Haunted Prisons

Council Bluffs, Iowa is one of the more unsuspecting locations for paranormal activity. The rather small and simple city is situated on the Missouri River directly across from the Nebraskan city of Omaha. Home of Pottawattamie County, the area was named after the heavy presence of a contingent of Native Americans in the area. However, another heavy ghostly presence still remains in Council Bluffs at the old Pottawattamie County Jail, within an area of cells known as, “the squirrel’s cage”.

Is the Pottawattamie County Jail Haunted?

“Squirrel Cage” at Pottawattamie County Jail

Constructed in 1885, the Pottawattamie County Jail was actually styled as a three-story, Victorian brick building. Legend has it that the ground it was constructed on used to be a morgue that was crudely connected to an Episcopal church that was all torn down to make way for the jail. Inside, however, there was an arrangement of thirty cells that were controlled by a lever that would rotate them around in ten cell increments. This revolving jail cell setup was crudely dubbed, “the squirrel’s cage” due to its wiry and animalistic design. Operating until 1969, this jail housed local inmates who had committed mainly misdemeanors with a few felony murderers mixed in. Most were men who awaited jury trials at the nearby courthouse, while others just served out bits of sentenced prison time. Overall, a total of four people were reported to have died in its eighty-four-year history, and there are many who say these very spirits and more are what haunts it today.

The Ghosts of Pottawattamie County Jail

The most disturbing paranormal entity in the jail is that of a little girl in a tan dress. This is perhaps the most farfetched, and wildest claim anyone could make as the child was not an inmate there. However, visitors to the jail have reported seeing a girl of around seven years of age, sitting sadly both inside the cells and at odd areas around the jail. She is reported to be either spotted dashing around corners, or she sometimes tugs at the shirts of visitors in a manner of which a little child would do who wants an adult’s attention. Her spirit is thought to be there prior to the jail being built.

One of the upper floors contained the apartment dwelling of the jail superintendents who used to live on site. Both spirits of Otto Gudath and J.M. Carter have been reported as being seen on this particular floor. In fact, the spirit of Gudath is said to have fully manifested into a full-bodied apparition on more than one occasion. A pair of inmate deaths are also speculation as to be responsible for the activity. One inmate committed suicide in their cell, while another had died after falling from the top of the infamous prison cage when he attempted to write his name on the ceiling. Paranormal investigators that have toured through noted vicious cold spots along with a flurry of multicolored orbs have been felt and seen. At another time, cell doors and old worn-out guard quarter cabinets have mysteriously been thrust opened and banged shut.

Today, the old Pottawattamie County Jail is actually open for visitors. The local preservation and historical societies regularly organize tours for those who are looking to get a glimpse of this colorful jail’s history. It is indeed both an architectural marvel and a paranormal phenomenon.

Prison escapes are one of the rarest events to occur inside correctional institutions across the world. But what if there was a way to ultimately prevent escapes? It should come as no surprise that in 1934, a maximum-security federal prison called Alcatraz was opened on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. To authorities then, if inmates escaped, the raging waters would drown them. If the thrashing waves didn’t kill them, then the sharks surely would. Decades after closing, Alcatraz remains one of the top haunted prisons in all of North America.

History of Alcatraz Island

In 1861, Fort Alcatraz which was on Alcatraz Island had been fashioned into a military prison by the Department of the Pacific, where Civil War-era prisoners of war and some Native Americans were kept. By the end of the Civil War, military prisoners and those accused of treason were kept housed there. In 1898 during the Spanish American War, the meager inmate population of twenty-five ballooned to over four hundred and fifty inmates and slowly gained a reputation as a legitimate prison. The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 caused great distress to the city’s infrastructure and prisoners were sent to Alcatraz while repairs were made. During the next twenty-seven years, the military made changes and upgrades to the site before officially selling the prison to the Bureau of Prisons.

Native American Prisoners at Alcatraz Prison

When Alcatraz officially opened on August 11, 1934, it received a large transfer of federal inmates as the prison was officially being touted as the final destination to accumulate the most violent and troublesome federal inmates. Some of the most notorious inmates to be incarcerated at “The Rock”, were Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Rafael Miranda, and Robert Franklin Stroud. Split amongst three cellblocks with personal cells measuring 9x5x7, it was no surprise that such tight quarters helped inspire a torrent of violence that carried over once the prison was closed years later in March 1963.

Is Alcatraz Prison Haunted?

Cell Block D

Cell 14 of D Block is reputed to be the most haunted place in the entire prison. D Block was the area of the prison where the most violent and disobedient inmates were sent. This area housed what is commonly called “The Hole” in many prisons, a small concrete room with no light, a mattress on the floor, and a hole to relieve yourself in. The most popular story is that of an inmate confined to Cell 14 who screamed and shouted all night long that there was a creature with red glowing eyes in the room who was trying to kill him. Guards dismissed the claims as typical paranoia but were shocked to find the next morning the inmate laying dead in his cell from strangulation which was unexplained since the inmate had nothing in which to strangle himself.

Cell 14 of D Block

Cell 14

Haunted by the situation, until the prison’s closing, guards were reported to have an extra man in the headcount and his ghost was spotted on occasion being that extra in line before vanishing. Another prisoner was reported kept for nearly three years on Cell 14 and was finally released back into the general population and upon doing so immediately stabbed another inmate to death. He was never formally charged because his mental state was so corroded, coupled with talk of a red-eye creature had him labeled as officially insane.

Spirits rushing and disappearing were noticed firsthand by Warden James Johnston. He was giving a small tour of the facility to some federal inspectors when they heard a mysterious crying sound that followed them to all the spots they were touring. The sobs grew louder and louder until right upon Warden Johnston, an unexplained gust of wind swept past him and the sobbing ceased. As if phantom prisoners and sobbing sounds weren’t enough, banjo music has been heard.

Al Capone

Al Capone, during his time there was sickly, and to ease his time he joined the prison band playing the banjo. After a vicious altercation in the prison yard, the guards let Capone practice strumming in the shower rooms. Not only after Al Capone died, but also decades later, visitors to the prison have heard banjo music being played around the shower room areas, of course with nobody in sight.

The Lady Spirit

Alcatraz was famous for housing male inmates only, however, in 2014, a British couple taking a tour of the deserted prison took one of the most remarkable ghost photographs ever taken. It is of a woman in decidedly period dress who is staring back at them. Very hard to say who the female might have been or how she ended up at Alcatraz. Given that the island did house Native Americans at one point, there is the belief that she is a deceased former prisoner of the island. In fact, it is also believed that a portion of the Native American deaths that occurred on Alcatraz, helped contribute to the other ghostly phenomena in the prison such as glowing multicolor orbs, cold spots, phantom apparitions, and incessant banging of cell doors.

Alcatraz may have had its doors closed all those decades ago, but that does not stop it from being one of the most popular tourist attractions to those who visit the San Francisco Bay area. In fact, there are many tours to the island of both the sightseeing variety and paranormal that are in operation to this very day.

Missouri was made an official state in 1821, and by 1836 a fully functioning and surprisingly large stone penitentiary dubbed the Missouri State Penitentiary was dolefully open for business. 183 years later, the remains of the prison are more haunted than ever before. In fact, Time Magazine once referred to the prison as, “the bloodiest 47 acres in America.”

Is the Missouri State Penitentiary Haunted?

Governor John Miller was the fourth governor in Missouri’s new state history, and he was responsible for helping establish Jefferson City as the state’s capitol. In a political swerve, Miller chose the prison to be built in Jefferson City so as to fend off other small Missouri towns for claiming themselves as the capitol. The prison opened in March 1836, with precisely one prison guard, one warden, one foreman who taught brick making to the inmates, and fifteen inmates themselves.

Over several decades, inmates began flooding the prison and in September 1937, Governor Lloyd Stark officially signed a state bill that made executions, via the gas chamber, official at the prison. In totality, forty prisoners were executed by lethal gas at the prison, so naturally, the execution block is one of the most haunted places in the prison. Not one, but two spirits are said to be haunting the death row cell block area. A pair of violent lovers named Bonnie Heady and Carl Austin hall have made their presence known. The pair kidnapped and murdered a young boy in 1953, and were given a death sentence to be carried out via the gas chamber. On the day of the execution, they were both seated in the gas chamber side by side and were executed at the same time.

Today, it is believed that their spirits haunt this cellblock, and in particular Cell 14.  People have not only felt vicious cold spots and heard growling noises but also experienced a pair of unseen hands caressing the back of their heads and then shoving them in the back. Paranormal investigation groups have frequently come through and attempted to get spirit footage of either Carl or Bonnie. While no video evidence has ever been obtained, audio footage certainly has. With the help of recording equipment, numerous EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon) have captured the three most frequent and disturbing words, “stay”, “love”, and “kill”.

Ghosts of Missouri State Penitentiary

• Prison deaths at Missouri State were exceptionally violent. One inmate named John McBroom had run afoul of some inmates he was sharing a cellblock with who believed him to be an informer for the prison guards. During breakfast call early one morning a pair of inmates charged into his cell, using a pair of broken scissors as a weapon. They stabbed him repeatedly in the eyes and skull and he ended up bleeding to death before he was ever found. Years later, however, visitors to the prison have reported seeing a pale white apparition of what appears to be a man, bleeding profusely out of his eye sockets, wondering around the cell walkways.
• Hall A is considered the oldest part of the prison and is naturally one of the most haunted spots. It is in this particular building’s basement where the infamous row of “hole” cells was built. Small, narrow cells with essentially no light, it’s where the most violent and out-of-control inmates were kept. Foul smells, disembodied voices, shoves, and paranormal equipment malfunctions in this area are rife.
• Just above Hall A, in Cell 48, an inmate was supposedly bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer by another inmate. Visitors to this cell have reported an overwhelming sense of dread here and even a heavy, unseen weight being pressed into their bodies.
• Just to the top of the building in the control room, the spirit of even a former prison medic haunts this area. Known as “Fast Jack” this white-colored spirit has not only been spotted gliding past watchful visitors, but also has been responsible for opening, closing, and even locking cell doors from the control room much to the shock of paranormal investigators!

Visit Missouri State Penitentiary

This formidable and chilling prison is still standing today. A collection of paranormal, historical, and photography tours of Missouri State are available in both public and private capacities for those looking to get a glimpse inside the infamous walls. These highly affordable and guided tours are some of the best that are offered for a haunted location such as this. Private overnight paranormal investigations are available for the most discerning of ghost hunters, but beware that while they sell out regularly, not everyone makes it through the entire night before fleeing in terror!

Gold was first discovered in the Wyoming Territory in 1842 right near the Sweetwater River. Legend has it that the man who first discovered it was so envied for his find that he was murdered before he could even make it home with his new treasure. For the next three decades, the area boomed with ruthless and violent prospectors who would stop at nothing to strike it rich. With so much crime in the High Plains, it was only a matter of time before justice would have to step in and be meted out. The Wyoming Frontier Prison opened its doors in the small town of Rawlins in 1901 and was in operation for only eighty years, however, that was enough time for much bloodshed to be planted, and paranormal activity to be harvested.

Is the Wyoming Territory Prison Haunted?

By 1890, Wyoming officially became a U.S. State and a larger state and federally funded prison was built in Rawlins. Nearby inmates from the Wyoming Territorial Prison were gradually shipped here once the prison opened in 1901. By 1908 the prison had upgraded to add additional cells, cellblocks, and a women’s unit. Executions were publicly carried out at the prison via hanging until 1916 when an execution chamber was added that made the hangings private until a gas chamber was added and the hangings discontinued in 1936.

Andrew Pixley

Andrew Pixley was a cold-blooded murderer responsible for the gruesome slayings of some children whose father was a circuit court judge. He was found guilty and sentenced to die in the gas chamber and when his execution came, he took the longest to die of any inmate ever recorded by the gas chamber. Most perish under two minutes, but Pixley lasted nearly seven minutes as he laughed the entire time Not only did he physically hang on as long as he could, but spiritually he’s still hanging in. Candlelights placed inside Pixley’s cell during ghost tours of the prison have been known to flicker intensely, emit a glowing light, go out completely, then suddenly relight. Of all things, a black cat has been known to infiltrate the prison and has been spotted coming and going from Pixley’s cell and the execution chamber. This chamber is where people have claimed to hear ghostly laughing picked up during ghost hunting sessions as well as the crying of young females. This is believed to somehow be the weeping of Pixley’s victims.

Frank Wigfall and The Pie Lady

Another ghostly apparition doesn’t involve a singular spirit, but rather a half dozen. A frequenter of the prison during its early years was a local woman who brought fresher baked pies and a homespun spiritual message to the inmates. One, named Frank Wigfall in particular took a keen liking to this woman known as the “Pie Lady”, and upon his release from prison, tracked her to her home and brutally raped and killed her. Finding himself back in the prison again, Wigfall was instantly hated by all the inmates who enjoyed the pies and cheer the Pie Lady spread. This inmate was hung with a rope by a small group of prisoners over the side of an upper walkway as justice for the Pie Lady. Since then, prisoners, prison guards, and paranormal investigators have been supernaturally privy to a scene where a half dozen spirits quickly execute this Wigfall with a spectral rope in full view.

Sightings over the years have varied in their disturbing diversities. Tour guides have frequently heard footsteps in and around the gas chamber area of the prison, as well as disembodied voices calling out over the various cellblocks long after the last tourist has visited and left for the day. The ghostly phenomena of orbs have been sighted and recorded as well as EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon). The EVPs have ranged from “help me” all the way up to an unseen entity saying, “give me a cigarette”. In fact, there is no one particular area of the prison that is not off-limits for paranormal activity. One of the most bizarre and chilling places is the main prison shower room. Voices emanating from the darkened shower room have one thinking that people in there are having a conversation only to find nobody in there. Equally disturbing is the fact that wet footprints have been spotted on the tile flooring despite no water being run in the shower room at all.

Visit the Wyoming Frontier Prison

Over the decades, the prison took on many different names and stately owners before being closed in 1981. A piece of Wyoming history, in 1988, a local joint power board for preservation helped to establish the site as a prison museum that remains in operations today, where tours are given with regularity. A highly rated, historically thrilling tour it’s one of the more popular tourist experiences in the state and can almost guarantee that for some, they will be scared straight.

Castellated with turrets and battlements, the imposing Gothic-styled West Virginia Penitentiary looked every bit as intimidating on the outside as it was violent on the inside. Prison breaks, riots, and scores of executions on inmates for a prison constructed to hold 480 people before swelling to over 2,000 in the decades to follow. Even the object of a Supreme Court case in 1986, the prison was eventually decommissioned and inmates transferred elsewhere. But what still remains there? And just exactly why is this one of the most haunted prisons in North America?

Is the West Virginia Penitentiary Haunted?

In 1863, West Virginia has seceded from Virginia at what many considered the height of the ongoing Civil War. Being a brand new state with extremely limited resources, Governor Arthur Boreman began lobbying the new legislature for a spate of crucial necessities, among these was the request for a prison. It took close to three years of lobbying before the legislature afforded him $3,000 to purchase a ten-acre tract of land in Moundsville, West Virginia. At first, a makeshift wooden prison was erected while prison officials scouted out a more exacting plan. They found their inspiration in the Northern Illinois Penitentiary of Joliet. It was built in a classical, stone Gothic style that represented something of a fortress so much so that it was referred to by scouting prison officials as “a cheerless blank indicative of the misery which awaits the unhappy being who enters within its walls.” The West Virginia Penitentiary opened for business in 1866.

The prison had both cellblock areas named the North and South Halls. In fact, the North Hall was referred to as, “the Alamo” due to the violent environment and guards even had to don riot gear with flak jackets and helmets just to serve food to inmates sometimes. Over the years, it was fitted with a sizable dining hall, jail hospital, chapel, female unit, and warden and guard apartments. Industry jobs to keep inmates busy while serving out their sentences included carpentry, painting, stonemasonry, and even work release detail at the nearby coal mine. However, life inside was anything but easy.

Old Sparky

A spate of cells measured only 5×7, and the inclusion of an execution block did anything to ease tensions. Over the course of its operation, the prison executed ninety inmates by both hangings in the gallows as well as way of the newly patented electric chair which was disturbingly referred to as, “Old Sparky.” Countless other suicides and inmate on inmate prison deaths occurred with unpublicized frequency. Its violent nature landed this prison officially on the United States Department of Justice’s list of one of the ten most dangerous prisons in the United States. Together this has all culminated in a supernatural recipe for some sinister paranormal activity.

The Shadow Man of the West Virginia Penitentiary

The chief ghostly presence at the prison is what has been called, the Shadow Man. In 2004, well after the prison had been abandoned, an investigator to the site named Polly Gear took one of the more convincing and eerily profound paranormal photographs in recent supernatural history. At the end of a row of cellblocks, her photo lens captured a picture of the chilling Shadow Man. But exactly who or what is the Shadow Man? Paranormal speculations have him being the ghost of former prisoner R.D. Wall. Wall was an inmate serving out a life sentence on a rape conviction at the prison when he was cornered in a basement work area and had his fingertips cut off as well as his throat sliced open.

Visitors to this area of the prison have encountered a dark specter that appears in khaki clothing, which is what Wall was last seen in. It is also said that women have encountered the feeling of an unseen hand grip at their shoulders. While Wall had an unhealthy affinity for women outside of the prison, he was thought of as a model inmate inside it and was favored by guards and the warden but thought of as a prison snitch always looking and lurking about. This is the most popular theory on who the identity of the Shadow Man is. Watching and looking from out behind the corners of cellblocks, his foreboding presence is terrifying enough.

The Sugar Shack

One of the centrally located areas of the prison for paranormal activity is what has been referred to as, the “Sugar Shack”. This part of the prison during its operations was a hotbed of illegal activities such as gambling, drinking, and carousing. Abandoned for decades, visitors to the prison who have come across this area have spoken of cold spots, instances of slight dizziness, as well as the sensation of being watched. Some have even gone as far as saying they’ve heard disembodied voices as well as laughter. Notorious inmate Red Snyder was stabbed nineteen times to death in his prison cell where he was serving time for both arson and murder in 1992. His cell has been noted as not only a chilling place to step into, but his disembodied voice has been heard as well as EVPs captured with foul utterances demanded visitors leave his cell.

Today, the Moundsville Economic Development Council has helped to preserve the prison as a historical tourist destination. Tours vary in range from historical, photographical, group, paranormal investigations, and overnight paranormal investigations. In fact, the prison is also home to one of the hottest paranormal conventions in the country, Para-Con.

Prisons are notorious for being very haunted places. Built to last decades and decades, they are enormous structures housing some of the most brutal killers that society has ever seen. The people who spend their lives in them are confined to tight living quarters and subject to incredibly high amounts of violence, brutality, and many times, death. There is no joy to be found in them except among those who serve smaller prison sentences or are unexpectedly reprieved. For over one hundred and thirteen years until its closing in 2009, Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee is one such place and is considered to be very haunted.

Brushy Mountain’s Violent Past

Opening in 1896, Brushy Mountain was originally built after a bitter coal miner labor dispute in the area. Coal miners were not contracted as much for the East Tennessee coal mines and local convicts were used instead as their labor price was practically free. The state legislature got involved and the coal miners were put back to work and the prison was built to house the convicts. The prison was geographically isolated by the surrounding Cumberland Plateau and the Frozen Head State Park. The prison property was built deep into the mountainous rock and actual stone from the site was used in the construction of the prison. From a nature standpoint, escapes were few and unsuccessful as the terrain was just too treacherous.

Holding almost six hundred inmates, the closeness of the state’s hardened criminals yielded human misery every single day with a long-standing rumor that the prison averaged one prisoner death a week. In fact, fencing had to be installed over the upper cell balconies because inmates frequently pushed one another to the concrete below. Brush Mountain was a prison with a validated execution chamber with the primary method being electrocution. For the time the prison was in operation over one hundred executions took place. Not to be outdone, there were numerous race riots, fires, random prison killings, and death by natural causes inside there as well. Its construction on top of the nearby limestone helps to validate a theory that proposes there is an element to limestone that somehow amplifies paranormal activity. Coupled with the fact that the prison property was also built in and around coal mines that had suffered an occasional collapse and miner deaths, the entire site was considered to be utterly grim.

Is the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary Haunted?

One of the most famous ghosts to haunt Brushy Mountain is that of an inmate named Jack Jett. He was a little person and he had the misfortune of developing a reputation as someone who snitched on other inmates for having contraband. One evening while he was making a call to his mother on one of the prison phones he was stabbed multiple times in the back of the neck and bled to death. Inmates had reported the phone receiver levitating off the hook and then back up to it again. Also the small phone area was said to have a tremendous cold spot and general sense of dread when standing there. No doubt from the violent and unexpected death Jett suffered.

Normally considered a sanctuary, one of the most haunted parts of the entire site is the prison chapel. EVP recordings within the chapel are some of the most active to be found anywhere. While visiting the chapel, various paranormal groups have captured such words as “hell”, “beast”, and “pain” inside there. Whether or not the EVPs are part of a leftover sermon or not remains to be seen. Former inmates have told stories of seeing objects in the chapel area mysteriously float across the room as well as cold spots that occurred even on the hottest of summer days.

As typical with most prisons, “the hole” is a dungeon-like cell that serves as the ultimate type of solitary confinement. Mental illness was often born there as the conditions bordered on torturous. Floating light orbs have been seen there and given the fact that there is no natural light makes their presence even more concerning. The orbs seen are not white and yellow in color which indicates more gentle spirits, but instead are purple and red which mean that whatever is in there is aggressive in nature. Audio recordings have also picked up the sound of footsteps and whispers within the solitary area as well.

Tour the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

Since the prison closed officially in 2009, it has been developed into something of a tourist attraction. Self-guided tours are available as well as guided group tours. Don’t worry if you are touring the prison alone, there are former prison guards on site to answer any questions and tell you some spooky stories.

The prison is surrounded on all three sides by running water and in the paranormal world, it is said that spirits cannot cross swathes of water. Despite no prisoners physically being there any longer, the water still seems to be keeping decades worth of spirits there.