#weird ghosts

From the time Alcatraz became a federal prison in 1934 under the stern and watchful eye of Warden James A. Johnston until it closed in 1963, its steel doors clanged shut on then 1,000 hardened convicts, criminals, and would-be escape artists.

From the start, the most incorrigible inmates from across the country were sent to The Rock. Each train that arrived in San Francisco to dispense prisoners seem to have a "celebrity" of sorts on board. Among the first inmates were Al Capone, perhaps the most famous gangster of all; Doc Baker, the last surviving member of Ma Baker Gang; George "Machine Gun" Kelly, the privileged son of a wealthy Memphis family who became one of the Prohibition period's most notorious gangsters; Floyd Hamilton, a gang member and driver for Bonnie and Clyde, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, a Canadian-born former Public Enemy No. 1 who arrested by J. Edgar Hoover himself; and Robert Stroud, the amateur ornithologist who would later become known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.

Noteworthy or not, the inmates found that Alcatraz was a place where they had but five rights-food, clothing, a private cell, a shower once a week, and access to a doctor. Their methodical daily routine never varied.

While the cells the prisoners lived in were barren at beast, they must have seemed like luxury hotel rooms compared to the punishment cells. In these, men were stripped of all but their basic rights to food-and even then, they barely survived. Confinement in the single Strip Cell was punishment for the most severe violations. In the Hole, the name for cells in the bottom tier of the main cellblock, the punishment usually included psychological torture, and sometimes physical torture as well. In D Block, inmates in cells above the Hole couldn't escape the screams of those imprisoned there. Prisoners who emerged from the Hole would often be senseless or sick and bound for the prison's hospital ward. Others never came out alive.

Even worse were the dungeons. A staircase in front of A Block led down to a large steel door, behind which were catacomb-like corridors and stone archways leading to the sealed-off gunports from the days when Alcatraz was a fort. In the dungeons off the corridor, the prisoners were chained to the walls, their screams unheard in the rest of the main cellblock. Food and sanitation in the dungeons were minimal, dignity nonexistent.

Early Ghost Activity

A number of guards who worked in Alcatraz between 1946 and 1963 experienced the strange and the unexplained. From the grounds of the prison to the caverns beneath the buildings, they heard people sobbing and moaning, smelled strange odors, discovered cold spots, and saw what they described as ghosts. Even families who lived on the island and the occasional guest claimed to have seen the ghostly forms of prisoners or phantom soldiers. The sound of what seemed to be gunshots mdae the guards think prisoners had escaped and obtained weapons.

A deserted laundry room would sometimes fill with the smell of smoke, though nothing was burning. The guards would be sent running from the room, only to return momentarily and find the air clear. Like the other mysterious happenings at Alcatraz, the phantom fires were never explained.

Even Warden Johnston, who had no time for those who believed in ghosts, once heard the unmistakable sound of a person sobbing in the dungeon as he led a group of guests on a tour. The sound was followed by an ice-cold wind felt by the entire group. Johnston could never arrive at an explanation for this weird occurrence.

During the twenty-nine years Alcatraz operated as a prison, there were at least fourteen escape attempts. Almost all the prisoners who tried to flee were either killed or recaptured, and only one is known to have made it ashore. The most traumatic and violent attempt, later dubbed the Battle of Alcatraz, took place over two days in May 1946.

What started as a well-planned breakout from the "escape-proof" prison turned into a disaster when the six inmates involved saw their plan fall apart. Realizing they couldn't succeed, they decided to fight it out. Before it was over, they had taken a number of guards hostage, killed three of them, and wounded several others; two of the guards were murdered in cold blood in cells 402 and 403 (later renamed C102 and C104). The failed escapees fared no better. Three of them climbed into a utility corridor to avoid the constant gunfire, only to die after being hit by bullets or shrapnel.

An escape attempt in 1962 was later documented by Hollywood in the film Escape from Alcatraz. Released in 1979, the movie was a big hit in the box office, but the prison had closed long before. Too expensive to renovate and properly secure, what could be called the world's most famous prison shut its doors for good in March 1963.

Mysteries of Cell 14D

In 1972, the federal government put Alcatraz Island under the purview of the National Park Service, and after opening to the public, it became one of the part service's most popular sites. While in the daylight hours the old prison teems with tour guides and visitors, at night it is filled with mystery. Many believe that the energy of those who served time on The Rock remains, making the Alcatraz complex one immense haunted house.

Night watchmen patrolling the main cell house, divided into A, B, C, and D blocks, say they've heard the sounds of what seems to be running coming from the upper tiers. Thinking an intruder has gained entry, the watchmen investigated the sounds but always found nothing.

One Park Service employee reported that on a rainy afternoon the sparse number of tourists allowed her some time off from guiding tours. She went for a walk in front of A Block and was just past the door leading down to the dungeons when she heard a loud scream from the bottom of the stairs. She ran away without looking to see if anyone where there.

Asked why she didn't report the incident, she replied, "The day before, everyone was ridiculing another worker who reported hearing men's voices coming from the hospital ward, and when he went to check the ward, it was empty. So I didn't dare mention what I heard."

Several guides and rangers felt something strange in one of the cells in the Hole: Cell 14D. "There's a feeling of sudden intensity that comes on when you spend more than a few minutes around that cell," one of them said.

Another guide described Cell 14D as "always cold. Sometimes it gets warm out here-so hot that you have to take your jacket off. The temperature inside the cell house can be in the seventies, and 14D is still cold."

The tour guides weren't the only ones to have strange experiences there. Several former guards at the prison have told of terrifying incidents that took place near the Hole, and in Cell 14D in particular.

During one guard's stint in the middle 1940s, an inmate was locked in 14D for some since forgotten infraction. According to the officer, the man began screaming within seconds of being locked in. He claimed that a creature with "glowing eyes" was locked in with him. Yet no one took the convict's cries of being "attacked" very seriously, probably because tales of ghostly presence wandering the nearby corridor were a continual inducement to practical jokes to the guards. The man's screaming continued into the night, until finally there was silence. The following day, guards inspected the cell and found the convict dead. A horrible expression was frozen on his face, and there were hand marks around his throat. An autopsy revealed that the strangulation couldn't have been self-inflicted. Some believed that the man might have been choked by one of the guards, who had been fed up with all the screaming, but no one ever confessed to the crime.

On the day following the tragedy, several guards who were performing a head count noticed that there were too many men in the lineup. Then, at the end of the line, they saw the face of the convict who had recently been strangled in the Hole. As they all looked on in stunned silence, the figure abruptly vanished.

Banjo Strains

A park service employee who worked at Alcatraz in the late 1970s had a weird experience in another of the main cellblock's chambers. He was down near the shower room when he heard something he couldn't explain.

"It was banjo music," he said. "The room was empty, but I definitely coming from there. Maybe back in the days when it was a fort or army stockade, there was some guy here who played that instrument."

What the employee didn't know was that during the most traumatic days of his life, Al Capone, rather rick going out to exercise yard with the other inmates, would sit in the shower room strumming on his banjo.

Now imagine that same room shared with up to five other men-a prison cell in every breath drawn might be the last and every setting heralds new terrors that come in the night.

A New but Fearful Facility

By 1873, the prison in Laramie, Wyoming, was bulging at the seams. Home to convicts from the surrounding areas, it could no longer accept new inmates, yet the stream of new arrivals never let up. The state government decided a new prison was needed, one that could accommodate the high number of miscreants who roamed Idaho at the time. Construction of what would be an enormous structure began in 1888. It took thirteen years, but on December 12, 1901, the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins opened its doors. The incarcerated were to be assigned meaningful duties that would not only put money in the coffers of both the prison and the state but would also in the prisoners the seed of a work ethic. Over the years, the prisoners manufactured brooms, shirts, and proceesed wool, when they weren't stamping out license plates.

Despite the state's good intentions, the new facility had tiny cells without running water or toilets, and their bare concrete walls bred more than a sense of punishment. They bred madness. Fights were common, as were stabbings and near riots. In just three years, the penitentiary saw several bloody battles between prisoners, one of which involved a prisoner attempting to cut another's heart out. The terrified guards, who sometimes felt themselves the real prisoners, often did nothing.

Such violence could only be tolerated for so long, prompting the construction of "the Hole" in 1906. Being confined to this windowless room was the punishment for anything from refusing to eat dinner to murder. The guilty were chained to a wall in the room and left in total darkness. During their stay, they were attended to only briefly and were fed miniscule amounts of bread and water.

It wasn't until 1914, years after the prison had already come dangerously close to its capacity, that the penitentiary cells were equipped with toilets, washbowls, and running water-cold only, however.

After several escape attempts by inmates, high concrete walls replaced the wooden stockades surrounding the prison buildings in 1915. The convicts were pressed into service to erect the walls and guard towers, partially to make them aware that escaping would be impossible.

Rough Justice

Executions were commonplace, either by hanging or by gas, but it wasn't just the state that meted out capital punishment. Prison guards often enforced their own bran of justice or simply turned a blind eye to prisoner-devised hangings. In one case, the person hanged didn't die immediately, prompting his executioners to haul hi up by the rope and toss him over the rail for a second time.

By the late 1970s, tales of abuse and overcrowding reached the state. Stories involving the horrors of the Hole and other tortures, including thumb cuffs and the insidious Oregon Boot (a heavily weighted steel shoe), reached the proper ears, prompting an investigation. In 1981, the Wyoming State Penitentiary closed its doors for good, leaving decades of abuse and agony behind.

It is impossible to identify the restless souls that never left what's called the Old Pen; they're simply too numerous. What is clear, however, is that in my places whatever remains is angry and resentful-and not at all shy about showing its feelings.

Tour guides and tourists alike have reported seeing shadowy figures disappearing around corners and malicious presences throughout the structure. There are, however, a few places deemed hotbeds of activity. The showers, were countless inmates were attacked, violated, or even killed, are the setting of many a story. Also on the list of places to be avoided are the former Death Row and the gas chamber.

However, most agree that the worst hauntings occur in the black pit called the Hole. Whatever lurks there, according to those whose job it is to walk the halls, is angry and crazed, threatening anyone who enters. There are also specific cells in which voices are heard and presences felt. Also well known is Guard Tower No. 9, in which a guard committed suicide.

The buildings stand as they did, with cell walls still bearing the markings and artwork of those who occupied them. Death Row cells are adorned with photos of those prisoners who spent their last moments inside. The old prison cemetery is visible on the grounds, and many of the tombstones lie broken or stand propped against a fence.

Some of the prisoners' sentences, it seems, have extended into the afterlife. And a few of the other former occupants may haunt the premises as well. In what is now a museum, accounts of ghostly activity from staff members and visitors alike aren't uncommon-and they often have to do with one cell in particular.

The Feared Dark Cell

When an inmate broke the rules, he was confined in solitary in what became known as the Dark Cell, which measured ten by ten feet. The only daylight came from a small ventilation shaft in the ceiling. The inmate would be dress in underwear only and be given one meal of bread and water each day. Sometimes he would also have his legs chained to two ringbolts.

After the sun went down, the inmates found himself in total darkness. He often shared the cell with scorpions and snakes, and whether these varmints slithered in from the outside or sadistic guards dropped them down the ventilation shaft as further torture, as prisoners claimed, will never be known. After serving their time in the Dark Cell, some prisoners were sent directly to the insane asylum in Phoenix.

Surprisingly, the most prominent ghost in the Dark Cell might be that of a small child. The ghostly phantom loves pinching, poking, and touching visitors with icy fingers, but only if they're wearing red clothing. A psychic touring the prison felt the spirit wasn't that of an angry adult, but rather of a little girl. Perhaps her family was one of the many who found themselves homeless and lived at the former prison until they could get back on their feet.

A staff writer for a regional magazine in Arizona, wanting to experience what the inmates went through, attempted to spend forty-eight hours in the Dark Cell. Shackled to the ringbolt and given only a jug of water and a loaf of bread, the writer fell short of her goal by eleven hours. She insisted that she wasn't alone in the cell, and it didn't help that a cover on the ventilation shaft blocked out all rays of light.

Eerie Happenings

The Dark Cell isn't the only area where ghostly activity occurs. Assistant Park Manager Jesse Torres was in the museum early one morning when he thought he heard a coworker calling out to him. "Did you get it?" he recalled her saying. "I went to the back office to see her," Torres says, "but found out she was in the Ramada building, which isn't even close to the museum. In fact, I was the only person in the museum."

Torres continues: "At the far end of the corridor is Cell 14, which was occupied in the early 1900s by John Ryan. He was disliked not only by the guards but by the prisoners as well. When I passed his old cell sometimes, I find myself shivering because of the coldness. John was found guilty of a 'crime against nature,' which meant he committed rape or a sexually deviant act. Before his sentence was up, he committed suicide in his cell."

Other accounts tell of muffled conversations in vacant rooms, witnesses seeing things out of the corner of the eye, and a woman who sings in the visitors area early in the morning. Another harmless ghost, called Johnny, doesn't venture beyond the gift shop. There, he's content to flick coins in the coins in the cash register while leaving all the bills allone.

Built in 1936 in the small coastal town of Camarillo, a jumping-off point for the Channel Island, the State Mental Hospital first opened its doors in the era when people with mental disorders were called crazies, lunatics, or criminally insane. The acreage around the facility was used as farmland, complete with a diary. The patients-alcoholics, pedophiles, or those with mental illnesses, retardation, or violent tendencies-had no need ot leave the grounds for any of their needs, nor were they allowed to.

By the 1950s, more than 7,000 people-some as young as eleven years old-were housed at the massive facility. Patients wore tan jumpsuits to distinguish them from the facility staff and to make it easier to identify any patients who tried to escape. The rowdiest were routinely kept under control with powerful drugs; those who were still uncontrollable were subjected to electroshock therapy.

Another routine treatment was to immerse the patients in hot water, then wrap them in ice-cold towels immediately after they were pulled out. Still others were strapped to their beds until they'd exhausted themselves. Investigation of the hospital revealed brutality on the part of the guards and incidents of inmate abusing and even killing one another. Given Camarillo's "house of horrors" atmosphere, it should come as no surprise that people who either worked or lived ther ehave told some compelling stories of hauntings.

Brief Encounters

A female janitor got a shock one evening when cleaning the women's restrooms. AS she bent to pick something up off the floor, she noticed a pair of legs, which she described as obviously belonging to a man, under the door of a stall. When she called out to the person, there was no answer. She pushed the door open, only to find the stall empty. She refused to enter the restroom again.

Another employee, a nurse named Debbie, had a strange encounter while sneaking a cigarette during a rainy day. Not wanting to go outside in the rain, she opened the door to the courtyard and lit up. No sooner had she taken her first puff then, as she put it, someone grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and shook he rhard. When she turned to see who it was, there was no one there.

On another occasion, a sixty-five-year-old nurse claimed to have been grabbed by the hair and pulled backward out of a chair by an unseen assailant, though were no witnesses to the incident. One of the nurse's coworkers, a ten-year veteran of Camarillo named Sheryl Downey, thought the story eerie, but it wasn't until her own encounter with the supernatural that she began to believe a former male patient who picking on women.

She says that during one of the busiest times of day, just after breakfast, she spotted a man she'd never seen before outfitted in the uniform worn by patients in the old days of the asylum. He was walking into the women's restroom. When she called out to stop him, he continued as if he hadn't heard her. Sheryl called her coworkers to roust the man out, but the room turned out to be empty. There were no other exists or windows, so the man couldn't have left without anyone seeing him.

As Sheryl puzzled over his sudden disappearance, her coworkers screamed. The man was standing directly behind Sheryl, and then promptly vanished into thin air.

New Day, Old Ghosts

In the mid-1970s, things changed at Camarillo. The institution examined its policies and began working to actually heal the patients instead of locking them away. By the early 1990s, conditions had improved significantly. Patients were taught real skills and underwent less radical types of therapy. A petting zoo was even added to help the developmentally challenged children in residence.

Toward the end of the Reagan administration, the President instituted a new legislative mandate of deinstitutionalization. It heralded the end of Camarillo, as patients were moved to other facilities or released back onto the streets. Camarillo closed its doors in 1997, marking the end of an era.

Still, scars left by the old treatment methods remained. Future employees, as well as workers who would renovate the buildings, tell tales of phantom presences, moving objects, and several strangely coincidental deaths. Even movie crews, which have used the buildings for several set locations, have reported strange encounters.

Most people who enter the old hospital grounds are affected in one way or another. Headaches and nausea are common, as are dizziness and fatigue. Many who enter say they feel they're being watched or threatened. While such feelings can be put down to the imagination, it's the eyewitness accounts that provide a chilling view into the past of Camarillo State Hospital.

Many have heard the voices and laughter of children at the building once designated as the children's center, and at the former petting zoo as well. A beautiful woman in white, assumed to be a nurse, roams the hallways of the bell tower, only to vanish when confronted. There are also reports of an old woman who walks the grounds outside the bell tower and a man who sits at the bus stop. There's even a chattering ghost in the tower's ladies room.

While on a location shoot in May 2004, several members of a film crew reports tools missing-tools later found in unopened rooms. Set builders talked of windows slamming on their own, microwave ovens thrown to the floor, and strange knocking on walls. Cold spots were also common in the buildings. Several of the crew quit, saying the place was jus ttoo creepy.

There even appears to be something strange about the back road into the hospital, which has been the scene of several unexplained car accidents. Although the road wasn't heavily traveled, car crashed on it were frequent. Following an accident that killed a Camarillo nurse, an autopsy showed that the otherwise healthy woman had suffered a freak brain embolism.

Camarillo Today

Its connections to celebrities have amplified the reputation of the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Jazz legend Charlie Parker stayed for seven months after a nervous breakdown in 1947, and soon after recorded his hit "Relaxing at Camarillo." The old hospital is also rumored by some to be the inspiration for The Eagles' 1976 hit "Hotel California."