Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia went out of business in 1971, but some say the spirits of its former prisoners stuck around. Here’s what it’s like to visit.
Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, PA.
First opened in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary is considered to be the world's first penitentiary. Prisoners there were held in solitary confinement — a prison management style that came to be called the Pennsylvania System — with the belief that complete solitude would encourage penitence for one's crimes.
Though Eastern State eschewed corporal punishment, some felt the solitary confinement system was just as (if not more) cruel. Charles Dickens, on visiting the prison, wrote in his travel journal:
I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye,... and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment in which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.
The solitary confinement system was abandoned in 1913 when overcrowding in the penitentiary made it untenable. By then, thousands and thousands of prisoners had already served time in solitary. This fact (combined with Dickens' chilling words and the building's stark, foreboding appearance and feel) likely contributes to the haunting rumors that have circulated the penitentiary since the 1940s. The penitentiary is the frequent subject of ghost hunts, including an episode of Ghost Hunters in which this maybe-ghost was captured on film.
Here's what it's like to visit what many call the most haunted prison in America.
1. The Prison Dollhouse
Why It's Creepy: dollhouses come alive at night, everyone knows this
Paid admission into Eastern State Penitentiary also gets you an audio guide, which I was thrilled to discover is narrated by Steve Buscemi. Steve (who I will refer to by first name because we walked around the prison together for over an hour) first got to know the prison when using it as the filming location for his 2000 movie Animal Factory. He loves this prison.
At the beginning of the tour, just inside the first prison block, there is a little model of a prison cell. Outside it, a doll guard guides a doll prisoner (with the then-customary hood) into his cell. Prisoners at Eastern State were forced to wear hoods any time they left their cells, to prevent recognition by (and solidarity among) fellow prisoners.
