Constructed around 1900 as an unyielding military detention facility for the Russian Imperial Navy, Karosta Prison is a grim brick fortress defined by institutional cruelty, mass executions, and highly volatile, physical paranormal manifestations. Originally built to function as an infirmary, the Tsarist regime quickly converted the heavily reinforced structure into a high-security military brig to break the spirits of insubordinate sailors. Throughout the 20th century, the prison shifted between oppressive regimes, serving successively as a brutal interrogation and detention center for the Soviet KGB, Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, and the Latvian army. Thousands of military prisoners, political dissidents, and deserters were packed into the freezing, windowless concrete cells, with hundreds of documented executions carried out directly in the prison yard.

Today, Karosta operates as an interactive museum where tourists can pay to experience a simulated night as a targeted Soviet prisoner, making it an incredibly active focal point for firsthand anomalous accounts. Visitors and overnight guests who dare to sleep on the hard wooden bunks routinely document intense, terrifyingly physical interactions. Guests frequently report the distinct sound of heavy iron cell doors slamming shut on their own down empty corridors, followed by the sound of heavy military boots marching on the concrete and frantic, disembodied chains rattling. The most chilling encounters involve direct physical manipulation; overnight visitors have reported invisible hands violently pulling blankets off their beds, leaving cold scratches on their skin, and pinning them down with a suffocating, crushing weight in the pitch black.

The facility houses two highly specific, recurring apparitions heavily tracked by regional research groups. The first is a distinct, solid shadow figure of a Tsarist-era guard who patrols the dark corridors near the isolation cells. The second is the “White Lady,” a tragic female entity believed to be a young woman who snuck into the prison to find her jailed fiancé and hanged herself in a nearby corridor after discovering he had been executed. Her spirit manifests as an icy white silhouette gliding through the dark, accompanied by intense, localized drops in temperature that instantly trigger a complete freeze on digital monitoring screens and total power drops on high-definition camera arrays.