The Ohio State Reformatory
Okay. I know it's an old creepy building. I know it has a dark history and that many men were murdered and felt their last breath slip away while incarcerated in this place. But what....and why would you linger is such a hell hole like this in the afterlife? Wouldn't you want to "go" somewhere pretty with green fields, birds singing and the sun shining? Why spend eternity slithering around in a dark and dreary building like a prison?
The Ohio State Reformatory
There seems to be a general consensus among prisoners that if you die in prison, your soul stays in prison. You are serving an eternal sentence with no chance of parole.
Eastern State Penitentiary
Take for instance this photograph I took of an old door at Eastern State Pen. My husband and I visted this historic prison in the summer of 2009. Roaming the halls was one thing, but stepping into a cell gave you a completely different feeling. Your body knows the difference between a "happy" place and a "not so happy" place. Stepping over the doorway and into a cell gave me an overbearing sense of dread and a mild claustrophobia-like feeling of suffocation.
Can you even imagine what went on inside the heads of those men who were not mentally insane ? Feelings of desperation, anger, hate, resentment and fear?
Solitary confinement cell at Eastern State Pen
What a recipe for a haunting!
Eastern State Pen prisoners in the yard
And what of those prisons who executed the condemned? What kind of spirits haunt areas where men- in the name of justice- snuffed out other mens lives? The firing squads, the hangings, the electric chair and the needle. The list of the executed in America is sadly a long one. Both men and women were put to death legally. I have come across records of men...and women being burned at the stake in Colonial America. Not to mention to hundreds of illegal lynchings that took place in small town America.
Whitegate Cemetery, West Virginia
And what of the locations where the prisoners were buried? Would they be haunted as well? Would the souls of those hung and electrocuted for their crimes wander the burial ground? Whitegate cemetery in Moundsville West Virginia is a great example of a prison cemetery. Hundreds are buried here with only a simple license plate style marker. These were the bodies of men who were not claimed by their families after dying in prison...or after their execution was completed. Just a simple field, no fancy statues or marble markers...just little white plates with names and dates.
The paranormal field tends to be a subject that offers more questions than answers. Why do we haunt? Are we really stuck in the Afterlife? Can we help ghosts?
One thing is for sure. Prison's are haunted. They have been...and will continue to be.
Maybe that's why I like spending so much time investigating them and writing books about the subject? Who knows? Maybe I was a prisoner or a guard in a past life?
Now THATS another Blog!
