Today on The Grave Talks, a conversation about the Squirrel Caged Jail Museum with Cat Slaughter.

In the 1880s, the Squirrel Cage Jail in Council Bluffs, Iowa, was considered a revolutionary concept in housing

inmates. They claimed the new concept allowed for maximum security with minimum jailer

attention. It was a 19th century marvel constructed so that only one jailer was needed to keep an eye on an entire jail

full of prisoners.

The cells were all positioned on a central carousel that when a hand crank was turned,

it would rotate the cell so that only one could be entered at a time.

However, it didn't take long to realize this concept didn't

work as they thought it would. While the jailer could attend to that one cell, the others

were simply trapped. Of the 18 prisons built, most were closed within a couple of years after

opening. However, the squirrel cage jail remained in

operation until 1969. But it seems some of those who are once there are still there. Reports of

hauntings date back to the 1950s when a jailer refused to sleep in his quarters because he believed it to be

haunted. Today on the Grave Talks, we talk about the hauntings of the Squirrelcage Jail with Kat

Slaughter, director of the Squirrel Cage Jail Museum and Rails West Railroad Museum.

I'm really interested in both of these locations.

The one that drew me to you, though, was the Squirrelcage Jail Museum.

And I saw that first, and I was like, what the heck is this? Because it says it's a jail.

But then when you look at photos of it,

I would seriously say an old courthouse is what it looks like.

It does not look like a jail.

Yeah.

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