff don’t feel comfortable going into certain areas at night. We listen to that, respect it and don’t put them down there at night,” she explains.

That said, Lauren did outline another experience that genuinely frightened her. “It was when I was pregnant and I was coming through the museum towards the women’s laundry. I could hear the faint sound of a baby crying, so I went to have a look,” she tells me. “There wasn’t anyone down there as it was towards the end of the day. We are on a cliff face, but the street is so far away, and this was a really loud crying noise by the time I got there. I freaked myself out and needed to leave immediately.”

“I did ask our head historic interpreter if [babies] would have been there,” she says. “Babies were in the jail, either by inmates who were pregnant before they came, but also, above the laundry is the Governor's house, where the governor, the jailer who looked after the men and the matron who looked after the women lived with their families and children.  

“A colleague also felt someone walk through them, which was quite a visceral experience, but they didn’t feel it was too threatening.”

Would the museum ever be tempted to call in a priest, or stage a ghostly intervention?

“No, I don’t think we ever would. They are such a part of our history, and they were there before us.” 

Head to the National Justice Museum’s website to see their full list of tours, fright nights and other special events.

nationaljusticemuseum.org.uk