The Haunted Prison Cell
In 1872 in New Orleans there was a haunted cell in the Fourth Precinct Police Station.
An old woman named Ann Murphy had hanged herself, it was definitely proved that several suicides which occurred in the cell after her death were instigated by her ghost.
The prison cell already had a history of being haunted before Ann Murphy killed herself. The following appeared in the Western Daily Press, November 1872.
It appears that a few years ago ‘a little old woman’ named Ann Murphy committed suicide by hanging herself in this cell, and since that event no fewer than thirteen persons shut up in the cell have attempted to destroy themselves in a similar manner, four of these attempts being attended with fatal results.
One of those lately cut down before life was extinct was a girl named Mary Taylor, who on recovering consciousness declared that while lying on the floor of the cell she was aroused by a little old woman, dressed in a faded calico cress ‘with brown jeans and josey’, no stockings, and downtrodden slippers, with a faded handkerchief tied round her head. Her faded dress was bound with a sort of reddish-brown tape, and her hand was long, faded and wrinkled while on the fourth finger of her left hand was a plain thin gold ring.
‘This little woman,’ said the girl, ‘beckoned me to get up and impelled me by some mysterious power to tear my dress in strips, place one end of a strip round my neck and tie the other to the bars. I lifted my feet from the floor and fell. I thought I was choking, a thousand lights seemed to flash before my eyes, and I forgot all until I found myself in the room with the doctors and police bending over me. It was not until then I really comprehended what I had done, and was, I believe, under a kind of trance or influence at the time, over which I had no control.’
Mary Taylor had never heard of the suicide of Ann Murphy, whose appearance, according to the police, exactly tallied with the description given by the girl. Others having complained in like manner of the ghostly occupant of the cell, the police, to test the real facts of the case, placed a night lodger who had but just arrived in the city in this cheerful apartment. Being thoroughly tired and worn out, he fell asleep immediately, but shortly afterwards rushed in the office in a state of terrible alarm. He too had been visited by the little old woman, and wisely declined to sleep another night in the station.
What prompted Ann Murphy to hang herself was apparently never ascertained. She was not known to have evinced an suicidal tendency prior to her occupying the cell, or while she was in it. Although no tragedy had occurred in the cell before Ann Murphy's advent to it, it was rumored to have been haunted for a long time, so that it was quite possible her suicide was due to the prompting of some very evil supernatural entity.
The police even tested the supernatural occurrences by placing a man who had been picked up for drunkenness inside the cell. They had several officers placed outside ready to intervene. Despite being heavily intoxicated when arrested, later that night the police barely saved him as he was attempting to hang himself. After this event, the cell was closed up and used only for storage, no other prisoners were placed there.
The haunting of the jail in the Fourth Precinct of New Orleans continued. In 1882, it was still being reported on. In some instances it was more than one cell which was haunted. It was noted that "more suicides and attempts at self-destruction have occurred within the wall of that station than in any other in the city."
Cell No. 17 used in the female department of the Parish Prison and by then no less than 14 prisoners attempted or committed suicide, which is why it was no longer used to hold anyone. However when the Parish Prison absorbed a portion of the building set aside for the use of the old Police Jail, and the female prisoners were transferred to that side, the cell was whitewashed and repainted and appeared to "have lost its evil prestige".
But this turned out was because the ghosts appeared to have moved to the third story of the City Prison in the first cell from the corner of Marais and Orleans Streets. In the last 6 months of 1881 several women confined in the cell attempted to commit suicide. Strangely the turnkey found the door open or unlocked.
On other occasions prisoners who were locked up walked downstairs and appeared in the offices. When asked how they got out they said a red-headed woman had opened the door for them, and pointed out the direction that led to the stairway.
On Saturday, January 21, 1882, Ella Scott was brought into the station in a "beastly state of intoxication" so much that she was unfit to appear in court, and was kept in the station. At 6 p.m. that night Turnkey Glennon went upstairs to light up the jail. This is when he saw a white handkerchief tied to the bars of the window in the cell. The prisoner had hung herself, and the cell door was unlocked. She was revived and went on to describe that a man in a black cap pulled down over his eyes had appeared at the window, and she was so frightened that she didn't remember trying to kill herself. They kept her downstairs until she went before the judge.
Four months later Ellen Bell was incarcerated in a cell adjoining the haunted cell in the Fourth Precinct Station. She was charged with drunkeness ’ and attempted suicide by hanging herself with a handkerchief. She was cut down by the turnkey, and this was the second time she had tried to take her life while a prisoner at the station.
What became of the tainted prison cell is unknown.