Harrie's Jailhouse

Harrie's Jailhouse in Middletown, CT is a sandwich shop inside an 1850s jail where staff leave mocktails for a child ghost named Sarah to stop her from flickering lights and slamming doors. TAPS investigated in 2016 and captured a child's voice saying "let's play dress up," concluding the spirits were friendly.

The staff at Harrie's Jailhouse leave a mocktail on the bar some nights. Not for a customer. For Sarah.

Sarah is a little girl, somewhere between eight and ten years old. She died in this building at some point after it stopped being a jail. Nobody knows her last name or exactly when she lived here. But the owners, Carrie Carella and Heather Kelly, have learned to work around her. When Sarah starts acting up (flickering the lights, slamming doors, knocking items off tables), a mocktail calms her down. Makes her feel included. That's the theory, anyway.

The building at 51 Warwick Street was built in the 1850s as the Pameacha Jail, a holding facility with twelve brownstone cells and a sheriff's residence attached. The cells were eventually removed and shipped to Haddam for use in their jail. What remained was the shell of a building that had held prisoners, housed the poor, and sheltered orphans.

The almshouse next door was worse. Over a hundred orphans packed into the attic at one point. Mentally ill residents shackled in the basement. Hundreds of people died in these two buildings over the decades. None of them chose to be there.

In 2016, the TAPS team from Ghost Hunters investigated both the jail and the almshouse for Season 11, Episode 10, titled "Stone Cold Colonists." The new tenants and business owners had been dealing with enough activity to call in professionals. People in the renovated apartments reported a gentleman in a top hat walking through rooms. Doors slammed on their own. Residents found their beds torn apart with scratch marks gouged into the bedframes. In the gym next door, a heavy medicine ball rolled six feet across the floor with nobody near it.

TAPS captured audio of a child's voice saying "let's play dress up." The team concluded the spirits were innocent and posed no threat. A polite way of saying the ghosts are real but friendly.

Carrie and Heather opened Harrie's Jailhouse as a restaurant in March 2021, turning the old jail into an elevated sandwich shop with a basement bar. They knew about Sarah before they signed the lease. The paranormal history was part of the appeal, not a dealbreaker.

Sarah likes to play with the lights. She creates sudden drafts in rooms with no open windows. She takes items off tables and drops them to the floor. The staff treat it the way you'd treat a toddler at a family dinner: mild exasperation, a little humor, accommodation. The mocktail trick is their go-to. When things get rowdy, they pour Sarah a drink and set it at an empty spot. Things usually settle down.

The almshouse next door has its own separate haunting. Former residents who spent their last days in the poorhouse still seem to occupy the space. The building has been converted to apartments and small businesses, and the current tenants live with the activity the way you live with a noisy upstairs neighbor.

What stands out about Harrie's Jailhouse is how mundane the haunting has become. No drama, no fear, no dramatic investigation footage. Just a restaurant where the staff pours a drink for a dead girl because it keeps the lights from flickering during dinner service. Sarah, whoever she was, seems to want company more than anything else. The mocktail is a small kindness for someone who probably didn't get many when she was alive.

Harrie's Jailhouse is a restaurant located at 109 Court Street, Middletown, Connecticut.

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