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Texas | Features | Ghosts

Haunted Jails
and Jail Museums in Texas

Reader's Email
I LOOOOOOOVE this website – just love it!

Because of your excellent Milam County Jail Ghost story I went to the Milam County Jail and you’re right! There is most definitely a ghost in there! We were the only visitors there that day, yet the entire time we were there, we kept hearing footsteps, sometimes pacing, sometimes RACING, up and down the spiral staircase and around and around the cell blocks. My friend and I fully expected to come to a face-to-face encounter with other visitors, what with all the racket going on in there, but like I said, it turned out we were the only visitors there at that time.

This Milam County Jail visit has led me to other jail museums. I have now been to so many jail museums in Texas I can’t keep count, but the catalyst for all these jail museum visits was most definitely reading about your Milam County Jail Ghost story.

There is an EXCELLENT jail museum in Brady, TX. Here is a wonderful and informative link for the McCullough County Jail:
http://www.bradytx.com/sites2/museum.html

There is another jail museum in Carthage Texas, the Panola County jail of 1891. Here’s a link for this one:
http://www.carthagetexas.com/historical/1891jail.htm

It was your own Gonzales County Courthouse: Legend of the Courthouse Clock that led me to visit the most excellent Gonzales Old Jail Museum. Here’s a link for that one: http://www.gonzalestexas.com/attractions.htm I do believe that place is haunted too.

Next I uncovered a jail museum in La Grange – the Fayette County Jail Museum and La Grange Chamber of Commerce are housed together in the old jail building. Here’s a link for that one:
http://www.lagrangetx.org/visitor/adayinlagrange.htm

The jail museum in Lockhart I have visited as well. That place is haunted too! It seems so many of these old jail museums are haunted.

The museum at Fort Clark Springs is the Guardhouse Museum, which I didn’t realize until I went there and actually walked inside of the museum, that Guardhouse translates into Jail. http://www.fortclark.com/museum/index.htm This is a MOST EXCELLENT jail museum if I ever saw one!

The last one I want to mention is Fort Martin Scott in Fredericksburg. http://www.fortmartinscott.com There isn’t much left of this fort, presently there are about 5 buildings on the site of the old fort. Four out of five buildings are replicas. The lone building with the distinction of being original is the Guardhouse. You can walk inside the Guardhouse at Fort Martin Scott. It is the old jail, it’s very old (it was included on a map drawn in 1853), and still intact. So, that’s another excellent early jail example that is open to the public. Fort Martin Scott does not charge a dime to visit their site.

It was because of your website, Texas Escapes, that I first started going to jail museums and I am an absolute FANATIC about it! I hope you will find these links useful. Thank you for letting me share some of my jail museum stories with you.

- Shannan Yarbrough, Fredericksburg Chamber Assistant, March 11, 2005

Related Topics: Ghosts | Texas Jails
See Jail/Museums Images by Shannan Yarbrough

 


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