Friar Gate's gaol was Derby's working house of correction for the best part of a century, and its record is grim reading even by the standards of the period: 58 executions between 1756 and 1825, carried out publicly outside its walls, on top of an unknown number of deaths from gaol fever among prisoners who never made it to the gallows. That density of death is the usual explanation local guides give for why the building has such a strong haunted reputation today.
The gaol is now a small independent museum, kept alive largely through its association with the paranormal. Its owner, Richard Felix, is a well-known figure from the Most Haunted television series and has spoken about a walking grey haze he associates with the site, along with cell doors that are seen to close by themselves. Contractors and visitors working in the building have separately reported feelings of nausea and unease concentrated in the condemned cell, the small room where prisoners spent their last hours before execution. Some visitors will not go in at all; those who do often describe leaving in a hurry.
The strongest and most repeated vision reported at the gaol is of two men hanging from a fixed beam inside the condemned cell, an image that maps closely onto the building's actual use rather than being a free-floating legend. Activity is described as seasonal, with a peak from around October through December and a smaller rise again in early summer, and the gaol now runs organised ghost walks and overnight vigils built around that reputation, including for stag and hen parties looking for a scare rather than genuine belief. As with most sites this heavily marketed around its hauntings, it is worth being honest that commercial interest and ghost story have become hard to fully separate here, but the underlying history of the executions themselves is solid record rather than embellishment.
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