Ottawa International Hostel, Ottawa, Canada

"This used to be Ottawa jail now it's a hostel, Ottawa International Hostel. A bit of history about that place, the prison was built in 1862 and was used until 1972 and it was known to be one of the most brutal prison in Canada. On records there was only three executions, three hangings, but later on a hundred body was found buried near the prison and all had broken necks, so no body knows what really went on inside. From what i heard many visitors have heard screams and saw shadowy figures passing by and others have felt eerie presences .The last execution was of Patrick James Whelen, accused of killing D'Arcy McGee (i stayed in a room named "McGee" :0)..man..i didn't know about that until later)because they found on him a revolver which match the same make as the revolver that killed D'Arcy, but there was no real proof, just that he was in the area where the victim has died and that he had a similar revolver. So he was put in jail for several months then hanged later, and he was the last prisoner to be executed. And now it is said that he is one of the famous ghost that haunts the prison, according to many descriptions from people. There are several pictures of him inside the prison, one can't seem to stay in it's place, it keeps on falling on the ground. The workers in the hostel tried to nail it, glue it, Velcro it but it kept on falling.

I stayed few days in there and took a lot of pictures. These pictures were taken using a small digital camera with no flash or LCD screen, just a plane digital camera but with a high sensitivity to infra red light .Infra red light is part of a wave length of the visible light which isn't visible to the naked eye, but visible to some animals and to cameras made specifically to capture this wavelength of light. There wasn't a lot of light where i took the pictures that you see, but the light from the bulbs was giving off enough infra red to take pictures. As you can see the pictures have few colors and they aren't that clear which is a common thing in infra red photography. I'm not a expert in this field but that's what i noticed from taking pictures here and there.

With my camera i usually take two or more consecutive shots of something in case one didn't come out as clear because of hands movements. There was places full of agonies, suffering and pain, the air was full of these energies in places inside the jail(i will talk about them later when i get my other films developed) . But what surprised me the most is the shots of the white orb (below), you can see it clearly visible in front of the wooden door, just floating. It was first up in the view of the camera then it started to go down little by little outside it's view."

Just a example of a shot taken in Infrared inside the prison

The white orb mentioned above

The orb moving

Adds on :

"I'm adding additional information and experiences that i hinted to earlier on (Above). Just as i arrived at the hostel i met a lady who's been there for a couple of days and had a strange experience. According to her story she was with friends at the hostel in her room then all of a sudden they hear kids playing and laughing above them in the floor above ,so they went up to see what's going on but found no one. I was surprised, how can children be here in the jail, what brought them here? I got the answer to that when i later took the tour. Back in those days the inmate's families where often brought in to live in the jail too.

Another story is about a priest who was attacked one day by the prisoners and murdered inside the jail. Now his ghost is said to also haunt the jail and has been seen walking pass the prison cells. One other bizarre story was told by our guide later is of two children who bled during a jail tour. What happened was that on one occasion when the guide was talking and showing to visitors where the hangings took place, so he was explaining the process, then he mentioned that the last prisoner to be hanged here was Patrick James Whelhem. And that nobody still to this day knows where he was buried, his wish was to be taken to Montreal and buried there, but that never happened.

Underneath the trap door was a large block of concrete where a skeleton remains were found later but nobody knows who they belong to. But when the guide mentioned what was found under that block and that some believe that this could be where Patrick McGee and that was his skeleton two kids from the group stood up on the block and started jumping and laughing and they both started to bleed from their noses at the same time and had trouble stopping the bleeding.

While exploring the jail several places (photo 2 and 3) inside were of great interest to me because i felt in them intense residual emotions, agonies to be exact, and could not understand why these particular places were impregnated by so much suffering and pain. I could not find any explanations and so i decided to wait and take the guided jail tour couple of days later and so i did. We were like twelve during the tour and when we arrived at those places of my interest i described to the guide what i picked up and he gave me a question mark look for a second then he continued talking. Few minutes later he started talking about the tiny room right in front of us that was used as a torture room. This room had a common wall with a oven on the other side, so it was extremely hot inside and that's where some prisoners were locked, inside this oven room. So were we stood was probably where prisoners stood awaiting their turns to be forced inside this tiny room. One can only imagine what those waiting for their turn must have went through while hearing the cries of those inside and feeling their turn is approaching that they're going to go through the same thing, that they're next. And all those terrible experienced emotions are left here where we stood. A person might feel strange standing in this place but if he's sensitive enough he would what was left behind as if he was reading a book. I came also across another part of the building where there was present in the air intense agonizing emotions that if i wanted to put them in words they would take the following form " O NOooo !!!...NOOO !!....". I started looking around ,examining the site and thinking maybe i could find traces of a torture tool or something or chains where prisoners might have been tied up and beaten but i couldn't find anything. There was in front high up a large thick wooden beam going across from wall to wall, no one knows what this beam was used for but it seems (according to the guide)that heavy objects were hanged from it then dropped on the ground which is eight floors below because the ground is dented. But where that beam was was a bit far from where the residual emotions were present .So i decided to wait again like in the first case for the guided prison tour."

"While taking the tour later we arrived to that particular place ,i was a bit behind the group because i had my cameras and camcorder with me and not taking pictures was out of the question. But when i got back to the group i was shocked by what i saw ! The guide was standing where these emotional residues i mentioned above were !(photo 3 which i took taken later because it wasn't allowed to take pictures during the tour with the group). And the guide was standing facing a metal bar door that had just opened which i never thought of it as a door, i took it for a window and never looked through it to see what's behind it.

"This door lead to where one would be hanged, a rope was dangling few feet behind that that black metal caged door. And underneath the rope was the trap door. But what's all that got to do with what you felt you might ask? Well where those emotional residues were present is EXACTLY where a prisoner would stand, before he is walked forward where the rope is hanging which is like 4-5 feet away."

"I have to say this is one haunted place, i felt in some parts of it like i was in a pool of energies and emotions. On my last couple of nights i stayed on the last floor(the 9th)room John and i always felt there was someone still living there in his mind in my room close to the door. He wasn't here because i was here he was because he's always been here. And at night i had a lot of difficulties i mean A LOT meditating, i don't think I've been in a place like this before where it was so hard to concentrate and meditate. And if you turn off the light it becomes so dark you can't even see your hand if you put it in front of your face, just complete darkness and it was pretty eerie."

"During the tour the guide mentioned floor 9 and he said it was the hospital in those days. There was one crazy doctor up there. He was a alcoholic and to satisfy his needs he used to steal the money given to him to buy medications then buy with it alcohol. There was no medications to treat patients and if one needed a leg amputation for example it would be done with no anesthetics, just a saw on flesh on bones. One story connected to the hospital is about a prisoner who tried to escape from that floor. Since it was the only floor with no metal bars on the windows, he pretended that he was sick, taken up to the hospital, he sneaked out and jumped from that floor, the 9th floor. He broke both of his legs but stayed alive. He managed to drag and hid himself and all this happened during the day light, he escaped during the day. Some time had passed and the prison was alerted that one of their inmates had escaped, a search was done but no one could find him. They caught a guy who looks exactly like him outside the prison but later released because he wasn't wearing the prison outfit and it turned out that this person is the escapee twin brother. The escaped prisoner was caught later hiding under a police car."

"1)Shot of floor 6 stairs entrance(below)where there was a lot of emotional residues. You can see on the right there is part of a arched door now covered with bricks but still visible a bit ,that used to lead to a small room that had a common wall with a oven on the other side, and this suppose to have been used as a torture room where prisoners would be locked in."

"2)This is where the hanging took place, behind that black metal caged door and it's where i felt the repulsive emotions "not to get inside" in the air that i've talked about above and in which i didn't know that this is where a convicted prisoner would stand for a few moments before he walks forward where the rope would be put around his neck."

"3)This is the trap door from below and where i was standing is located the large block of concrete where a skeleton remains were found which is thought to be that of the last prisoner Patrick James Whelen."

"4)There was where i took photo 2 a large thick wooden beam above where i was standing when i snapped this shot, which goes from side to side. No body knows what this huge beam was used for(we are on the 8th floor by the way)but beneath it 8 floors below at the bottom the floor is dented, which mean heavy objects were dropped from where the beam is, what were these objects no body knows. And what you see in photo 5 is where these heavy things landed, you can see the dent in the floor covered by pieces of wood. And the camera seems to have caught some blueish mist right above the dent."

"5)Same as photo 1 (floor 6) but from a different angle from above."

"6)Strange lights that appeared on film after shooting the fourth floor staircase entrance ,from above also, nothing was visible during the shooting."

UPDATE:

Below are more shots from the most recent visit to Ottawa International Hostel.

"This is on the 8th floor. This area was closed to the public. The camera under burst mode with flash caught a moving orb in about 1.5 seconds. Three shots were fired and this orb was caught heading past me. Follow the yellow arrow to see it's trajectory. Many strange incidences occurred here in the past, one time a lady got locked up in one of the cells and no one could get her out. It was a cell where prisoners in the past waiting for their executions were locked in. The whole hostel staff ran upstairs to try to free the lady to no avail. After 3 hours of trying everything with no success the door all of a sudden just flew open. Somebody else lost a finger in that same cell when it's door just shut close on it's own."

"Below is a close up of that moving orb."

"The orb shots below were also taken on the 8th floor. This side of the floor was open to the public. This area of the floor was rented in the past. But an incidence happened then they stopped renting it. What happened was people were sleeping in these cells on the left then one night heavy footsteps were heard passing along the cells. As people came out to see who was walking by and discovered that no one "visible" was there yet the footsteps continued. So everyone freaked out then ran downstairs to the front desk."

"Now these burst mode shots below were taken on the 7th floor. 3 Shots with 3 flashes in about 1.5 seconds. Follow the yellow arrow to see the orbs trajectory."

Patrick Zakhm