Burlington County Prison Museum

Designed by Robert Mills — the same architect behind the Washington Monument — this 1811 prison ran continuously until 1965. Ghost Hunters featured it, and it's widely considered one of New Jersey's most haunted buildings.

The Burlington County Prison in Mount Holly was designed by Robert Mills, one of America's first professionally trained architects, who would later go on to design the Washington Monument, the U.S. Treasury Building, and the U.S. Patent Office. Completed in 1811, the prison was considered a model of progressive penal design for its era, featuring individual cells, cross-ventilation for fresh air circulation, fireproof construction, and provisions for each prisoner to receive a Bible or prayer book. Originally built to hold approximately forty inmates, the facility operated continuously for over 150 years until its closure in 1965, making it the oldest continuously operating prison in the United States at the time it shut its doors. It reopened as a museum in 1966.

The prison's most notorious inmate was Joel Clough, a twenty-nine-year-old man convicted of stabbing his girlfriend to death in Bordentown after she reportedly jilted him. Clough managed to escape from the prison but was quickly recaptured and confined to the maximum-security cell, known as the dungeon, located on the top floor of the building. That placement was deliberate -- the architects put the most dangerous cell on the highest floor to prevent escape by tunneling and to isolate the prisoner from communicating with others in the cell blocks below. Clough was hanged in the prison yard in 1833, and his body was buried in a corner of the yard where a large tree now grows. Almost immediately after the execution, guards and inmates began reporting strange sounds from his empty cell: moaning, the rattling of chains, and the smell of cigarette smoke drifting from a cell that held no one.

Joel Clough's ghost is considered the prison's principal haunt, but he's far from alone. Paranormal investigators who have worked in the building report electromagnetic field readings that spike consistently in and around his former cell. Objects have been observed moving on their own -- a stretcher positioned next to the maximum-security cell shifted by itself during one investigation, and motion sensors were triggered by an unseen force within the cell. Dark figures have been witnessed moving across rooms and down hallways. A child's spirit reportedly hides in the old iron safe, and visitors have heard small footsteps and giggles in areas where no children are present.

The Atlantic Paranormal Society, TAPS, featured the Burlington County Prison in an episode of "Ghost Hunters" on March 12, 2008, investigating its long history of reported hauntings. EVP recordings captured voices in the cell blocks, and investigators documented orb anomalies on film. Independent paranormal teams, including the Paranormal Consultants and Investigators of New Jersey, have conducted their own investigations and reported banging sounds that occurred on command in response to questions posed aloud, light anomalies visible in the dungeon cells, and shadow movement down hallways coinciding with motion detector alarms and trigger objects being knocked over. One investigator reported feeling a physical tug on her hair, immediately followed by the REM pod, EMF detector, and motion sensor alarming in rapid succession. The dungeon itself, where prisoners were chained to the floor in darkness before their executions, is described by visitors as a space where the air feels physically heavier, leaving people breathless in ways they struggle to explain.