HI-Ottawa Jail Hostel, Ottawa, Ontario
(Can you handle this?)
This is the HI-Ottawa Jail Hoistel, Located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
This building in the 1860s to 1972, and was a maximum-security prison. According to gathered information, it was quite a brutal place. The jail had appalling and inhumane conditions for the prisoners that persisted throughout the usage of it. Executions by hanging happened until the 1940s, and prisoners were kept in overcrowded cells. There was almost nothing to do but wait out the long days of their sentence. If they were unlucky, they were put in solitary confinement, where they were chained face-down, on the cold, hard, ground for over 23 hours per of the day.
When it was finally closed in 1972, and the occupants transferred to the new Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre in Blackburn Hamlet, it was considered to be a suitable, potential site for a new year-round hostel in Ottawa, and topped the list of many other potential sites. With some imagination and renovations, it could be transformed into a friendly and welcoming hostel which is what it has become today!
Before the opening, it was excavated and many unmarked graves were found. During renovations they turned cells into hostel rooms and made very few changes. They invited, and still invite people to spend a night "in jail." But the dark history and events has led many to believe it is haunted. Some report seeing a ghost appearing at the foot of the bed in the shape of a man. Supposedly he is Patrick James Whelan, who was hanged for the murder of journalist Thomas D'Arcy McGee in the year 1869.