Inside a haunted Scottish jail where 30 people will sleep on Halloween

Cells at a 200-year-old prison set on a windswept hill in the Scottish Borders will be occupied once again this Halloween.

Jedburgh Castle Jail will host a sleepover of 30 ghosthunters later this month to explore the bleak Georgian pile, where many unexplained events have been recorded.

Inside Jedburgh Castle Jail. | Contributed

The sold-out event is not the first held at the former prison with the unsettling atmosphere long drawing those with an interest in the supernatural, including the crews of the Most Haunted television show who witnessed a cell door suddenly slam shut.

Duncan Rollo, of Live Borders, welcomes guests to the jail, which is now a tourist attraction and museum.

He said: “It is a very strange building. It is a Georgian jail and it is foreboding as it is on top of a hill and it is blooming cold.

“One of our cell blocks is pretty much exactly as it was back in the day in the 1800s.

“The block where most of the ghost people want to go is where there are two condemned cells where anyone who was condemned would be put before they were hanged, either in the Tolbooth or latterly to Edinburgh to be done unto.

“That is what gets most people excited as this room is not open to the public.”

Mr Rollo doubted guests would “have the nerve” to sleep in this part of the prison, which he described as “peaceful” with an atmosphere unlike other parts of the building.

“You might hear crows from there, but nothing else,” he added. The last 12-hour visit at the prison was held just a couple of weeks ago, with people bringing their own sleeping bags and some an inflatable mattress and duvey, but some people didn’t last the night.

Mr Rollo said: “We had people sleeping all over every room in the main Jailer’s House and there were one or two who were brave enough to sleep in cells.

“It was extremely cold that night and not many folk slept for very long and also one or two of them went away early as they just weren’t enjoying it, shall we say.

“It was cold and a bit spooky for some of them.

“If you put a bit of imagination into it, people get very stressed and excited by it all, in equal measure.”

The cells of the jail are set to be slept in once more during the ghost hunting event. | The cells of the jail are set to be slept in once more during the ghost hunting event.

On one occasion, a trestle table in the Jailer’s House tipped up without warning. Cameras recorded the incident and showed no one was in the area at the time.

Mr Rollo recalled another incident at the end of 2018 - ‘a baltic, cold night’ - when three visitors went their own individual ways around the building, each with the assistance of a member of staff.

Two women on the trip were ‘believers’ while the man was an ardent sceptic, Mr Rollo said.

He added: “We went into the third building, the Bridewell. In the upstairs floor there are two ventilation grills and when he looked down he saw someone in a frock coat and heard jangling, as if he were holding keys.

“This man came out of that place faster than you can imagine, I am 6ft odd and he was crying on my shoulder. He was absolutely sobbing. The two women then came in and they had seen the same thing as well.

“I was outside that cell and I know there was no one any there. The man was a believer after that.”

Mr Rollo added: “If you believe ghosts exist, then it is haunted. If you believe they don’t, then it is not. There is no other way of explaining it.”

Jedburgh Castle Jail was built in the 1820s according to the principles of Scottish prison reformer John Howard.

It was emerged on the site of the old Jedburgh Castle, which was demolished in the early 1400s after it was passed between the Scots and the English, in the 1820s.