Post #488657 by Cammo on Fri, Oct 16, 2009 10:11 PM

** Angie's Ghost Story Part 8 **

Lots of people came in that night, it was our first really crowded summer night and there wasn’t much time to talk, we were handing out keys, charging people, showing them where the bathrooms were, people were dropping off their baggage and coming back later, it was a lot of fun. Finally it got slower at about 8:30, and we sat there with nobody around. I didn’t want to read my Nancy Drew, cause Cindy would make fun of me. And there was too much to talk about now anyway.

“I knew this place was haunted when I first saw that 8th floor, and all that oil on the floor and the gaslight, it looked like a horror movie or something.”

The problem was, Cindy wasn’t listening to anything I was saying.

“What are you talking about? Huh? You are one Crazy Canary. You know all I’ve been thinking about?” Cindy told me, “did you see what Mrs. Aldon was looking at on her bookshelf?”

“What? Books?”

“Yeah, she had books about the jail, did you see ‘em?”

“No. Is that what she was looking at when she was turned away from us?”

“Yeah, I think she was going to pull one down and show it to us. But she didn’t. I don’t think she wanted us to see it. And you know what? I’m gonna go get it. Goodbye!” She got up.

“What, in her office? Isn’t it locked?”

“I’ll see.”

She ran down the hall, I saw her trying the knob, then she looked back at me, smiled, and went right in. The light popped on, she was in there for a few minutes, then she came running back holding a little dark book.

“Carleton County Gaol, 1865-1972,” she said, holding it up in the air like it was a trophy, “ta - DAAAAAAA!”

“Are there any pictures?” I asked. I always want pictures. If a book doesn’t have pictures, chuck it.

She flipped through it. “Yeah. Some, look, that’s our place! Told ya!” There was an old photo with a horse and buggy out front of our building. It was taken so long ago that there were no other buildings around it, so it was kind of weird.

“And that’s us! Look!” Cindy pointed to two ladies in front of the place, dressed in big skirts. I laughed, then we opened the book and read.

The County Gaol, or Jail, was built to hold criminals tried in the court next door, but it ended up holding poor people who couldn’t pay their loans, old people, crazy people, drunks, prostitutes suffering from VD, children of the prisoners, and a lot of Irish immigrants. The whole cellar area was a holding area for immigrants, it had no bathroom, they were tossed down there to see if they had diseases, and if they died they were burned out back and thrown in a pit. Thousands died there.

But the story got better.

They had lots of solitary confinement cells, (we didn’t know where those were) and the place was equipped with a full functioning gallows, which is an old name for the place where they hang people. Three prisoners were hanged here, one seemed to start haunting the jail as soon as he died. No prisoner was allowed to wear clothes, they only got blankets that were also used as bedding. Nobody ever washed. Ever. The place had been crawling with rats, lice and cockroaches. They stuffed more than three people in each of the cells, and like I said the cells were about as big as my closet. If you complained they’d beat you with sticks. Once you were in there most never got out until they died. And you got to go to the bathroom only once a day, I’m not kidding. Almost everybody tried to commit suicide, so the whole place was rebuilt inside to prevent suicides.

This is now, believe it or not, the biggest youth hostel in Ottawa.

The connecting passage between the court next door and the jail was underground, and that’s where the guards would regularly rape the female prisoners. If the women protested they’d kill them and bury them out back. Nobody knew how many people were buried in the courtyard, or under the parking lot nowadays, or in the cellar, but they dug up a LOT of bodies when they were digging a sidewalk in the 1970’s, about 140 at last count.

“A hundred and FORTY?” Cindy said, “That’s gotta be WRONG!”

We were sitting in absolutely the most horrifying torture chamber and giant graveyard you could imagine. The home of justice for the entire country. Ottawa’s, the capital of Canada’s, oldest central jail.

It took a while to get through that book, we kept flipping forward, and most of the good info was in the notes at the back. We just couldn’t believe it.

“Why the heck did they make this place into a HOSTEL?!” Cindy asked me, “The whole place should be torn down in shame! Why don’t they dig up the parking lot? Isn’t anybody interested in how many bodies are out there? It says here there could be thousands!”

All I had for her was more questions.