Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Surprise...Part 3

So we enter into the west cell block and walk down two flights of stairs. When we come out at the bottom, we all look up and we are standing beside a five-story tall wall of steel. The cell blocks at the prison are one solid steel structure. The west wing has five stories and the east wing has six stories. The east wing is actually in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the tallest single continuous steel cell block in the world. There is a 10-12 foot space between the outer wall of the prison and where the cells start. A walkway where the prisoners entered into their cells is all you can see from the ground. It is absolutely one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Click HERE and then find the photo gallery to see a little of what we were seeing.

The cells themselves are tiny. There is only enough room to walk past the bunk beds and then the back of the cell has a toilet and a sink. The west wing had bigger rooms than the east, and the inmates called it the Hilton wing. But the cells were still tiny. The prison closed in November of 1990, and they have done nothing to it in that time. So in many of the cells there are still blankets and pillows and mattresses. There were even a few items of clothes like shoes and pants. It was so eerie. There was one section of cells where they taped the Shawshank movie that had been cleaned up. There was also 4 cells that were used in a Godsmack video that were cleaned up too. But other than that, the same pealing paint and flaky plaster that we found in the guest quarters was everywhere here too. If you touched the walls you could make stuff fall off, but none of it was falling on its own. Like I said yesterday, it was as if the place had been frozen in time.

No one was ever put to death in this prison, but hundreds of people were murdered or committed suicide while there. The majority of those deaths happened in the cellblocks, so Ell and I made a note to return there later that night on our own. We knew the energy in that place was sure to produce something. If not ghosts at least the need to change our undie's. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the huge halls and rooms and then Friday I'll write about our actual ghost-hunting experience. Make sure you come back!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home