History & local legend
The Courthouse Square office building in Greensburg occupies the site of an earlier Westmoreland County jail. In 1984, dispatchers at the 911 center reported a disturbing image on a security monitor: the transparent lower half of a body appeared to hang in a hallway.
The camera covered the passage between the magistrate’s office and the delivery garage on the upper parking level. Workers went to investigate. They found the hallway empty, although they reportedly felt a patch of cold air.
Their colleagues continued watching the screen and said they could see the workers walk through the hanging figure. The old jail, completed in 1884, had once stood on the courthouse block with a tower rising 104 feet above the street.
Sources
- The Shadowlands, Greensburg, Westmoreland County Courthouse, dispatchers’ 1984 security-camera account
- Vogle & Winsheimer, History of Greensburg and Greensburg Schools, 1899, photograph and accompanying description of the fourth county prison
- Library of Congress, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Greensburg, 1915, sheet 2, county jail and courthouse footprints
