BLOG: 10 Horrible History Facts About Eastern State Penitentiary (and Our Own Tour of the Famous Haunted Prison!)
Many a list of “The World’s Most Haunted Places” would not be complete without the looming, castle-like specter of Eastern State Penitentiary claiming its place in line. The imposing prison is remembered for its unique methods of criminal reformation, famous for its continuous and compelling paranormal activity, and also happens to be located in Philadelphia in our home state of Pennsylvania!
Whether you’re a ghost hunter, PA local, or history buff, Eastern State Penitentiary is an unmissable haunted destination with a storied background. Check out 10 horrible history facts about Eastern State Penitentiary, followed by our own quick impressions about our tour of the infamous prison!
10 Horrible History Facts About Eastern State Penitentiary
1) Built in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary instituted what was called “the separate system” (or “the Pennsylvania system”) to reform criminals. The controversial reformation method prevented criminals from speaking or experiencing human interaction for the length of their incarceration. For 23 hours a day, prisoners remained in their cells forbidden to speak or receive any visitors besides their guards and local ministers. The forced isolation was intended to make prisoners reflect upon their wrongdoings and seek God in their solitude, but for many, the unending silence and loneliness lead to growing insanity.
2) When prisoners were removed from their cells, their heads were completely covered with hoods to prevent communication with other prisoners, and also to maintain anonymity. It was not until close to 1900 that the hoods were permitted to have eye holes. Since the closure of Eastern State Penitentiary in 1971, eerie hooded apparitions have been reported throughout the abandoned facility.
3) Although complete silence and no communication between inmates was enforced, there were prisoners who broke the rules, and they were dealt harsh - and often inhumane - punishments. Among the notorious tortures were:
“The Mad Chair,” where prisoners were confined for days, unable to move their bodies and so tightly bound that some later required amputations to limbs where circulation had been cut off.
"The Hole," an underground cell where no light, no human contact, and no toilets were allowed to prisoners, sometimes for weeks at a time. Very little food was offered, and what was provided was usually set upon by roaches and rats.
“The Water Bath,” a tortuous dunk into cold water that was followed by hanging the rule-breaker from a prison wall all night long. During winter months, punished inmates could be found coated with a layer of frost when they were released from the wall in the morning.
“The Iron Gag,” arguably the worst of the horrible punishments which was administered by clamping an iron collar on a prisoner’s tongue, strapping their arms behind their backs, and chaining the tongue collar to their wrists. Any movement instantly caused the tongue to start tearing and bleeding profusely - and inmates were known to die from blood loss.
4) In 1833, only four years after it opened, Eastern State Penitentiary faced public scrutiny when inmate Mathias Maccumsey met an untimely death after trying to communicate with another prisoner. Prison officials clamped him in the Iron Gag as punishment, and just one hour later found him dead in his cell. The official cause of death was “apoplexy,” and prison employees were cleared of any wrongdoing, but most people would maintain that the Iron Gag caused Maccumsey’s death, and the scandal began to chip away at Eastern State’s reputation.
5) Classical author Charles Dickens - whose works often highlighted social inequality and the tragedy of deprivation - toured Eastern State Penitentiary in 1842, and was distraught at what he witnessed. In his travelogue American Notes for General Circulation, Dickens had condemning words to share about the separate system, which he considered to be cruel and inhuman, writing:
“Looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker’s last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has expired….He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years….
And though he lives to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part of the building it is situated; what kind of men there are about him; whether in the long winter night there are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors.”
6) Although prison reforms finally came in 1913, the broken system at ESP was already beyond repair. The solitary confinement method of punishment and the penitence officials hoped it would instill had long been neglected, as the prison that was originally designed to hold 250 inmates was overflowing with 1,700 prisoners. Unacceptable living conditions were cited and the separate system was officially ended, but ESP still remained in operation for another 58 years.
7) In 1929, mobster Al Capone served seven months in Eastern State Penitentiary for carrying a concealed unlicensed weapon, the first prison sentence in his illustrious history of crime. Although Capone received better treatment than most prisoners and was allowed luxuries like a rug and a radio, he too was allegedly tormented - not by physical punishment, but by visits from the dead. According to historical rumors, while Capone was incarcerated in his stately cell, he was haunted by the ghost of James Clark, one of the men murdered during the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Capone believed the man’s spirit was rooming with him in his cell, and it is even claimed that in his final years of life, Capone would cry out in his sleep for “Jimmy” to leave him alone.
8) Eastern State Pen closed down in 1971, and sat abandoned in the middle of Philadelphia for two decades. Bed frames, stools, clothing, personal mementos and more were all left behind to molder, along with the ghosts that have helped make ESP one of the world’s most famous prisons. Over the 20 years that the facility remained abandoned, ghost stories continued to grow as trespassers and ghost hunters emerged from unsanctioned adventures inside the walls with tales of apparitions, disembodied footsteps, screams and cries, shadow people, and extreme negativity energy.
9) One of ESP’s most well-known ghost stories actually comes from Gary Johnson, an unsuspecting locksmith who was called upon to work on prison repair efforts that began in the 1990s, after the penitentiary was turned into a historic landmark. According to the story, Johnson was attempting to unlock a 140-year-old door in Cellblock 4, where many of the prison’s brutal punishments were carried out. He struggled to break through the lock, but when it finally gave way, Johnson described being overcome by a cold force so powerful he was paralyzed. Unable to move, he felt that he was leaving his body as he was compelled into the cell, which was covered with horrible faces and figures on the walls and teeming with negative energy. The frightening encounter ended with Johnson unharmed, but there are those who believe he opened a physical doorway to the paranormal when he broke that lock on the cell door.
10) During its 142 years in operation, Eastern State Penitentiary saw 1,200 inmates die, 50 inmates commit suicide, dozens get murdered by other prisoners, and over 100 people attempt to escape. Combined with its cruel punishments and isolation methods, and then subsequent abandonment, the prison has decidedly created an atmosphere where ghosts can thrive. Although ESP reopened to the public as a historical site in 1991 (dubbed a “stabilized ruin”) scary stories continue to manifest. The prison has been the subject of many ghost hunting TV shows, accommodates approximately a dozen paranormal investigations every year, and hosts the haunted attraction Terror Behind the Walls each Halloween season, in addition to its year round historic tours. Not only is Eastern State Penitentiary considered one of America’s most haunted prisons, it is also one of the most haunted places in the world.
Our Tour of Eastern State Penitentiary - 2017
In spring of 2017, Tony and I toured Eastern State Penitentiary as part of Obscura Day, Atlas Obscura’s fun annual “global celebration of exploration and discovery.” As native Eastern Pennsylvanians, we were excited to explore one of the world’s most famous haunted places that just so happened to be in our own backyard!
When we originally planned an Eastern State Penitentiary blog for the website, we wanted to share the dozens of photos we took on the ESP premises to bring you all the great creepiness and history that the prison had to offer. I’ll quell the anticipation of those photos for you immediately: when I went back to choose the best ones, I discovered that our pictures for almost that entire year had been inexplicably deleted. No idea when or how they disappeared, but the loss was disappointing to say the very least. Our only Eastern State Penitentiary photos to survive the Great Deletion of 2017 were just 10 images we had uploaded to Instagram, to preserve the memories and score some likes. We’ve included those pictures here throughout our reflections on the ESP tour, but we certainly wish we still had our whole album to share with you! I guess we’ll just have to go back another time…
Getting back to our original tour, Eastern State Penitentiary is one imposing building to come upon in the middle of a huge city. The city itself was gradually built up around the prison facility, until ESP came to look like a medieval fortress surrounded by row homes, parking spaces, and office buildings. When we arrived for the tour, some kind of neighborhood festival or block sale was taking place all along the street in front of the prison. Tables and blankets were sprawled on the sidewalks, and all kinds of folks were selling all kinds of things, from artwork to clothing to antiques. One detail I remember clearly - which is also probably totally insignificant to anyone else - was how strongly the scent of cooking onions filled the air as a vendor prepared food somewhere nearby. At the time I was eight weeks pregnant, and the smell was delicious and disgusting all at once. (If you’ve ever been pregnant, I’m confident that you know exactly what I mean.) The contrast between the aged prison sitting like a citadel in the middle of the lively, modern, kind-of rundown city around it was actually pretty shocking when we first saw it.
Entering Eastern State Pen also felt like walking into a medieval fortress, and I half-expected to see the portcullis of the soaring entrance slam shut and a drawbridge raise up behind us. Nothing nearly so dramatic really happened, but stepping from the street and fully into the interior of ESP was like walking from an bustling open space into a giant still vault. At one point our tour guide informed us that the accomplices of prisoners on the outside would sometimes try to lob contraband over the sides of the prison, but at 30 feet high and ranging anywhere from 2 to 10 feet thick at certain places, the walls did a sound job of blocking out the rest of the surrounding world.
Because we visited ESP on a nice spring day and there were lots of people around, and probably because we weren’t condemned inmates, the prison grounds didn’t give us too many frightening feelings to speak of. Eastern State is rife with ghost stories, so I don’t doubt that the paranormal activity there can get jumpin’, but on that particular day, we didn’t come away with any stories to add to the books. Tony even swore he’d be completely fine spending the entire night at ESP, alone. That seems like something that’s a lot easier to say in the daytime, but we’ll never know for sure!
Our tour of Eastern State Pen coincided with the new opening of the Medical wing, which had been restored enough to finally allow visitors after decades of disuse. If the outside grounds of the prison weren’t especially eerie, being inside the wings and cell blocks was a different story. Even with renovations to the Medical building, walking past aged, peeling wooden signs marking rooms like “Laboratory” and “Psychiatric Dept.” immediately calls up unpleasant images of the kinds of treatment that may have once taken place there. One room still held an enormous surgical light suspended ominously from rusted hinges. Knowing the punishments, injuries, and insanity that inmates sustained over the century-plus that ESP was in operation casts a certain creepy pall to the Medical rooms, even as being some of the first visitors to explore them made for a fascinating experience.
Just as the Medical wing was creepy, so the cellblocks were creepy and bleak. It’s not hard to imagine the decayed wings enveloped in silence, as the thick walls and enclosed cells work easily to hold back sound, light, and comfort. The cells we entered had a subterranean feel, totally encased in concrete and only small “Eye of God” windows above to let in the sun. Even the doors seemed designed to promote isolation and a feeling of being cut off: one unusual feature we noticed about them was just how tiny they were! I’m a small 5-foot-3-inches tall, and still needed to duck a few inches to clear the thin doorway. Full-sized men and women prisoners must have needed to shoe-horn into the cells like they were cubbyholes, just one more continual reminder of how far removed they were from normal life and liberties.
While a lot of the cells and floors are open for exploration, since Eastern State Penitentiary is considered a “stabilized ruin” there are still wings that are off limits (like the one in the picture below), and it is these areas that gave me the most unsettling feelings. The areas of the buildings that are well-traversed by visitors seem a little less gloomy, what with all the lively energy all those living people give off. But in the darker, unvisited corners, the atmosphere seems more ready to scare you with a shadow figure or a banging door or mysterious footsteps… That may just be an impression triggered by the active imagination of a sensitive, easily creeped-out person like me, but these were the thoughts running through my head while peering down the still-abandoned corridors. Maybe I could make it through a full night outside on the prison grass (no I wouldn’t), but unlike Tony, I know for sure I wouldn’t bunk down until dawn in a cellblock!
Even though we didn’t witness any ghosts or have any unexplained encounters on our visit to ESP, the tour and site exploration were still well worth the trip! Eastern State Pen was an original facility that achieved many innovative “firsts" along with the more horrible parts of its history and consequently, even in a crumbling state, the prison still holds much historical - and paranormal - value. If you’re interested in local Pennsylvania lore, criminal history, or the world’s best haunted places, Eastern State Penitentiary offers a memorable experience at every turn.
For more of our haunted explorations, check out our visit to another paranormal Pennsylvania location in the blog post Pennhurst Asylum ParaCon 2019 Photo Album, or follow us to the other side of the U.S. and read about Our Trip to Alcatraz, America's Most Haunted Prison!
~ Lindsay W. Merkel
