Old Clay County Jail, Green Cove Springs, Florida

The Clay County Jail in Green Cove Springs was built in the 1890s, and is known to be haunted. Many paranormal groups have investigated. Three members of Offthetrails Paranormal Investigations, MaryJo, Greg, and Rob, did our investigation February 10, 2012. We all had some personal experiences and are reviewing our evidence.

Originally, the jail housed the sheriff’s family, too. Children were born and grew up in the building. There were two cells in the original jail. The jail was in use until the 1970s. There were at least 5 executions in front of the jail. Death was by hanging. Greg and MaryJo had visited the jail a couple of years before and chatted with then curator Claude Bass, but had not done any investigating. There are mannequins from St. Augustine’s Old Jail throughout the building, which lend an air of eeriness. They are dressed in the old black and white striped uniforms. Vishi Garig is curator now. Lisa, her assistant and a paranormal investigator herself, took us on a tour of the jail before we started our investigating. As she was telling us how cell doors sometimes opened on their own, we heard a cell door sqeaking! These doors are extremely heavy metal, the hinges are rusty, there was no draft in the building, and no one else was there! We set up our equip[ment and began our investigation. MaryJo smelled urine in one of the cells. The jail has been a museum for many years, so no one has used the cells. Greg and Rob, on seperate occasions, saw a shadow figure sitting in a chair in a corner of one cell! When they approached it, it vanished. Greg managed to get a photo! Rob closed all the cell doors in one corridor, but when he returned, one was standing open! Rob thought he heard a voice, but couldn’t be sure. We all felt a presence. Close to the end of our investigation, MaryJo was holding the camera shoudler high and filming in a corridor right outside a cell when she felt a pull or push on the camera, causing it to come down to waist high! We think one spirit felt it was time to wrap it up. In Abe’s cell, there was a dried boquet of flowers on a windowsill that caused us to wonder who had left them. Abe had been one of the men executed there in the early 1900s. Lisa told us that the inmates’ spirits are often active and she has had many experiences. We would like to return in the future.

As always, we look for possible explanations before calling something paranormal. Orbs caught on camera might be an entity, but they can also be dust. If there are many, we suspect dust. One or two, they might be spirits.

http://archives.clayclerk.com/ghosts.html

http://www.offthetrails.com/the-backroads/our-florida-backroads-adventure/north-centralne-florida/