I joined an online community for female writers – travelers where once in a while, one of the members brags posts about visiting one of their bucket list destinations. I came to a realization that I too, just ticked off something from my list recently. The thing is, my last ticked bucket list was about spending a night in a cold old jail and I hesitated to share it in the forum. I dig historical gloomy places, preferably the haunted ones, and I know this sounds odd and prolly sounds straightly freaky when you compare it to other bucket list destinations like let say Cinq Terre, Italy.
Sleeping in jail has been one of the tops in my bucket list and the only way for me to tick that off the list without committing a felony and getting a criminal record is to spend a night at this Jail Hostel in Ottawa. I have admitted before somewhere in one of my posts that I don’t like sleeping at hostels while traveling. First, because I am antisocial but mostly because I fart when I sleep (I am antisocial even when I am unconscious).
I have a long subjective list of why I don’t like staying at a hostel, but this one particular hostel is so special that I decided to give it a chance. Hi Jail Hostel Ottawa was once a creepy jail in the 1800s with built-in gallows called Carleton County Gaol. It was only in the 1970s that the jail was closed due to inhumane conditions. The building was then preserved as one of the Ottawa heritage buildings. The city then decided to lease it to the Ottawa Hostel Committee as an affordable lodging as a way to keep the building self-sufficient while continue to keep its value as historic architecture.
It's both creepy and adorable, and that's why I love it...
The location
First and foremost, this hostel is situated exactly in walking distance to anything important you might want to visit in Ottawa like the National Gallery of Canada, the Parliament Building, Rideau Canal, Byward market, shopping centers, restaurants, etc. Ottawa is a super clean and modern city, so having an old building like this hostel in the middle of modern skyscraper adds the charm to the Ottawa downtown.
The facade
The building is well-preserved inside and outside, thanx to the law that protects repurposed historical buildings in Canada. The law only permits minimal reparation/redecoration and any modernization to make the building up to the modern standard in comforts and safety has to be done without changing the look of the building itself at all.
The inside
Although this hostel provides the 21st century’s facility such as wifi on every floor, stable non-flickering lights, and a bar, the interior remains like it was before when it was a functional jail. The wooden doors and the stairs with suicide nets are the real deal from back then.
The rooms
Like any other hostel, there are plenty of room types to choose, from crowded, 8 beds bedroom, to private rooms. We took a private room with a communal bathroom on the 6th floor. Our room is tiny enough to give me a brief anxiety attack when the door is closed. It fits exactly a small twin bed. The room was kept the way it was a hundred years ago with thick wall and iron-barred door. For privacy sake, since it’s a paid lodging anyway nowadays, they cover 2/3 of the door with a sheet of metal and leave the bottom part open for ventilation.
Back then this jail was a model prison due to its architecture. This prison has arched ceilings which made it acoustics and allows softest sounds to be heard across the hall so the guard at the end of the alley could hear any whispers from the furthest cells. It simply means, this hostel has very low noise privacy. Quiet time rules that begin every 11 PM is for this reason.
The bathroom
Every floor has communal bathrooms and toilets, and both separated by gender. The bathroom is humble, there are three shower stalls and a lounge with benches. If you don’t take your shower early enough (or late at night), you’ll find yourself sitting on one of the benches with other people in various degrees of nakedness waiting for an available shower.
The communal room
The communal room is the most interesting and entertaining room in the building, not because it has a reading corner, tv corner, an open kitchen, and a bar, but because it has this cramped dining area where everybody comes to sit and have breakfast every morning and you get to eavesdrops of interesting chats around like these two teens who sat next to us and their comments boy on hardboiled eggs:
Young Boy : (looking overwhelmed and confused while holding a boiled egg, inspecting it as if it’s a Rolex watch and he was a pawn shop keeper; sceptical) I have never had a hard-boiled egg, I always had it omelleted or sunny side up so I don’t have to deal with the shell.
His friend: just knock it off gently on the table to crack it, then peel it off
YB knocked it off and peel the egg awkwardly like Edward Scissorhands.
YB: Gosh, look how many shrapnels it made…
Shrapnels, ladies and gens, freakin, shrapnels! Its godang eggshell you millennials!!..
The legendary ghosts
Rumor has it that this hostel is haunted by those poor souls that died (executed) in this place. Yep, this jail has a dark history of death rows and honestly, it was one of main the reasons I checked in this hostel in the first place. This medieval prison does fits for a haunted place, its long empty corridors, its gloomy aura, and its long list of people who died there and buried right in its very yard. It’s like the fool-proof recipe for haunting. The number one suspect for sighting in this hostel is of a man called Patrick Whelan who was hanged at the jail for assassination. They believed that Whelan is still roaming, waiting for a proper burial that he never get. There are numerus ghost associated stories about this hostel; unexplainable footsteps noise, that Whelan guy standing at the end of your bed, and so much more. There are even a paid tours dedicated to this haunted hostel you can join, or simply take the daily free tour from the hostel jail itself to get a glimpse of the story behind the jail.
Is there actually ghosts in this place?
Well, if art is in the eye of beholder, ghosts and ghost related stories are in the eye of believer. None of us got a heart attack from seeing a ghost during our long weekend stay at the hostel although I didn’t mind a spectral sighting. But at least now I can start nostalgic convo with Nico on our romantic moments by saying: do you remember those nights when we slept at the haunted old jail? While looking at him, lovingly.