Haunted Montreal Blog #5 – Old Montreal Prison Cells
What the visitors are oblivious to is a dark secret: lurking just below the square lies an old dungeon, a series of creepy jail cells that once housed Montreal's most wretched and miserable prisoners, including those awaiting execution.
It is the site of the first Montreal Prison, a notorious jail where inmates were locked up in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The prison also hosted live executions, where cheering crowds on the Champ-de-Mars witnessed criminals being hanged from a scaffold erected in front of the prison wall. The old jail cells are presently off-limits to the public and are rumoured to be haunted, possibly by ghosts of criminals long-since executed.