Some ghost hunters believe that shadow people draw on the energy from street lamps in the area.
Source: Listverse
SECTION TWO
HAUNTED PLACES
JAILS AND PRISONS
Some paranormal researchers believe the reason so many jails and prisons are haunted is because of what they are, the kind of people they incarcerate, and what they do to people once they are behind bars. Prisoners are immediately stripped of their freedom—to move about at will, to privacy, to possessions, and to happiness. To be confined in a small space hours at a time oppresses the mind and body, and affects one’s individualism. But as Richard Pryor said after visiting an institution and witnessing first hand those incarcerated, “Thank God we got penitentiaries!”
As a result of the loss of liberties and the powerful affect of spending so much time in a small room, people often experience high levels of rage and depression; some become more evil than they were before being confined. According to some paranormal investigators, when these people die in prison those intense feelings go with them and they continue to experience the same emotional troubles in their afterlife. It’s for this that reason people see apparitions wandering about in cells and corridors, and hear their screams and cries.
One other explanation is that because of a prisoner’s profound emotional state when he dies from illness, murder, or accident, his residual energy remains. It’s not an intelligent form but rather a “recording,” an image or sound similar to an audio or video that continuously replays. Sometimes the energy weakens over time.
But other times it recharges.
GHOST PRISONER
By Joe Bertetto, GySgt USMC (ret)
I used to work the graveyard shift at the San Bernardino County Central Detention Center in California. One night, another deputy and I were sharing duties, performing all the required safety checks and working in the control room. There were always the night owl prisoners, but overall it was quieter in the wee hours as opposed to the madness of day shift.
All inmate workers were housed in an area designated as "C" tank and I was moving along a series of what we called “officer's walkways” outside and around all of the housing units.
It was around 2 a.m., and it was my turn to complete the safety checks and initial the logs. I was moving along the walkway towards the rear of "C" tank, and I had stopped to look into the housing area to see if there was anything going on. As I turned back to the walkway, I noticed an inmate worker at the far end. It was routine for deputies to bring them in to sweep and mop, so I thought nothing of it and looked back into the housing area. Then I remembered something.
I didn’t have an inmate scheduled out of his cell for cleaning. Had one gotten out of the housing area? I moved back to where I saw the man at the far end of the walkway.
He wasn’t there. I looked in all directions. Nothing but quiet.
The more I thought about it the more I realized what I had seen was a light grey presence. Then as I moved toward where he had been, the air temperature rapidly dropped as if I had just walked into a freezer. The extreme cold only lasted for a few paces before it returned to normal.
Back in the control room I told my partner what I had just seen and felt. She believed my tale because she had seen similar things herself. Everyone else on the shift just laughed.
Jails and prisons are notorious for ghost sightings as they are a breeding ground for high emotions. Inmates lose their freedom to move, speak, and do all the things people on the outside take for granted; for sure, their world is mostly an intensely dark, depressing, and dangerous place. Many paranormal investigators that study hauntings believe the dead are attracted to such places because of the emotional charge that lingers in the air and reverberates off the cold, hard bars.
Whatever the cause, I know what I saw and it made me a believer.
TOWER 7
By Steven Alva, LAPD, (ret)
The following incident happened while I was serving in the U.S. Army with the Berlin Brigade from 1976 through 1979. It was during the cold war with the Soviet Union in Berlin, a city divided by the great powers that won World War II.
According to the Potsdam Agreement in 1945, Berlin was divided into occupation zones, one each for the Russians, French, British, and the Americans. It was during this time the Americans carried out the only military ceremony with the Soviet Union. It took place in Spandau Prison in the British sector of the occupation.
The prince of Prussia built the structure in the 1840s to confine his political rivals and anyone else he deemed to be a subversive. A hundred and thirty-five years later and it still looked like an old medieval castle that Hollywood would create for a horror movie. It was built with 5-foot-thick brick and mortar walls to stop canon balls, and a large wood and steel gate that lowered to seal the main entrance. The Gestapo took it over during World War II and used it to hold prisoners, conduct interrogations, and to perform executions.
When I was there, it was a dark, cold, and drafty place, befitting of its only prisoner, Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer to Adolph Hitler. He was sentenced to Spandau in 1947, and 40 years later at the age of 93 he would kill himself.
For sure the prison had a long and bloody past and God only knows what horrors were committed there. The British soldiers stationed nearby knew it to be haunted and avoided the place like the plague.
During my tenure, someone from my command headquarters decided to put together a unit of combat veterans to participate in a ceremony with the Russian honor guard. The idea was to show them up and let them see what experienced infantry soldiers looked like, as opposed to their more ceremonial approach.
Each of us was hand picked and we practiced every single aspect of the ceremony over and over until we were all sleeping at attention. It paid off because when the day came we outshined the Russians. But as usual, there was a flip side: We had to remain and the Russians, who were as frightened of the bloody place as the rest of us, got to leave. Only Hess’s doctors remained. For three months, we lived in the compound and pulled prison guard over the old Nazi.
There were nine guard towers around the prison wall. We would enter the base of a tower through a locked door and climb a steep ladder-like staircase to a trapdoor under the floor of a guard stack. Once inside, we would close the small door and stand on it throughout our watch. All the towers were the same, that is, except for Tower 7.
That one was—special.
Whenever we had to pull guard in Tower 7, the others would ask the next morning if anything happened. I think everyone had experienced something strange there. Did it have anything to do with the French soldier that hung himself in it years earlier?
One day it was my time to pull a shift in the infamous tower. As usual, we were marched to each one where the sergeant of the guard dropped off a fresh soldier. When we got to Tower 7, which was located at the rear section of the prison, the sergeant of the guard unlocked the ground level door, I worked my way up the steep staircase, climbed into the guard shack, closed the trapdoor, and assumed my post as the door far below was once again locked.
I had been there just a short while when two strange things happened simultaneously. I heard the door at the base of the tower open, and at the same time I felt the temperature drop. The door opening at that moment was strange because it wasn’t the end of my shift and only the sergeant of the guard had the key.
Then I heard heavy, labored breathing, as if someone were having trouble getting air. But it was the next sound that turned my blood cold.
Foot steps. On the stairs. Ascending toward me.
I called out, “Who goes there? Stop and identify yourself!" I had a full magazine of live ammunition and I thought about loading my weapon. But I stopped myself.
The footsteps grew nearer until they were just under the floor of the guard shack.
Then something pushed up against the trapdoor—and I was standing on it.
I could hear what sounded like someone mumbling s
omething, all the while the trapdoor bumped up and down. It seemed to go on forever but in reality it was only a few minutes; I was so petrified and I—
It stopped and all was quiet.
The next day when the guys asked if anything had happened on my post in Tower 7, I just told them no.
Three months later, we were all glad to leave the unsettling place known as Spandau Prison. So many people had lost their lives there in such terrible ways. I was happy to be gone and I never looked back.
I guess the German people of Berlin felt the same way after Hess died in 1987. They demolished that brick and mortar house of horrors and by doing so freed, I hope, all those trapped and tormented souls.
THE ETERNALLY CARING NURSE
By Dwayne Howie
My career in corrections began after serving Uncle Sam in two separate branches of the military. Years of military service plus a career in the hard, grey, and unforgiving environment of a prison system tends to make a person see things realistically and discard any nonsense. That’s why what I’m about to tell you blew my mind.
The facility in question was constructed on the East Coast in the late 1800s, and then opened in 1900 as a tuberculosis hospital. In the early 1980s, it was remodeled into a prison, with housing for minimum and medium security inmates, as well as a medical wing to tend to injuries and a variety of illnesses.
I have many fond and not so fond memories of those convicts commuted to natural life sentences after the state removed the death penalty, only to have it reinstated a short while later. I often recall the many inmates that died from illnesses related to HIV and AIDS before modern medications were developed to save lives. Others died from TB and, of course, there were the inevitable suicides (many others attempted it but failed).
For the 20 plus years I worked in the institution there were questions from inmates in the medical section about seeing a black female nurse dressed in red and pink striped clothing. They told me they saw her bring water and sometimes food to the ill men. The first time an inmate told me about her I assumed he was on psychotropic meds or some other kind that caused visions or hallucinations. But then other inmates began telling me the same thing. I would tell them that there were no medical personnel working in the prison that wore that type of uniform, but still the reports of sightings continued. While I never saw the “nurse” on any of my shifts anywhere in the prison, I had to wonder after one inmate after another told the same story.
They couldn’t all be hallucinating.
The facility closed in 2008. I was retired by then but I had one last opportunity to tour the old building. It was in good shape for a structure over 100 years old, and so very hauntingly empty, though in my mind all those many incarcerated lives still occupied the place.
As we walked down long empty halls and passed through bare rooms, I could still hear those old bumps, creaks, and other odd sounds I had always attributed to pipes and regulators so common with steam heated buildings.
But steam no longer passed through the pipes.
We worked our way up to the third floor, a place never occupied by inmates, though the night shift officers still had to check it each shift. They frequently told me about hearing sounds of someone walking behind them or hearing doors closing in areas they had just secured and locked.
There was a story at that time about a patient housed on the third floor back when it was a TB hospital, years before it was a correctional facility. The man killed himself by jumping off a balcony; a rope looped around his neck stopped him before he hit the floor. We never knew his real name so the correctional staff referred to him as “Sam.”
Touring that third floor we could hear Sam again—those odd sounds that couldn’t have been steam in the pipes in the old empty building.
As the tour ended, one of the other men in the group, a friend and past coworker at the correction facility, told me to follow him. I did, asking him what was up, as he seemed quite anxious and jittery. He showed me an old slide carousel and projector he had found in a storage area. After setting it up, he proceeded to flip through pictures of the facility taken back when it was the TB hospital. There were lots of slides from the 50s and 60s of people, patients, and cars in the big parking lot. Then came the pictures he was so anxious about.
“You remember that nurse the inmates always asked about, the one that would get them water or ice or food items?” When I told him I did, he adjusted the slide carousel. “Ready to see something?” he asked.
Then he began to show me slide after slide of a nurse—the same nurse all the inmates had described in vivid detail. In some, she was standing with adult patients and in others with pediatric patients. There were a few of her posing with doctors and friends. All taken at the hospital so long ago.
I didn’t know what to think. Did all those men see an apparition? Ghost? It was very creepy.
Over the low hum of the slide projector, I could hear those bumps, creaks, and other odd sounds.
SOME STAYED BEHIND
By Loren W. Christensen
To better understand the intricacies of paranormal research, Sapulpa Herald reporter Brian Patrick was permitted to do a sort of “ride-a-long” with investigators from Sooner Paranormal of Oklahoma. Their target was the former Creek County Jail in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. There had been rumors for some time about a restless spirit in the old facility and Jim Pace, founder of the organization, was called in to evaluate the property.
According to Pace, who brings a massive amount of paranormal investigative experience to the task, the scientific approach is key to revealing genuine evidence rather than relying on superstitious conjecture. It’s also important, he says, to know the history of a place. Besides the incredible negative energy that typically exists around any structure used to incarcerate violent and troubled souls, Pace learned that a deputy sheriff was accidentally shot and killed in the jail shortly before it was moved to a new facility. Some people believe his spirit still walks there.
Pace likes to first map a site to better track any paranormal activity. He says, “When we map a location, we use grid paper to draw a representation of the home, business, or property in order to know precisely where we are recording or filming. We assign numbers to each room we investigate, noting areas on our drawing of reported activity. This helps us later when we review our work.”
It also allows the investigators to more easily point out to the client where they uncovered activity and, should they conduct a follow-up investigation, they have a record of where to concentrate their efforts.
Sooner Paranormal of Oklahoma investigators employ something called a Gauss meter to detect any fluctuations in electromagnetic energy in a particular location. A base level is first established by measuring inside and outside of a target building. If the Gauss meter shows a spike during an investigation, it indicates a possible presence. Pace’s people are always careful to stay away from electrical conduits.
The crew also uses video equipment and motion sensors to disclose movement in a given area and images better seen on the equipment.
When the investigation is over, the real work begins as the crew evaluates their findings, a process that can take hours. The team found the following after only one investigation.
When the second floor was checked for EVPs, electronic voice phenomena, (see “Terminology” page) they picked up a voice.
“Is it okay to shoot pictures in here?” an investigator asked the empty room.
“Shoot me,” a voice replied.
They discovered one room had random spots that were colder than the rest of the area.
A photograph revealed a cluster of four orbs in one corner.
Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the night happened when both Pace and the reporter, Brian Patrick, felt a tightening of their throats when they neared a door to one of the rooms.
Pace’s conclusion of the evidence gathered from the one investigation was that the old jail might not be haunted but there was definitely paranormal
activity in the place.
In fact, Patrick was so impressed that he and his wife joined the paranormal organization, and did great work with them for eight months.
“The difference between a believer and skeptic,” Jim Pace says, “is personal experience.”
THE DRAWING
T-MINUS 1 HOUR, 46 MINUTES
By R. S.
I lost my father to lung cancer on February 16, 1999. If anyone had asked about my thoughts concerning the afterlife at that time, I probably would have told them that once you're dead that's it. No heaven, no hell, no singing angels, just nothing. As a patrolman with almost five years on the job, I was used to seeing dead and dying people. It has a way of making you a realist and maybe a cynic as well.
Not long after losing my father, a co-worker told me about a TV program called Crossing Over starring John Edward, a medium. I watched the show but I wasn't sure if it was real. No one talks to the dead, do they? I bought Edward’s book One Last Time and read it with an open mind. It was hard getting through parts of it without becoming teary eyed, and the more I read the more convinced I was that communicating with the afterlife could be true. I went on to read other books about mediums and anything pertaining to psychic development.
Although my interest in mediumship and communication with the deceased was relatively new, I have had a lifelong interest in other areas of the occult and pretty much anything else out of the ordinary.
Around 2000, my police agency went to permanent shifts. I ended up on graveyard, which gave me time on quiet nights to read some of my books and practice psychic development. One simple exercise I liked was to have someone think of a color while I tried to guess it.
Cops' True Stories of the Paranormal: Ghost, UFOs, and Other Shivers Page 6
