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Bastille Hauntings: “I think they are gone.”
At The Bastille, you can still encounter ghosts from the American West.
From 1897 until 1964, the cherished and significant structure, which rises above Hanford’s Civic Park, housed Kings County’s jail and sheriff’s office.
Until 1893, the county was part of a much larger Tulare County. Although Hanford had been a city for two years, the county still needed a main office.
In 1896, the Kings County Courthouse and the Kings County Jail, commonly called The Bastille, were completed one year after plans for the jail were drawn.
After it was completed in 1897, it housed 204 or 205 prisoners, nearly four times as many as when it was completed. Back then, the place was crazy. Among its residents are drunks, tax debtors, and murderers. Women and children lived in the same building.
According to legend, Mary hanged herself as a prisoner in the jail’s upper floor. Mary could be seen through the window. Unfortunately, it was the chandelier. Some of the lamps can be misleading as a head through the window. But Mary was real. She haunts the building and properly catches her voice on the EVP.
