Ghost Archaeology/ Eastern State Penitentiary

@slappedham The Ghost of Eastern State Penitentiary. #ScaryVideos #SlappedHam #HauntedTikTok #Creepy #Ghost #Horror #YouTube #ScaryTikToks #Paranormal #FYP ♬ original sound - Slapped Ham

Here, we see another example of a ghost story used to engage viewers. Rather notable is the ask to debate what is seen in the video and offer a personal explanation, which is typical of ghost hunting. People enjoy it because the subjective nature of the evidence allows the viewer participate in the act of discovery and knowledge formation.

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Here we see a TikTok video showing us a preview of the Halloween Nights Eastern State Penitentiary hosts each fall. The setup includes five haunted houses, historic tours, live entertainment, and food & drinks.

The first Halloween fundraiser was held in 1991, in order to raise funds to create a daytime tour program, which several hundred people attended. It took until 1994 for Eastern State to operate historic tours on a daily basis. (x)

The prison’s facade in the early 1830s.

C. Burton, 1831

Symmetrical design for the radial plan.

C.G. Childs, A View and Description of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, 1830

The radial plan, lopsided upon completion.

Demetz and Bloet, 1836 Plan of Eastern State Penitentiary, 1837

A 1971 plan of the prison shows structures filling in almost all the space.

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, 1971 Plan of Eastern State Penitentiary

Read about a daring escape attempt from Eastern State in 1945 where 12 men, including Willie Sutton aka "Slick Willie," dug a tunnel to go under the prison walls. Most were caught in mere minutes.

Below are photos of the 2005 excavations done on the 50th Anniversary of this attempted escape.

The entry to the escape tunnel, excavated by a team of archaeologists and researches in 2005.

This virtual tour of the museum exhibit Prisons Today provides a 360 degree overview of the exhibit, including the striking question at the entrance, "Have You Ever Broken a Law?" The exhibit encourages self reflection as to what being a "criminal" means through interactive displays, explains the risk factors that may lead someone to commit a crime, the failures of the current system of mass incarceration, and depicts the personal perspectives of incarcerated people through documentaries.

While the unfortunate lack of clear photos and transcriptions mean that virtual visitors do not have access to the statistics and facts the exhibit highlights, they can get a sense of the general layout and read some signage.

The first thing a visitor sees when entering the room is a red sign asking the question "Have you ever broken the Law?"

If one answers yes, they may turn to the left and see the following sign:

If they answer no, they may see this sign.

The Criminal Us is an art installation putting written confessions on the wall of both folks currently incarcerated and visitors to the museum, and asks the question, can you tell who the criminal is?

Screenshot of two episodes on Eastern State Penitentiary available on Discovery+

Inmates and Guards celebrate Christmas on the gallery of Cell Block 5, c. 1960

Photo: gift of Officer Howard James (standing to the left of the Christmas tree)

We have to remember that prisoners are people, and not give into the idea that a "prisoner" is just a word for someone who is being justly punished for a crime. These were real people who followed religion, who celebrated holidays no matter how limited their freedom may be, and whose population today is disproportionally made up of black men.

Below is a video called “The Holiday We Hope to Celebrate: Freedom” which was a collaborative project between Eastern State Penitentiary Staff and eight incarcerated men held at Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Chester.

The video opens with the men's interviews about Christmas celebrations at the prisons, and goes on to talk about other holidays like Thanksgiving and New Years, and the use of Eastern State Penitentiary as a prison museum.

Ultimately, when discussing prisons and the prison system, it is important to hear from incarcerated people directly about their experiences, and this is just one way to get their voices to be herd.

Kate Duffy (Ph. D American Studies) writes here about her personal experiences working as a tour guide at Eastern State.

For the sake of this blog, I'd like to highlight this excerpt surrounding her experiences with ghost hunters and other paranormal experts:

I loved the job, and in slow twilight hours I perched in a tour guide stand, falling into a kind of meditative trance. I considered the prison guards who once stood there and the strange historical process through which tour guides supplanted them. Vines rustled in the wind and shadows crept across walls.

On a few occasions I spent all night in the prison, escorting groups of paranormal investigators. They appreciated the picturesque quality of the ruins, the bats swarming above, and the thrill of exploration. Some took a technological approach, setting up camp with an arsenal of gadgets. Others preferred seances by candlelight. A few ran screaming through the cellblocks, cursing the spirits. One night I met an actual parapsychologist, a man in a black trench coat who said he worked with the Catholic Church. “Not everyone is cut out for spiritual demonology,” he told me.

I believe the prison is haunted, perhaps not by distinct ghosts one could hunt with an Electronic Voice Phenomena detector, but by the aura of the tens of thousands of lives it held captive. The prisoners have left traces throughout the penitentiary, embellishing Haviland’s design with their own mysterious marks.

In Cellblock 8 we find an eye painted over a doorway. Guards long permitted inmates to paint their cells at Eastern State. When Charles Dickens visited in 1842, he met two prisoners who decorated their walls using colors extracted from yarn.

Al Capone's Cell at Eastern State Penitentiary, courtesy of me, Fall 2019

Shane and Ryan, the hosts of Buzzfeed Unsolved head to explore Eastern State Penitentiary, in search of evidence of the paranormal.

In the section of the video discussing Cell Block 12, we see a great example as to how ghost hunting may be used to educate a populace. Ryan sets the stage with an impeccably narrated summary of the transition from the Pennsylvania System of solitary cells into the overcrowding of the prison by the time the 1933 riots broke out. Here, they search for a possible shadow figure running across the catwalk, possibly reliving these riots.

While Shane and Ryan do not manage to get any evidence of this ghost (boo) we ought to point out that the only reason they know to look for a ghost is by having a prior knowledge of the events that took place. To search for a ghost without any prior knowledge is to move without direction, and without meaning. It is the story and the history behind ghosts which make the hunts interesting.