Spirits Behind Bars — The Hauntings of Peterhead Prison

Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland – May 2025

Welcome, fellow travellers of the unseen, to Occult World, where even silence can speak — and where history sometimes refuses to stay locked away.

Far in the north of Scotland, where the wind from the North Sea lashes grey stone and iron gates, stands Peterhead Prison — a place once feared by convicts and wardens alike.
Now a museum, it has become something more: a sanctuary for memory, a fortress for ghosts.

The Prison That Time Forgot

Peterhead Prison opened in 1888, a grim Victorian institution designed to hold Scotland’s most violent offenders. Within its icy walls, men endured brutal discipline, solitary confinement, and forced labour on the nearby harbour works.
It closed as an active prison in 2013, but the building — with its barred corridors and cell blocks left intact — reopened as the Peterhead Prison Museum in 2016.

Visitors soon began reporting unsettling sensations: cold spots, whispers, footsteps, and unseen presences following them through the halls. What began as quiet murmurs among staff evolved into full-fledged paranormal reports.

Voices in the Dark

According to staff logs, unexplained activity has been recorded in multiple wings — particularly Block E, where violent inmates were once isolated.
Museum guide Fiona McArthur told the BBC:

“I was closing up one night when I heard a man say, ‘Let me out.’ The corridor was empty, and the cells were locked. The voice was right beside me.”

CCTV footage later showed a faint shadow moving along the corridor, independent of McArthur’s own. The clip remains one of the museum’s most replayed mysteries.

Visitors have also described the sound of chains dragging, doors slamming from within sealed areas, and the distinct scent of tobacco — though smoking has long been banned inside the museum.

The Cell That Breathes Cold

Perhaps the most famous spot is Cell E-19, where an inmate took his own life in the 1930s.
Modern visitors who step inside often feel a sudden drop in temperature, accompanied by dizziness or pressure in the chest.
Thermal cameras used by visiting paranormal teams recorded sharp cold anomalies exactly where the man’s bed once stood.

Psychic mediums claim the cell carries “the emotion of despair rather than the presence of a single ghost” — a residual haunting repeating the vibration of hopelessness.

The Ghost Hunts of Peterhead

In 2025, the museum began hosting official “Ghost Hunts at Peterhead Prison” — guided overnight experiences in collaboration with professional paranormal investigators.
Participants are given access to rarely opened cell blocks, armed only with infrared cameras, EMF meters, and courage.

The events regularly sell out months in advance. While many leave skeptical, few leave unmoved.
As one visitor wrote in the museum’s guestbook:

“You feel something here — not evil, just the weight of every story that ended between these walls.”

Between Guilt and Grace

Historians note that Peterhead was more than a prison — it was a crucible of human emotion: anger, regret, fear, and faith.
Those energies, layered over a century, seem to have seeped into the stone.

Some say the hauntings are echoes of pain; others believe they are manifestations of conscience — the spirits of those still serving invisible sentences, not for crimes of the law but of the soul.

Occult World Commentary

Peterhead stands as a reminder that hauntings are history refusing silence.
Here, every corridor hums with what it once held: the desperation of the condemned, the remorse of the forgotten, and perhaps, the faint hope of redemption.

So, dear readers of Occult World, should you ever walk through those echoing halls, tread softly.
You are not alone — but neither are you unwelcome.
The spirits of Peterhead have learned that eternity, like imprisonment, is simply another kind of waiting.

Sources:

• Peterhead Prison Museum – “Ghost Hunts Near Me: Experience Real Paranormal Activity at Peterhead Prison Museum,” official press release, 8 May 2025.
• BBC Scotland News – “Staff report ghostly voices in former prison turned museum,” 12 May 2025.
• The Scotsman – “Haunted Scotland: Visitors flock to Peterhead Prison Museum after eerie experiences,” 18 May 2025.
• Historic Environment Scotland Archives – Records of Peterhead Prison (File PHD/1888-2013).