Since the Ohio prison opened in 1896, its impenetrable walls have witnessed suicides, deadly prison breaks, riots, and horrible accidents.
The real-life haunted prison is turned into a staged haunted prison during Halloween season. Actors play ghostly killers, strategically placed lights casts eerie shadows, and spooky sounds emanate from cobwebbed corners. But sometimes it is hard to tell what is pretend and what is real, for the screaming continues after the actors have gone home, the special effects are turned off, and the place is buttoned up for the night.
A scent of flowery perfume wafts from nowhere on the third floor of the administration building. Staff credit it to the gentle spirit of Helen Glattke, who once lived on the prison grounds with her husband, Chief Arthur Glattke.
Poor Helen met her fate on a quiet Sunday morning in November 1950. According to November 7 editions of Ohio newspapers, the forty-one-year-old mother of two was getting dressed when she reached up on a high shelf for her jewelry box. Helen’s fingers curled around her husband’s .32-caliber automatic pistol, a defective weapon that often jammed. This morning it was in her way, and as she tried to move it, it slipped from her grasp, discharging as it fell.
A bullet pierced her left upper lung, and she later died at General Hospital. The saddest thing of all was that she did not get to see nine-year-old Teddy and thirteen-year-old Arthur Jr. grow up. It is somehow comforting to know that her spirit is sensed in the administration building and not in the shadowy places where the evil wraiths roam.
Some say they have witnessed Helen’s shadowy shape and even felt her soft touch as she caresses their faces and shoulders.
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OHIO STATE REFORMATORY
100 Reformatory Road
Mansfield, OH 44905
(419) 522-2644
www.mrps.org
Haunted Cage
A former warehouse turned museum in London, England, seems to be brimming with restless ghosts. After employees experienced phenomena there, the Paranormal Search and Investigation team checked it out, and both their psychics and their electronic equipment picked up on entities.
A hostile energy on the third floor near the gibbet cage spooked the group. The gibbet cage was used to display the dead bodies of pirates in the 1700s. The lawbreakers’ lives of plundering and violence came to an end when they were captured and hung on Execution Dock in Wapping, a section of London.
The grisly sight of the executed pirates was meant to serve as a warning to others who might be tempted to become outlaws of the sea.
While the bodies of the dead pirates are dust in the wind, their angry souls apparently still cling to the cage that showcased their public humiliation.
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MUSEUM IN DOCKLANDS
Canary Wharf
West India Quay
London, England E14 4AL
www.museumindocklands.org.uk/English/
Hanging Out
The Frontenac County Courthouse in Kingston, Ontario, is a formidable yet elegant structure. With its grand entry of towering columns and domed tower, the historic gray building draws the eyes of passersby. Originally constructed in 1796, it suffered fire damage twice and each time was rebuilt. During one renovation, workers discovered a clue to the strange goings-on there.
Over the years witnesses had reported seeing a peculiar man. He was always leaning against the same courthouse wall. A noose hung from his neck, and before observers could question why, the figure vanished.
Six sanctioned hangings had occurred at the Frontenac County Courthouse and Jail—the first in December of 1867 and the last in January of 1949.
Apparently, an unauthorized execution was also conducted there. Construction workers discovered a grisly surprise when they cut through the very wall where the apparition had been sighted.
Hidden behind the wall was a skeleton in a makeshift coffin. His identity remains a mystery. Once he was given a proper burial, sightings of his ghost ceased.
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FRONTENAC COUNTY COURTHOUSE
5 Court Street
Kingston, Ontario K7L 2N4
Ghosts in the News
Those in Glass Houses
THE BODMIN JAIL in Cornwall, England, is home to an eerie presence, according to an April 6, 2005, report from the BBC News. Erected in 1776, the castle-like jail was the site of more than fifty-five executions. More than twenty thousand spectators turned out to watch one public hanging. The last prisoner was hanged in 1909, and apparently he and some of his peers are still around.
When members of the Paranormal Site Investigators (PSI) spent the night in Bodmin Jail, two of the team were overcome by inexplicable nausea that drove them from the building, said the BBC News report. When the members were exploring the gloomy underground cells, stones were tossed at them by an unseen source. The mystery of the stones was deepened when it was discovered there were no nearby windows, and the ceiling was made of metal. The rocks apparently materialized from the other side and were “significantly hotter than the ambient temperature of the cell, the roof, and the floor.”