Out of all of Pittsburgh’s reportedly haunted sites, the National Aviary might be the least known.
One of my favorite places in the city, the Aviary is home to more than 500 birds representing 150 species, many of them rare or endangered. It was among the first zoos in the nation to pioneer free-flight habitats, where birds flit past visitors uncaged, and mentioning that it might be haunted conjures images of ghost penguins or phantom fruit doves flying around the building. But the rumored specters are far stranger, and, given the site’s dark history, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
From 1826 to 1880, the Aviary’s location on the North Side was occupied by Western Penitentiary, the so-called sister to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The prison was alleged to be less brutal than its notorious counterpart.
When Charles Dickens visited America in 1842, he famously wanted to see two places: Niagara Falls and Eastern State. The latter had recently adopted a radical new system of punishment, namely solitary confinement. But, as part of Dickens’ five-month journey for his travel memoir, American Notes, the 30-year-old author also spent three days in Pittsburgh. After arriving in the city by canal boat, he made his way north to Allegheny City, not yet annexed, and saw shackled prisoners at Western Pen, where the Aviary now stands.
As with what he’d witnessed at Eastern State, Dickens didn’t reserve his horror. He lamented to a friend in a letter, “The utter solitude by day and night; the many hours of darkness; the silence of death; the mind for ever [sic] brooding on melancholy themes, and having no relief…”
He even imagined the imprisoned men being haunted by apparitions, wondering, “What if ghosts be one of the terrors of these jails?”
Scholars believe Dickens later drew from his experience at Western Pen to create Jacob Marley, the chained ghost in A Christmas Carol.
The Aviary site touched American history again when, in August 1863, it was pressed into service to house Confederate prisoners-of-war.
Cavalrymen serving under Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan were captured after a 1,000-mile raid that ran from Tennessee to northeast Ohio. Ignoring orders from Robert E. Lee, Morgan and nearly 2,500 troops destroyed bridges, disrupted railways, and waged a campaign of terror, seizing food and supplies as they tore through the countryside. Morgan’s Raid made it farther north than any other Confederate incursion in the Civil War, ending with capture by Union forces about 40 miles from Pittsburgh. (Despite his defeat, Morgan’s Raid turned the Kentucky enslaver into a daring folk legend, though his memorial in Lexington was relocated in 2018.)
More than 100 of “Morgan’s Men” were held in Western Penitentiary, with various accounts of deaths that winter, and an escape attempt. A list of the “rebel prisoners” names was published in the Daily Pittsburgh Gazette, noting almost all were officers hailed from Kentucky. The soldiers were transferred to a New Jersey military fort seven months later, “well-clothed” and “looking hale and hearty,” the Pittsburgh Gazette wrote, in March 1864.
Ultimately, Western Pen relocated two miles up the Ohio River, reopening in 1882. (It operated as State Correctional Institution – Pittsburgh until 2017.) The original prison was torn down, and Pittsburgh’s first plant conservatory was established on the land until it was destroyed by a gas explosion in the 1920s.
The City of Pittsburgh rebuilt the conservatory in 1952, adding birds to the indoor gardens. When city budget cuts threatened to close the Aviary in 1991, concerned North Side residents formed Save the Aviary, Inc., a private nonprofit corporation, to keep it running. The group lobbied the U.S. Congress to grant the Aviary honorary “National” status, and Pres. Bill Clinton signed the declaration in 1993.
Since its opening and reopening (which also required unearthing a subterranean dungeon), people have experienced odd happenings in the building. In Haunted Western Pennsylvania, Patty A. Wilson reports Aviary staff have seen “shadowy figures that dart around” and heard “phantom footsteps through the halls” and banging noises in the basement. Birds react to unseen phenomena. Radios malfunction. In the 2013 book, Wilson recounts an oft-repeated story from a staff member who was preparing birds’ food in the morning and saw a radio flip on by itself, its dial moving “as if a ghostly hand was turning it.”
With its longstanding commitment to unfettered bird life, the Aviary has understandably distanced itself from its haunted history and Western Pen. But in the 2000s, the organization invited two paranormal teams to investigate the building.
Shawn Kelly, who founded the Pittsburgh Paranormal Society in 2006, tells Pittsburgh City Paper, “The Aviary is extremely haunted.”
The going theory is most of the paranormal activity emanates from wayward Confederate troops. There are apparently scattered accounts of Aviary visitors spotting figures in Civil War-era clothing.
Kelly says that during the Paranormal Society’s investigation, someone caught the shadow of a soldier on film. The team also saw floating orbs in the Aviary Wetlands, “where all the birds hang out.”
“It wasn't poop; it wasn't their feathers. They were very solid orbs,” Kelly says.
The late Rosemary Ellen Guiley details her investigation with the International Parapsychology Research Foundation in her 2009 book Ghosthunting Pennsylvania. She brought in a Frank’s Box or “spirit box,” a modified radio scanner believed to pick up disembodied voices.
Placing it in the kitchen where the ghost radio incident occurred, “a male voice said there were six communicators present.” Apparently, one copped to turning the radio dial, also saying “the communicators liked the staff members and the birds … and sometimes followed [them] around on their duties.”
Wilson conveys a similar sentiment, saying the Aviary’s spirits enjoy the birds and view the building as “a peaceful place” that they “seem intent on keeping it that way.”
Kelly is more skeptical. He asserts the Aviary is a better example of a “residual haunting,” which paranormal investigators believe happen where negative energy is stored at a site of stress or trauma.
Spirits essentially get “stuck,” Kelly tells City Paper, and are unaware of anyone’s presence, “continuously [walking] the same route … like a broken record.”
Accounts of 150-year-old ghosts enjoying the Aviary’s birds seems to speak to a deeper wish for a happy ending. Rather than a historical ruin, the site can be a lively, if slightly spooky, place for conservation and renewal.