Fort Smith National Historic Site

Judge Isaac Parker sentenced 160 people to death and hanged 79 at Fort Smith over 21 years. The underground jail, once called "the most miserable prison in the whole country," and the reconstructed gallows are the focus of paranormal reports, including ropes swaying without wind and audio recordings of a phantom gavel.

Judge Isaac Parker sentenced 160 people to death during his 21 years on the federal bench at Fort Smith. Seventy-nine of them actually hanged. The jail beneath his courtroom held up to 150 men in two large cells at once, and U.S. Attorney General Augustus Garland called it "the most miserable prison, probably, in the whole country." Visitors today call it something else: heavy. The air in the underground jail feels like it pushes back.

Parker arrived in Fort Smith on May 10, 1875, a Republican from Missouri appointed by President Ulysses Grant. He'd been offered the chief justice position in Utah Territory but requested Arkansas instead. His jurisdiction covered 74,000 square miles of Indian Territory, and the criminals who operated there had been running unchecked for years. Parker's first session ended with six men sentenced to hang. Only one received a commutation.

The gallows could execute up to twelve people at once. Over the next two decades, the structure outside the courthouse became one of the most feared instruments of federal justice west of the Mississippi. Eighty-six men were executed on the site between 1873 and 1896, with 79 of those falling under Parker's tenure. The hangings were public. Crowds gathered. Parker reportedly watched from his office window and never appeared to enjoy it, though the newspapers gave him the nickname "Hanging Judge" anyway.

The paranormal claims center on two areas: the underground jail and the gallows reconstruction. Kim, a visitor in April 2016, described seeing blue orbs around the underground entrance to the courthouse at night. Andy, who visited with a tour group in October 2014, wrote about a persistent feeling of being watched in the jail, "as if there was a presence" that followed him through the cells. The gallows ropes have been seen swaying on windless days by multiple visitors who couldn't explain what moved them.

Museum director Leisa Gramlich described something a paranormal investigation team captured on audio near Parker's old courtroom furniture. "I heard this on what they recorded," she said. "It was like three bangs, like a gavel. It was the hammering of a gavel." The recording was made in a locked room, after hours, with no one inside.

Parker died on November 17, 1896, at age 58. He's buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery, where visitors have claimed to encounter him as well. The historic site now includes a reconstruction of his courtroom, the original jail, a Trail of Tears walking trail along the Arkansas River, and the rebuilt gallows. The courthouse-jail building serves as the visitor center.

The honest take on Fort Smith is that the history does most of the haunting. A hundred and sixty death sentences, a jail so overcrowded it earned a nickname from the Attorney General, public executions that drew crowds for two decades. Whether the ropes actually sway on their own matters less than the fact that 79 men dropped through that trapdoor and the building where they waited still stands.