The Bastille

Built in 1897 to a design by San Francisco's McDougall Brothers, the turreted Kings County Jail and sheriff's office served until 1964, then became in turn an art museum, a restaurant and a bar, and today holds offices. Its famous ghost, a woman called Mary said to have hanged herself upstairs, has a known origin: according to a 1994 Hanford Sentinel editorial, bar regulars made her up one evening in 1985 because any self-respecting old jail ought to have a ghost. The building does hold one recorded death. A retired sheriff recalled that a local woman repeatedly jailed for drunkenness in the late 1930s was kept in the small upstairs room for women prisoners, and was found there one day dead of a heart attack. Her name was not recorded. People who have worked in the building describe a woman seen at the second-floor windows at night, footsteps on the stairs, and disturbances in the kitchen. The TV series Ghost Hunters featured it in a season premiere. The building can be seen from the street; the interior is not open to visitors.