SATURDAY 2ND MAY 2026 9PM -2AMPeterhead Convict Prison was built around 1888. It was designed to hold 208 prisoners and to be Scotland’s only convict prison.to
Occupancy averaged at around 350 however, until peaking at 455 in 1911.
Additional buildings were completed in 1909, 1960 and 1962, bringing capacity up to 362. According to the Scottish Prison Service, the prison could, in 2012, accommodate up to 142 prisoners.
It closed in 2013 and was replaced by the new HMP Grampian, the first prison in Scotland to jointly house youths, men and women. On 28 September 1987, a riot in the prison’s D wing resulted in prisoners taking over the building and taking a prison officer, 56-year-old Jackie Stuart, hostage. The rioters were serving life in prison for violent crimes. It was thought that they had nothing to lose and would not hesitate to make good on their threats to K*ll their hostage, whom they had taken up to the rafters. When negotiations broke down, the then-Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, dispatched the SAS to bring the riot to an end on 3 October. The operation was successful. The hostage was released unharmed and order in the prison was restored.
Peterhead Prison had a history of poor conditions for prisoners, being referred to as “Scotland’s gulag, a prison of no hope.” A 2005 inspection reported that electricity had only just been made available in all the cells and slopping out continued at the prison. HMP Peterhead was a specialist centre for sex offenders.
Over the years, many reports of unexplained activity within the prison have been reported, including disembodied footsteps and voices, doors slamming on their own dark shadow figures, and an apparition of a nurse continuing her duties in the prison block has also been reported.
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