Haunted hotel guide · Rockville, Indiana

The Haunted Old Jail Inn, Rockville: Sleep in a Cell at Indiana's 1879 Parke County Jail

For 119 years this brick building on the Rockville square was the Parke County Jail. Now you can sleep behind its barred doors, and Haunted Rooms runs its own ghost hunt and sleepover here.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate hotels

3.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1879Jail opened

9Cells and suites

Book our ghost hunt hereMeet the ghosts

The best way to spend a night in the Old Jail Inn after dark is with us. Haunted Rooms runs the Old Jail Inn Ghost Hunt and Sleepover: a history and ghost briefing, guided vigils on the cell block, the second floor and the old drunk tank, then free investigation, with General Admission running 8 PM to 2 AM and Overnight VIP guests sleeping in one of the five original cells or four suites. See the event page for dates.

The building stands at 127 South Jefferson Street on the courthouse square in Rockville, the seat of Parke County, famous for its covered bridges. It was the county’s third jail, in use from 1879 until the last prisoners left in 1998, and it is now one of the most unusual haunted hotels in Indiana: a working inn where you can book a barred cell on an ordinary night too.

The ghosts of the Old Jail Inn

Footsteps on the cell block

The most common report at the Old Jail Inn is the simplest: heavy footsteps pacing the cell block when nobody is there. Owners, staff and guests have all described it, usually late at night when the building is quiet.

The cell block is where our own ghost hunts spend much of the night, with EVP and spirit box sessions inside the old cells.

Doors that slam on their own

The iron cell doors are locked and chained open so they cannot swing shut. Even so, guests describe the crash of a cell door slamming somewhere on the block, a sound anyone who has worked in a jail would know at once.

Voices that know your name

One of the stranger stories is of names being called from empty rooms. Owners say they have heard their own names called out when they were alone in the building.

Shadow figures on the second floor

Upstairs, guests report shadow figures moving across the rooms and small floating lights. Others describe cold hands, tugs on their clothes, a touch on the shoulder and the feeling of someone sitting down on the bed.

One guest described having her hair gently stroked in the night. The inn’s story connects that to a former caretaker who is said to have died in a fire on the property, although we have not found a record of that fire.

The hanging behind the jail

The jail’s darkest chapter began on November 14, 1882, when Darlington grocer Taylor Dunbar was killed by Joseph W. “Buck” Stout, a 21-year-old farm hand, after what Stout later said was a quarrel over a quail. A crowd at Darlington wanted to lynch him, but he was moved to Crawfordsville and then, when the case went to Parke County, to Rockville to await trial. The governor refused a reprieve, and local accounts say Stout was hanged behind this jail on August 8, 1883, the last execution in Parke County.

Contemporary reports say he went to the gallows in a black suit with a flower in his buttonhole and said he was sorry. Nobody has tied a particular ghost to him, but the hanging is part of why people expect this building to be restless.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The cell block: The five original cells, barred doors still in place. Footsteps and slamming doors are reported here.
• The second floor: Where shadow figures and orbs are reported, and where we run lights-out vigils.
• The drunk tank: The jail’s original holding cell in the basement, now the Drunk Tank wine bar.
• The suites: Four more private rooms converted from the old booking cells, still with barred doors.
• The corridors: Where guests report touches and hair pulling. The walls double as a guest book, signed by visitors from more than 20 countries.

History of Old Jail Inn

Rockville built the jail in 1879 as Parke County’s third, with living quarters for the sheriff and his family. Our event page credits it, along with the courthouse and the boiler house on the square, to Thomas J. Tolan and Son of Fort Wayne. The Tolans were certainly hired by the county commissioners in 1879 to design the courthouse; we have not found an independent record naming them for the jail. The jail and sheriff’s residence are contributing buildings in the Rockville Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

For 119 years it held everyone the county locked up: people waiting for trial, long-term prisoners and those brought in overnight to sober up. Buck Stout waited here for trial in 1883 and, by local accounts, was hanged behind the jail. Visit Indiana notes that John Dillinger was briefly held here after a botched robbery in the 1930s.

The last prisoners left in 1998 and the building sat empty for twelve years. In 2010 Debra Ackerman, who had a background in marketing and branding, offered to buy the jail’s steel drunk tank doors and, as she told Visit Indiana in 2015, ended up being handed the keys and deed to the whole building. She turned it into an inn, living for a time on the top floor in what had been the juvenile hall, a padded cell and the sheriff’s office. A 2022 ABC57 feature named Patty Hawley as co-owner of the inn and its winery.

Today the inn has nine rooms. Five are former cells with their barred doors intact, named after outlaws such as Jesse James (one has a Harley-Davidson theme), sharing a bare-bones prison bathroom. The other four are suites with more privacy, with names such as the Bonnie and Clyde Suite and the Gangster Hideout Suite, and the whole cell block can be rented by a group. Downstairs, the jail’s real drunk tank is now the Drunk Tank winery and wine bar, known for interactive tastings. Rooms are booked through the inn’s own website or Airbnb.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book a barred cell for the full experience, or a suite if you want more privacy. Cell guests share the bathroom.
• See our ghost hunt and sleepover page for dates; tickets are limited. Our events are for ages 18 and over, or 16 and over with an adult.
• There is very little walking or climbing on our events. The only steps are down to the basement, and a chair can be arranged for anyone who cannot stand for long.
• Sign the walls. The corridors are the inn’s guest book.
• Come early to see Parke County’s covered bridges around Rockville before dark.

More haunted hotels nearby

• French Lick Springs Hotel: Indiana’s grand haunted resort, in the south of the state
• The Story Inn, Nashville: home of the Blue Lady
• Roads Hotel, Atlanta: overnight investigations north of Indianapolis
• Haunted hotels in Indiana

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Old Jail Inn (official site)
• Visit Indiana: At Old Jail Inn, spend a comfy night behind bars
• Parke County Covered Bridges: Old Jail Inn
• 1440 WROK: Stay overnight at Indiana's haunted jailhouse
• Haunted Rooms: Old Jail Inn Ghost Hunt and Sleepover
• ABC57: Experience a night behind bars at Old Jail Inn (2022)
• The Paper of Montgomery County: the Buck Stout case
• Wikipedia: Rockville Historic District (Rockville, Indiana)

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