by Joe Nickell
Interestingly, while the story of the haunted cell was first published in 1909 (“Haunted Jail” 1909), it appears to have sunk into relative obscurity long before I “did time” there, spending a restful night in 1993.
Not only was my sleep not broken by ghostly cries, but the innkeeper at the time, Ann Hurst, told me she had never seen or heard a ghost, even though, as she said, “I stay here a lot at night and I always felt very secure.” She added, “I never had any reason to believe in anything other than what I can touch.” Two others I interviewed—owner Fran McCoy and tour guide Cathy Lawrence—described themselves as “believers” in ghosts, yet even they had had no ghostly experiences in the historic jail—especially no moans, groans, or screams.
Nevertheless, today's mystery-selling ghost buffs chronicle spectral encounters at the Jailer's Inn. These tend to follow familiar patterns. For example, one sleeping guest “was awakened at 1:00 a.m. and witnessed a man standing on the other side of the room. He stood there for a long time and then faded away” (Smith and Jean 2003, 84). This was obviously another “waking dream” like those discussed earlier. At least the specter did not scream.
AUSTERE PENITENTIARY
The gothic, castellated Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was once a marvel of prison architecture. Its floor plan was designed so that a single guard—stationed in its rotunda—could peer down each of its seven long cellblocks, the corridors arrayed like spokes of a wheel. The prison opened on October 23, 1829. “It was the world's first true penitentiary,” claims a brochure, “a prison designed to inspire penitence—or true regret—in the hearts of criminals.” In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the prison and wrote in his travel journal:
In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature.
It remains today an extremely foreboding place, attracting with its “supernatural atmosphere” so-called paranormal investigators, including of course Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, and their team that comprises Sci Fi Channel's (now Syfy Universal's) Ghost Hunters. They visited the prison in September 2004 and, in their typical fashion, chased after anomalies. Something darted by their thermal camera but turned out to be “only a cat”; another thermal image, a bright spot, at first seemed interesting but proved to be a reflection; and a “black shape” that passed before two people after one had taken a picture was explained by Jason: “The flash must have screwed up their eyes for a second.” Their best effort was a moving image on a video that, although “a little vague,” resembled someone in a dark robe, although the duo conceded it could have been a hoax (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 99–113).
Other such teams “investigating” at Eastern State have employed “the usual ghost hunting equipment,” in addition to plying dowsing rods to supposedly effect spirit communication and photographing “orbs”—seeming balls of “spirit energy” that are actually caused by the camera's flash rebounding from dust particles. Ghost hunters have also relied on alleged psychic powers—on members’ alleged “clairvoyant,” “clairsentient,” and “intuitive” ability, including their “feelings” of various kinds (Sarro 2008, 11–54). In short, they have engaged in the usual pseudoscientific and superstitious silliness that characterizes most of today's ghost hunting.
Accompanied by Philadelphia skeptic Bob Glickman, I visited Eastern State on May 15, 2010. We explored the crumbling facility, including the comfortably furnished cell of “Scarface” Al Capone, talked with staff, and even ducked into one dark cell to conduct an experiment in making orbs. We took some trial snapshots, then shook dust in the air and—in a flash—captured images that many ghost hunters mistakenly believe provide scientific evidence of spirit survival. Alas, we otherwise came up empty.
As these examples and others show (I have saved Alcatraz for separate treatment), old places of imprisonment stir strong emotions. The idea that ghosts are, well, free spirits still haunting such literally confining spaces is a romantic as well as ironic one. Add to the romance the eerie feelings such ominous sites inspire and indeed “ghosts” of the imagination may well appear to the impressionable.
Alcatraz! Its very name is synonymous with incarceration. An island fortress that became a military prison turned federal penitentiary, Alcatraz was a place from which escape was deemed impossible (figure 18.1). Yet a man whom I saw as a boy on my hometown's sidewalks would dramatically challenge that notion. His amazing act, together with persistent stories that ghostly prisoners still unaccountably inhabited the forbidding place, lured me to “The Rock,” accompanied by fellow investigator Vaughn Rees, in May 2010. Here is some of what I found.
BACKGROUND
Located in San Francisco Bay, the small, stark island was discovered in 1769 by Spanish explorers who named it Isla de los Alcatraces (“Island of the Pelicans”). It became a possession of the United States in 1851 and was soon fortified; a lighthouse followed (1854), along with prison buildings (1868). Over the years it housed troublesome soldiers, Native Americans, and—during World War II—foreign enemies. Transferred to the Department of Justice in 1933, it began to serve as a maximum-security prison for dangerous inmates. Usually enveloped in fog, surrounded by icy, treacherous currents, and buffeted by wind, the facility was an isolated, foreboding place until it closed in 1963 (Collier's Encyclopedia 1993; Vercillo 2008, 7–39).
Thought to be escape-proof, it received such most-wanted criminals as Al Capone and murderer Robert Stroud. (Stroud, the “Birdman of Alacatraz,” who was played by Burt Lancaster in the 1962 movie of that title, was transferred to the island from Leavenworth, where he had become an amateur ornithologist of some celebrity, and hence a nuisance to officialdom. Hollywood notwithstanding, Stroud never kept birds at Alcatraz [Heaney 1987, 97]).
Notwithstanding the formidable security, men with little to lose and much time on their hands dreamed of escape, and several tried. In 1962, for example, three desperados—Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin brothers, John and Clarence—made a daring escape from the Rock and were never seen again. Some believe they got away for good, but most likely they perished in the icy currents. Six months later came a more successful escape, although—well, I am getting ahead of a good story.
John Paul Scott—“Mr. Scott” to me as a boy of eleven1—had come to my hometown of West Liberty, Kentucky, to work as a lab technician at the hospital. I remember him as not too tall, slender, making a neat appearance in his white lab coat, and having a pleasant personality. I had no idea that he was a twice-convicted bank robber or that he would soon be involved in a sensational aborted break-in at a bank in the next county. The attempt—in the early-morning hours of Sunday, January 6, 1957, made with his brother Don and another man—ended with Scott shot in the mouth and arm by the bank's night watchman and Sheriff Little wounded in both knees by a spray of a submachine-gun fire from the trio. I remember the big headlines about the subsequent state police manhunt and capture of the gang.
All three drew lengthy prison terms, and Scott—sentenced to thirty years and sent to prison in Atlanta—attempted escape and soon found himself at Alcatraz (Nickell 1991; Esslinger 2003; 397–412).
On December 16, 1962, however, six months after the previous Alcatraz escape, Scott and another prisoner, Darl Lee Parker, while working on kitchen detail, removed precut bars and went out a window, climbed up pipes to the roof, and used a knotted extension cord t
o lower themselves to the ground at the rear of the library. They tumbled down a steep hill and slid down a sewer pipe to the water's edge. Using “water-wings” improvised from parts of a prison shirt, the sleeves stuffed with inflated rubber gloves (stolen from the hospital), the pair swam toward shore. Parker, having apparently broken his foot in a fall, struggled against the currents, then took refuge on the nearby rock formation known as Little Alcatraz, where he waited to be rescued. Scott, however, successfully swam to shore, the mile-and-a-quarter distance lengthened by strong currents pulling him off course. Some boys discovered him unconscious and near death on rocks beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, and they alerted police (Blackwell 1962; Esslinger 2003, 402–403). Scott was soon returned to Alcatraz, but he had entered history as the only man ever to escape the Rock and unquestionably reach the mainland alive.2
STILL INCARCERATED?
Although Scott died in 1987 in a federal prison at Tallahassee, Florida, his ghost could, one supposes, still be among those who allegedly haunt Alcatraz today. Yet few of the former inmates—neither Capone, nor “Birdman” Stroud, for instance—actually died at Alcatraz (an exception being Joe Bowers, who was shot to death after crossing a fence in an attempt to escape) (Vercillo 2008, 79–115).
Yet if the urge to be free is so powerful, and not only among attempted escapees, then why do ghosts remain—as they purportedly do—at so many “haunted” places of confinement? Do they choose to stay for some inexplicable reason, or is it that the dungeons and jails themselves somehow retain “vibrations” of those who have lived there? Among believers in haunted places, there is no generally agreed-upon explanation (Guiley 2000, 180–81), and none that makes any scientific sense. Could it be that at Alcatraz, as elsewhere, the evidence for ghosts is untrustworthy, as I have indeed found in over forty years of active investigation?
With these thoughts in mind, on May 10, 2011, Vaughn Rees and I took an excursion boat to the Rock, where we toured the island and cellblocks—Vaughn with a still camera, I with a camcorder3—and talked with staff. Word spread among park rangers and interpreters of my connection with Scott, and I related what I knew. A young National Parks Conservancy member was soon guiding us about, asking if we would like to see some areas where tourists are not allowed. Of course we said yes, and after he fetched a bunch of keys, we were shown the hospital, the “psycho cell” (where I was shut in for the experience), a site associated with Robert Stroud, and other areas. As it happened, no ghosts put in an appearance.
PHENOMENA OF GHOSTS?
Claims of ghostly happenings at Alcatraz are largely products of folklore. Ghosts of Alcatraz (Vercillo 2008), like so many other mystery-mongering books, is rife with such unattributable constructions as “were said to” (58), “is said to” (67), “it is said that” (71, 73, 87, 97), “are said to” (74, 75, 99), “some say that” (89), “it is believed that” (93, 96), and so on—prefatory statements that demonstrate how worthless the anecdotes are as evidence.
Some claims are assigned to Alcatraz employees. Like our conservancy guide, most Alcatraz professionals do not claim ghost experiences, although “occasionally, one of them will admit that weird things happen here that they cannot explain” (Vercillo 2008, 123). Actually, the notion that an unexplained occurrence is proof of the supernatural is simply a logical fallacy called an argument from ignorance. Nevertheless, what about the movement of objects reported in the old prison administration office, which is visible to visitors through glass windows? According to Vercillo (2008, 71), “It is said that the chair…winds up in different locations of the room. And occasionally, the typewriter is shifted to a different spot on the desk.” But she admits there is a nonsupernatural possibility: “Most people believe that the security guards who keep an eye on the tourists of Alcatraz are just moving things around as a prank to pass the time and frighten their co-workers.” Now, I have uncovered many such pranks in my ghostbusting career (Nickell 2008), but there are also other possible explanations: maybe the objects are simply moved during cleaning, for example.
Other claims of ghosts at Alcatraz supposedly come from self-styled psychics. According to one source, “Numerous psychics have reported cold spots, harsh and sudden emotional outbursts, apparitions claiming abuse, vibrations and a myriad of other ghostly traces” (“Alcatraz Hauntings” 2007). However, admits Vercillo (2008, 118), “not too many psychics have reported on their findings at Alcatraz,” and “the records of these reports are mostly lost to time.” These alleged “findings” are therefore worse than worthless, and no psychic phenomenon has ever been validated by mainstream science.
Sylvia Browne, “the most well-known psychic to have visited the island” (Vercillo 2008, 118), is also one of the most notorious, once even failing to foresee her own criminal conviction. (See chapter 32.) Browne was also taken to task by the TV show Inside Edition, which exposed her claim to have solved a police case that, in fact, continued to remain unsolved (Nickell 2001, 124–25). Thus, we may be suspicious of the claim that she was “called in” by the National Park Service to investigate spooky phenomena at Alcatraz—especially since the Park Service does not promote ghosts there and, as Vercillo (2008, 106) concedes, “Reports of who precisely called Browne in to investigate the ghostly activity are varied.” And second- and thirdhand accounts of her “psychic” feelings—utilizing such phrases as “some say” and “are reported to” (Vercillo 2008, 106–107)—do not represent evidence that science should, or even can, study. Psychics like Browne typically offer unsubstantiated claims, even unverifiable ones, or information that is obtainable from research or other sources (Nickell 2001, 297–98).
Still other ghost claims at Alcatraz stem from would-be ghost hunters. For example, Vercillo (2008, 143–47) cites the use of such silly devices as dowsing rods and Geiger counters, without, unfortunately, giving many specifics, other than reporting on photographs of ghostly “orbs” (88, 120). These are supposed to be due to spirit energy but actually result from the camera's flash rebounding from particulate matter floating in the air. Vaughn and I demonstrated the making of orbs at Alcatraz by shaking a dust cloth in front of the camera: click, flash, voila! Orbs on demand! Ghost Science 101.
In his Ghost Stalker's Guide to Haunted California, Richard Senate (1998, i) refers to “haunted places” where people report “things that by all science, should not be there.” So maybe they really are not there, or maybe they are misperceived. Senate went to Alcatraz for a radio station, hoping to record some ghostly sounds for broadcast. Alas (apart from feelings he and a “psychic” had), “there was only the sound of terns and the awful silence of the prison,” he admits, so “the radio people were unhappy with the ghost hunt” (1998, 124–25). Although Vercillo (2008, 50, 70) tells us “voices are reportedly still heard” in the prison, elsewhere she admits, “Sound carries easily here and there are always plenty of people to keep the place occupied.”
And then there are supposed tape-recorded spirit voices, so-called EVP or electronic voice phenomena. But EVP might be better explained as the experience of verbal pareidolia. Pareidolia (see appendix) is the tendency to see pictures in clouds or to hear apparent words in random sounds—either from the tape recorder's own electronic and mechanical noise or from external, nonghostly sources (e.g., background noise). Alcatraz EVPs were analyzed by audio expert Paul Ginsberg (2009). He concluded that the recordings were “not the speech of a human being,” explaining, “These sounds are well above the range of the human-voice spectrum, so I would say without any question that these sounds were not made—could not be made—by any human” adding whimsically, “at least not a live one.” More seriously he concluded, “I would love to have some hard evidence that this, in fact, is a connection to the Beyond and that there are other worlds out there, but right now I'm still skeptical.”
Moreover, certain other sounds—if they indeed actually occurred—might have similar nonghostly explanations. For instance, alleged “unearthly screams” may be nothing more than
the cries of seagulls, which “sound almost like human screaming” (Vercillo 2008, 50, 122). And the claim that visitors to Alcatraz sometimes hear Robert “Birdman” Stroud's “distinctive whistle attempting to reach his beloved birds from beyond the grave” (Smith 2004, 174–76), might be explained as only the whistling notes of other birds. Of course, the imagination is yet another ready source for perceived sounds.
Indeed, the imagination plays a crucial role in all ghostly encounters. If ghosts are not the stuff of science—no matter how much they are pseudoscientifically mischaracterized by the word energy—then they are figments of our romantic attitudes. And so convict ghosts remain forever trapped—not behind bars and walls that could never hold them, but in our minds. There they offer perpetual penance, having at least escaped, we can imagine, the greatest confinement of all: death.
Given the illusory nature of mirrors, with their reflective and ever-changing surfaces, they have long been used for scrying. In this activity (of which crystal gazing is a form) shiny surfaces are stared upon at length until clairvoyant visions are perceived in the mind's eye—that is, the mind of a “psychic” (or fantasy-prone person). Some believe mirrors are portals into the spirit world, so it is not surprising that the ghost-in-the-mirror phenomenon is common. Indeed, it represents a distinct genre of ghostly encounters, indicated by a book, Ghost in the Mirror, by Leslie Rule (2008), as well as by my own investigations. Among my ghost-mirror cases (in addition to one at the “haunted” Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana [Nickell 2007, 1–10] and the story of another mirror, now lost, in which Abraham Lincoln witnessed a strange double image of himself [Nickell 2001, 109–13]) are more recent investigations.
