I spent a night in world’s most haunted jail… what ghost said to me was chilling
“GET out!”, a voice warns chillingly as we walk the corridors of the world’s most haunted jail – while whatever lurks in the shadows does its best to scare us off.
Alone in my hotel room in the early hours of the next morning, I am repeatedly playing back footage we had just filmed during a five-hour ghost hunt at Shepton Mallet Prison.
And though I didn’t hear it at the time, the sinister command is clear as day on our recording.
I had known the previous night that powerful forces were at play as soon as I entered the former nick once known as Cornhill Prison, in Somerset, where I had arranged to meet leading ghostbuster Tony Ferguson.
And I was gripped by genuine terror when, after witnessing the eerie goings-on, I had fled down the dark corridor of a jail once home to the criminally insane.
Unfortunately for me, I was unwittingly dashing into the old execution room, where the remains of former inmates are still buried within the 400-year-old walls.
The rotting penitentiary once kept some of our most infamous villains, including Ronnie and Reggie Kray, under lock and key.
Before it closed its towering hardwood doors in 2013, even the toughest convicts feared visiting certain rooms.
“Prisoners did not like going into the library — which, unbeknown to them, was the old execution shed,” local historian Dave Cable, 52, explained.
‘Horrific screech’
“We’ve heard countless stories about objects being thrown, doors violently slamming, lights turning on and off by themselves, unexplained voices — the activity is unbelievable.
“I was a sceptic before I came here.”
Shepton — described as “hell” by former lags — had one of the highest prison suicide rates in the country. It was used to house criminals with severe mental illnesses.
Psychopaths and those suffering from schizophrenia and depression were locked up, feared by staff and kept segregated in D Wing — which Dave described as a “hotspot” for ghostly activity.
Just days before Halloween, I was outside the jail in the pitch black, meeting Tony — one of the country’s leading paranormal researchers — to find out what really goes on behind the building’s 17th Century walls.
Tony, who lives in the New Forest, claims to have seen and heard more ghosts than anyone else in Britain — so much so, he’s nicknamed “The Ghost Whisperer” in paranormal circles. When he arrived, he suggested we head straight for D Wing.
He told me: “This place scares professional ghost-hunters.
“I’ve known sceptics to run out like their lives depended on it. It’s not for the faint-hearted.”
The last time he was here for an investigation, a fellow paranormal researcher passed out while hosting a vigil, and Tony caught the whole episode on camera.
He said: “I took video and, before he collapses, you see a white figure walk across the screen, followed by this horrific screech. It was awful.”
Inside the miserable prison hall, surrounded by damp-infested cells on either side, it made perfect sense why this building has been used as a filming location for 2020 horror flick Patients Of A Saint.
Tony placed his paranormal gear along the corridor, including a Rem pod, which lights up when motion is detected, and ‘kitten balls’, which glow fluorescently when pushed.
He then turned off the lights. Standing in complete darkness, his voice echoed around the empty three-storey hall as he asked the spirits to communicate with us.
As the team anxiously waited for a response, my gut was telling me this was the calm before the storm.
Then something — or someone — caught my attention.
Unsure if my imagination was playing tricks on me, I turned to the team and asked if anyone else could make out the tall figure at the far end of the corridor. “I see it too — he’s watching us,” Tony whispered, bringing tears to my eyes.
“He seems to be responding to your voice. Why don’t you try walking towards him?” Nervously, I forced myself to start taking baby steps.
“Did you hear that?” Tony shouted, just as I had made it to the halfway mark. “A man’s voice just yelled, ‘Get out!’.”
As I returned to tell him I hadn’t heard anything, the figure disappeared, but both kitten balls began to light up, prompting me to run back to the group as fast as my legs would carry me.
Filled with fear, I dashed towards a corridor leading from the hall where we’d been standing, with the others in pursuit.
Little did I know until Dave told me that I was just 30 seconds away from the jail’s execution room, which was housed along the very passageway I ran to for refuge.
As Dave and Tony approached me to make sure I was OK, I noticed our photographer had not said a word and appeared completely distracted. “Everything all right?” I asked. He was not all right.
He had just witnessed the door of a fire extinguisher box open on its own and was looking for a logical explanation. But there wasn’t one.
Desperate to get out of there, I then unknowingly led the team straight into the old execution shed.
Screaming face
During the time it was used as an American military prison during World War Two, Shepton Mallet housed 768 soldiers.
By the end of 1944, it was guarded by 12 officers and 82 enlisted men.
Some 18 US servicemen were executed there — 16 were hanged and two shot by firing squad.
The shed was a small room with a wooden platform in the middle, hauntingly marked with two footprints to show where prisoners would have stood.
Below the dock was a 12ft drop. As the reality of what happened here started sinking in, the sadness was inescapable and I began feeling drained.
“We call this sensation ‘sway’ in paranormal investigations,” Tony told me. “When you feel like this, it’s best to walk away.”
He then guided us towards A Wing, which he said was another hotspot for paranormal activity.
Back in the 17th and 18th Centuries, men, women and children were thrown into the cramped disease-ridden cells and left to starve.
The youngest prisoner was a five-year-old who had stolen an apple.
I walked along the corridor trying to picture what the conditions must have been like. But something in my peripheral vision stopped me in my tracks.
Frozen, I turned my head to the left to look at a dirty cell window where I was sure I had just seen the reflection of a screaming face. But there wasn’t anything there.
“Listen to this,” Tony said as he played back footage from his night vision camera. In the clip, the sound of a woman screaming faintly or whistling can be heard.
With that, I was ready to go home. But Tony wanted to try calling out to the spirits one last time, asking that anyone there with us make their presence known.
There was a violent bang on the metal staircase. I no longer felt safe and was desperate to get out.
Seconds later, we were all in disbelief when we heard the voice of a man with a thick London accent mumbling at the end of the corridor.
It was so clear we expected someone to walk through the door, but we were the only people there. However, there was no denying what we heard because Tony recorded it all on camera.
While we may have been the only people on site, we clearly were not alone, and I was ready to flee.
Just as we were about to call it a night, Tony heard a bang come from one of the cells. He hurried over to take a look inside. Nothing.
“I’m going to go through this footage as soon as I get in the car because I’m sure I just heard a voice,” he said, packing up.
“If I find anything, I’ll send it straight over to you.”
True to his word, there was a message waiting for me by the time I got back to my hotel. I nervously opened the attached video.
There was no denying the faint sound of a female warning us: “Get out!” Had we disturbed something at Shepton? I wasn’t sure.
But I’m relieved I didn’t hang around longer to find out.