Fully spooked, jail hosts ghost hunt

Hundreds of people will be taking part in ghost tours of the jail over the next week

By Arthur Strain and Peter Hamill
BBC News

Belfast is a historic city, some of it noble and some of it bloody.

Come Hallowe'en and tales of the city as an industrial giant and Athens of the north take a backseat and the focus switches to its darker history.

Some of the blackest times are reflected in the Crumlin Road jail, located in a part of Belfast left run down by the effect of the decline of industry and the Troubles.

The first brick was laid on the site of the gaol in 1843 and it was closed in 1996.

Since 2005 people have been queuing up to tour the jail and a recent addition to the tours has been a ghost tour.

Local historian Joe Baker is one of the guides. His qualifications include spending involuntary time in the jail as a young man for rioting. Several of Northern Ireland's political leaders also tried the porridge in the Crum.

Local historian Joe Baker says he has experienced weird happenings in the tunnel

In the 1800s the regime was harder and the prisoners could be younger, with stories that could form part of Les Miserables.

"Patrick Magee was sentenced to three months hard labour, his parents were dead and he had stolen bread, but what the judge added to his sentence was that he was to be taken from the court to the prison and to be whipped," Mr Baker said said.

Terrified at the prospect the 10-year-old child tied part of the hammock in his cell to the bars and hung himself.

That was in 1858 and such stories fuel another aspect of interest in the jail - ghosts.

With the authorities hanging 17 people in the jail there is a heavy atmosphere in the condemned cell and hanging room.

The noose in the room was used in two executions and there has been one attempt to steal it as a macabre souvenir.

Such a mystique attracts the curious, the slightly morbid and those seeking contact with the spirit world.

HIGH SPIRITS In Pictures: Crumlin Road

As part of Mr Baker's tour two mediums seek to contact spirit presences they say they can detect in the tunnel running beneath the Crumlin Road that connected the jail to the courthouse opposite.

It's dark and cold in the tunnel and the lights go out to encourage the spirits to come forward. The mediums ask members of the audience to call to them.

The spirits are a mixed bunch, a prostitute, a ragamuffin child, a stern man and a spirit dog. Some say they can sense them and notice drops in temperatures and strange sounds, others do not.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph what was that touched my leg I felt something," said one female member of the tour.

"Say boo! I can't hear you," a more sceptical member commented.

Whether there is haunting or not is in the eye of the beholder, for Mr Baker the ghosthunt is part of an entertaining tour.

"The people we bring along are mediums and people come along who enjoy that sort of thing and try to make contact with the dead," he said.

"There's been things that have been strange, I've heard sounds I haven't seen ghosts in the sense of a white sheet or anything like that, but there have been things; there has been movement. There was one occasion when the noise sounded like was very windy but there was no wind.

"If you're asking if I've seen an out-and-out ghost with chains walking up the tunnel, no, but I have experienced weird happenings."

He said doing the research for the haunted tour they interviewed former security force staff based at the jail and one of the soldiers told them that there had been refusals to use one of the observation posts because they thought it was haunted.

Tim Losty is the Director of the North Belfast Community Action Unit, which runs the former jail and is planning its redevelopment.

Tim Losty says people have an interest in the past workings of the jail

They have big plans for the jail and want to see it become a means to regenerate the area and provide employment, up to 3,000 jobs, and training opportunities for locals.

Two of the five wings are being turned into jail museums, one of the Troubles era and the other of the Victorian period.

A three-star hotel, gallery space, retail units, educational facilities, a genealogical research section and business units are planned, after £3m of conservation work secures the infrastructure of the Grade A listed building.

This year some 20,000 people have taken tours of the jail, last year it was 10,000.

"We actually hope to increase the number of visitors," he said.

"What we are getting now is people coming in mainly for the tours and the events we put on but whenever we have been able to conserve and restore all parts of this jail site, we'll be able to use parts of the building for different uses."

He said that it can become an economic driver for the area and be the first time that people have parted with money to spend the night in the jail.

"It may not be the first time that money has caused people to spend the night here but we do see the potential to bring prosperity into north Belfast," he said.

In the meantime tours of the site, historical, ghostly and paranormal will continue.

But as for the rest of this witching season, the tours Joe Baker runs have been sold out, fully spooked one might say.