Squirrel Cage Jail is located in Pottawattamie Count Council Bluffs, Iowa
The unique jail was built in 1885 on the site of an old church morgue; one of 18 revolving jails built — and the only one with three stories. Today, it’s one of only three left standing.
What’s a revolving jail you ask? The jail’s pie-shaped cells revolve inside a cage that only has one opening. To let prisoners out, jailers would have to revolve the cells around until the desired cell was flush with the one door. That architectural concept alone gives the jail a certain chill.
The jail’s use was discontinued in 1969, and it has since been preserved and opened as a museum by the Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County (HSPS).
While the Squirrel Cage’s paranormal popularity has grown in recent years with flashlight tours and paranormal investigations, even guests and residents as early as the 1900s felt something was amiss. A jailer in the ‘50s refused to live in the jail’s fourth-floor apartment after hearing footsteps on the floor when no one was around. He opted to instead sleep on the jail’s second floor rather than live with the unexplainable noises.
Today’s museum staff and volunteers have experienced similar happenings in the old jail.
“Many of the jail staff and volunteers have heard footsteps, voices, whispers, and doors moving,” Kat Slaughter, the HSPS museums manager said. “Some have seen dark shadows move across the stairs or past doorways. “
Slaughter believes the notion that the jail is haunted is in part due to the fact that there have been four known deaths in the building: a prisoner died of a heart attack, another prisoner fell three-stories trying to carve his name on the jail’s ceiling, another prisoner hung himself, and an officer was shot when a gun misfired during riot gun training.
The jail’s hauntings go beyond hearsay with paranormal teams investigating and recording its ghostly activity. The jail has even received national attention with spots on Travel Channel’s Most Terrifying Places and Ghost Adventures Serial Killer Spirits.
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