The Old Beauregard Parish Jail doesn’t look like it belongs in the middle of a small Louisiana town. Rising beside the parish courthouse in downtown DeRidder, the towering structure—with its steep roofs, pointed arches, barred windows, and castle-like silhouette—has spent more than a century looming over the community. Folks eventually gave it the nickname “The Gothic Jail,” but over time another name would take hold as well: The Hanging Jail. That title came after two condemned men were executed inside its walls in 1928, on a scaffold built at the top of its infamous spiral staircase.

Over the decades, the jail became more than just a place of confinement. Violent criminals passed through its cells, jailers and their families lived inside the building, and whispers slowly began to grow around the strange things people claimed to experience there. Visitors have reported shadowy figures in empty hallways, footsteps on staircases with no one present, voices echoing from vacant rooms, and the sensation of someone standing just behind them. Whether the stories are tied to executions, generations of prisoners, or something far older lingering within the building itself, the old jail has become one of Louisiana’s most notorious haunted locations.

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