Post by Graveyardbride on Feb 14, 2015 17:08:15 GMT -5
Clay County’s Old Jail is Haunted
GREEN COVE SPRINGS, Fla. – By most standards, Vishi Garig’s working conditions at the former Clay County jail are downright deplorable. Paint is peeling from the white stucco-over-red brick building’s 120-year-old walls, many of the doors are rusted and cobwebs are commonplace.
Also, Garig’s fully convinced the place is haunted. “Just as an example,” she says, “one morning two or three years ago, I could see through my peripheral vision ... that there was someone standing at the end of the hall where the bathroom is. It was like a partial person – and as soon as I turned my head, he was gone, just like that. Stuff like that happens all the time here.”
To boot, Garig works alone. “To me, that’s exciting; things like that don’t scare me like they do most people,” she says. “Besides,” she adds, unable to resist: “they are in jail!”
Indeed, Garig says being among apparitions and inexplicable sounds at the former detention facility – where it’s like Halloween 365 days a year – may be the best job she’s ever had. After all, she’s a longtime paranormal investigator and was a county volunteer for five years before landing the part-time paid gig as the archives specialist.
“Lots of people get creeped out in these buildings,” she relates. “Some people, including my mother, won’t even go to the bathroom here because it’s located in an old cell block. But I’m comfortable here. At home, even.”
Garig has extensively researched and documented the jail’s history. The building was erected in 1894 with material manufactured by the Pauly Jail Building Co. of St. Louis, a business still in operation, that pioneered “tool-resisting steel.” The new facility offered plumbing fixtures that wouldn't clog and built-in secure windows that allowed prisoners a little daylight. The building housed men, women, children and mental patients, and hosted some births– the children of deputies who lived at the jail.
The darker history told by jail includes a sheriff who was assassinated and dragged into the jail, an inmate who slit his own throat, five executions by hanging, and a suicide that happened on the lawn between the jail and courthouse. “Oh, the courthouse is haunted, too,” Garig confirmed.
With all of the mystery and violent history within its walls, the jail’s exterior setting is postcard pretty under a canopy of Spanish moss-laden oak trees on the perimeter of the grassy Clay County governmental compound at State Road 16 and Gratio Place. The jail, which was expanded in 1903 and again in the 1920s, closed in 1972. The old St. Johns County jail in St. Augustine – the oldest jail in Florida and a popular tourist destination – is just three years older than Clay County’s old jail and in 2003, it was renovated for historic and archival purposes.
Garig maintains Clay County’s historical records, books and other collections and is the authoritarian on its history and haunts, which are the focus of frequent paranormal investigations. Indeed, Garig is a member of the CAPE Paranormal Investigations team that conducted the old jail’s first ghost-hunting expedition in 2009.
Because groups from throughout the Southeast and beyond claim they consistently record paranormal activity in the empty cells, the jail is increasingly becoming a tourist attraction. Clay County charges $20 per person for nighttime investigations and the money collected is used to enhance the archive program, which includes acquiring scanning equipment and purchasing books documenting the county’s history.
On October 15, 2014, the jail and courthouse were featured Syfy television’s Ghost Hunters. “Being on Ghost Hunters is big-time and it will bring a lot of worldwide attention to Green Cove Springs, Garig says. “We’re already booked with paranormal investigations through February and this will bring a whole lot more attention and tourism to Green Cove. And I can’t say enough about how professional the entire Ghost Hunters cast and crew were.”
On a recent Friday night, Michelle Vance of Newberry and a team of Amelia Island investigators returned for one of their regular outings at the jail. In their pursuit of what they believe is paranormal activity, the crew uses electromagnetic field meters, digital thermometers and video recorders, among other equipment. They also extensively research the sites they visit. Vance claims the jail has as much “activity” as any location she has studied and says she has recorded frequent “electronic voice phenomena” – sounds resembling speech found on electronic recordings. “We like to come here because it’s very active – a lot of energy,” Vance adds. “The cell doors creak when no one is there to do that and there’s a situation with one spirit in the jail, well, I won’t go in there alone with him ... “Knowing that there’s more than just life and death is what excites me about doing this work and keeps me coming back.”
Paranormal investigator and author Jamie Pearce of Orange Park hails the Clay jail as a mecca for ghost hunters. In her book, Historic Haunts of the South, she writes: “Historic Haunts Investigations came here in March 2013 and the building didn’t let us down.” During this visit, according to Pearce, Garig “announced to the spirit inmates that it was visitation day. That seemed to draw them all out.”
Vance confirms that she, too, begins her investigations by announcing her presence and making it clear that recording equipment is present. “I always thank them for participating,” she says.
Source: Kevin Hogencamp, The Florida Times-Union, October 3, 2014.
