Surprise...Part 5

After our tour guide left us and we put all our extra stuff back in the car, we headed back into the prison on our own. We headed up to the guest quarters and visited every room there. Other than getting some pictures of the crazy walls and ceilings and some of the built in cabinetry, it was a fairly boring section. We then headed over to the chapel which was one of the supposed hot zones for paranormal activity. I guess everyone must have had the same idea b/c there was like, fifty people in there. I wanted to go somewhere a little more quiet, and I had heard our guide talking about a TV ward that she said was hard to get to. We went to where the stairs were to get to this place, and it was really creepy. A single set of super steep stairs in a corridor that was no more than 2 feet wide was all we found. We headed up only to find another set of stairs the same width and steepness. When we climbed those, and yes climb is a better word that walk, we came into a hall. On the right hand side of the hall were six "cells" or rooms with multiple hospital beds in each. Each door had a huge iron lock hole on it. Since this was so hard to get to, we were the only people in this huge hall with the scary cells on the side. It was at this point that Ell looked at the map and told me it wasn't the "TV" room, it was the "TB" Ward. That's right, the Tuberculosis Ward. The reason it was so hard to get to was that they didn't want anyone to be there. And at that point, my lovely wife didn't want to be there either. And I, wanted to be there really bad. So with much coaxing, I got her to sit down with me against one of those huge columns in the hall side. With a little more coaxing, I got her to turn off her flashlight and we sat in the darkness for about 15 minutes. The feeling in that great hall was so eerie. I fully expected to see some ghostly figures walk out of those rooms on our right. We had our voice recorder on hoping to catch some EVP's which you only hear when you listen to the recording later. I have to say my heart was racing the entire time I was in that room. Other people eventually found the stairway and the room, so we left.

I'm not too sure of the order of the places we visited except for the last place, so I'll tell you about them in no particular order. [I may leave the two scariest things we saw until I write tomorrow since this is getting long.] We went to both of the "diagonals" and visited each of the rooms there. One of them is called the Jesus room b/c it has an 8 foot tall movie prop painting of Jesus on one wall and it's supposed to be one of the hottest ghost activity rooms. We sat there for 15 minutes but some stupid girls were in there making a bunch of noise so we left. We went to both of the cell blocks and wandered around. The cells are so small that every one we went to was creepier feeling than the last. We sat on one of the bunks for a while doing some video and voice recording but we didn't see or hear any ghosts. We walked through the shower room. It was weird to be in there, but there wasn't anyplace to sit down so we didn't stay. We climbed a creepy spiral staircase and ended up on a narrow walkway that led to one of the old guard towers that overlooked the courtyard. That was a pretty sweet place to be so Ell got a picture of me in the doorway to the stairs. We went up into a newer remodeled area that had the phones you see on TV where the inmates can talk to visitors. That whole area felt wrong to be in. There wasn't anything creepy or odd about the rooms, but it just felt like we didn't belong there. I am pretty open to the idea of ghosts and spirits, and I know that if you ever encounter one they usually won't hurt you. But this place had such a bad feeling about it that I knew if we didn't leave we weren't going to be safe. I think if I hadn't been so cold (the entire inside of the prison is 20 degrees colder than the outside air, and it was really cold last weekend) I would have liked to stay in there for a long time. And I'm sure something would have happened if we'd stayed.

I'll leave our two "ghost encounters" until tomorrow, so check back then for the climax of this awesome night.