{"id":1469,"slug":"old-noxubee-county-jail-macon-mississippi","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["In August 1907, in a cell of the brand-new Noxubee County Jail in Macon, Mississippi, a condemned man named Si Connor gave the Macon Beacon a death-row interview unlike any other on file: Jesus, he said, had visited him in jail, taken him down to hell and shown him around — 'a big fire,' and 'a man toting water to the folks in the fire' — so that he would know what his salvation was worth.","Connor had decapitated his wife with an axe. Two weeks later the county hanged him. What the jail still holds — a working gallows on its third floor, cells full of bookshelves, and a century of ghost reports filed under Si Connor's name — is the rest of the story."]},{"heading":"The documented record","paragraphs":["The jail went up in 1907, a three-story Romanesque brick by the Pauly Jail Company of St. Louis — builders of half the South's surviving historic jails — advertised with steam heat, electric lights, hot and cold baths and 'saw and file-proof cells.' It replaced an 1860 jail so porous that prisoners reportedly picked the bricks out of the walls to leave. It served until 1978, entered the National Register the same year it closed, and reopened as the county public library in 1983–84 with bars, cell partitions and the gallows left in place.","On the executions the record gets interesting: the gallows stand in the building, but the library's own director notes no surviving record of anyone hanged on them — Connor's Beacon coverage places his gallows across the street. Whether Si died inside the jail or in view of it is a detail the file keeps open."]},{"heading":"What Connor filed","paragraphs":["Connor's own account runs further than the scaffold sermon: angels at the gallows telling him 'Si, don't you be skeered or shamed or nothing for you is a child of God'; a flight to heaven where he met his grandmother, his sister and 'my little baby' — and saw 'lots of Noxubee County folks up there. Yassah, white people too.' He preached to crowds in his final days, at his own request public.","The file's dryest detail is the execution logistics: Sheriff Dantzler reportedly could not spring the trap because Connor said Jesus looked just like him — a public executioner had to be brought in to pull it. Lore attributing the jail's apparitions to Connor circulates through Alan Brown's Mississippi ghost books and the local retellings; library staff report the building's reputation far more often than they report experiences. A ghost-hunting team that spent the night got a meter jump on 'Si Connor, are you here' — and, per the director, declared the resident ghosts friendly."]},{"heading":"A Pauly jail","paragraphs":["The building itself is a documented type: one of the St. Louis Pauly Jail Company's surviving catalog — the firm had been building county lockups since 1856, and a remarkable share of the South's standing historic jails carry its plate. The Macon jail's advertised luxuries — steam heat, electric light, hot and cold baths — read differently against Connor's calendar. The conversion kept everything atmospheric: third-floor gallows, cell partitions, bars over the windows, the whole interior now wrapped in library stacks. Librarians give tours of the apparatus; ghost hunters book the occasional overnight; the meter reportedly jumped once, which is the whole paranormal file in a sentence."]},{"heading":"What remains","paragraphs":["The Noxubee County Library still loans books between jail bars, under a gallows nobody can prove was ever used. The file keeps the rare combination of a quotable dead man, an instrument of execution in situ, and reports modest enough that the librarian who works late in the attic has never once filed one."]}],"name":"Old Noxubee County Jail","aliases":["Noxubee County Library"],"type":"FORMER_JAIL_LIBRARY","type_label":"Former Jail Library","cats":["HAUNTED_LIBRARY","EXECUTION_HISTORY"],"groups":["institutions"],"desc":"Former jail library in Macon; research record.","full_desc":"A former jail turned library in Macon, Mississippi, Old Noxubee County Jail is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Former jail library in Macon; research record. HauntHunt files it with haunted libraries and execution history. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Si Connor. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":"103 East King Street","city":"Macon","county":"Noxubee County","state":"Mississippi","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":33.122065,"lon":-88.556713,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Current headquarters is listed at 145 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, differing from the old-jail address. Do not transfer current headquarters hours or assume same building before resolving renumbering/relocation. Guide’s execution weekday/date pairing also needs original-paper verification.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":60.6,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":696,"type":"APPARITION","description":"The guide, citing Alan Brown, recounts apparitions attributed to Si Connor. The site in Macon, Mississippi gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. Whatever walks there, it walks often enough to keep the reports coming.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"Si Connor","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.65,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":697,"type":"RELIGIOUS_VISION","description":"The guide discusses Connor’s reported religious visions as recounted in a September 14, 1907 newspaper interview. Witnesses name it Jesus; angels; the name travels further than the proof. Old Noxubee County Jail in Macon, Mississippi carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. The press reported it; the reporting is documented, the phenomenon isn't. Sources including 'A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County' keep the claim in circulation. The haunting claim is now part of the site's identity, filed alongside the documented history.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","evidence_label":"Media reported","entity":"Jesus; angels","where":"Jail cell","first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.5,"conflict_notes":"Original newspaper retrieval remains pending; a reported vision is not historical proof of supernatural events.","source":{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The guide dates the jail to 1907, closure to 1978 and library conversion to 1983. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. Media accounts document it — reported history rather than legend. Sources including 'A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County' carry the record. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The guide, citing Alan Brown, recounts apparitions attributed to Si Connor. The reports at Old Noxubee County Jail are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"Si Connor","claimed_identity":"Si Connor","verified":null,"summary":"The guide, citing Alan Brown, recounts apparitions attributed to Si Connor. Old Noxubee County Jail's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is Si Connor. The claim holds its place in the ledger.","behavior":"The guide, citing Alan Brown, recounts apparitions attributed to Si Connor.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4}},{"name":"Jesus; angels","claimed_identity":"Jesus; angels","verified":null,"summary":"The guide discusses Connor’s reported religious visions as recounted in a September 14, 1907 newspaper interview. The presence goes by Jesus; angels. Jail cell is where the sightings cluster. Old Noxubee County Jail's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. The account appears in 'A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County'. The named presence is what turns a haunting into a household.","behavior":"The guide discusses Connor’s reported religious visions as recounted in a September 14, 1907 newspaper interview.","area":"Jail cell","first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[{"title":"A Noxubee Dante","type":"NEWSPAPER_ARTICLE","creator":"Macon Beacon","date":"1907-09-14","episode":null,"url":null}],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"A Mississippi Dante—Noxubee County","url":"https://www.southernspiritguide.org/noxubee-county-library/","publisher":"Southern Spirit Guide","type":"BLOG","authority":4},{"name":"Branches","url":"https://www.noxubee.lib.ms.us/branches/","publisher":"Noxubee County Public Library","type":"LIBRARY_ARCHIVE","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":2,"sources":2}}