Arrival
The group arrived at the reformatory at 7:00 pm EST. They unloaded their equipment and were greeted at 7:20 pm by Cathy from Confidential Paranormal Investigators, who would take the group on a quick tour before the investigation.
After the walk through, the group started to put together their equipment that they would carry for the night’s investigation.
NOTE: This was a large group investigation with over 70 participants, but each individual was free to walk around where they wanted to go.
Claims of Activity
- The spirit of a 14-year-old who was beaten to death in the basement is said to linger in the dark crumbling hallways
- The ghost of Helen (the warden’s wife who died by accidentally shooting herself in the chest) has been rumored to haunt several areas of the building, including the warden’s administrative area, the library as well as the cells themselves.
- People have reported feeling touched or pushed.
- Visitors to “The Hole” area sometimes leave after being overwhelmed with nausea. Others feel chills run through their bodies
Investigation
8:40 pm
The group spread out throughout the 2nd floor administrative area to observe the normal building noises while other groups were being taken on their tours. Bird noises could be heard, as well as some voices from people talking on other floors. The group started an electronic voice phenomena (EVP) session to see if they could interact with any possible spirits that might be at the home, including “Helen”.
Karen did pick up on the spirit of a young girl around 10-years old who wanted to play with “daddy”. She wasn’t sure if this girl was a daughter of the warden. She tried to direct some questions to her, but no activities occurred.
After several minutes of trying to communicate, the group then decided to head down the hall a bit to look at the other rooms. Karen previously mentioned she felt a male in the Clergy’s Quarters, but upon returning didn’t feel anything. She then quickly stopped by a room that was near it and picked up on a male who was not pleasant. She described him as tall, thin and balding. She felt he was the type of person who was up to no good when he was alive. The group attempted an EVP session with him, but again no activities occurred and the group kept moving on.
While walking in a few other administrative offices around 9 pm on the 2nd floor, Michael, a sensitive, picked up on a spirit that appeared to run through a few rooms before going into a wall. A few group members went to follow up with him, but no activities occurred.
The group continued up to the 3rd floor of the administrative offices. Michael picked up on a male spirit in another room, and the group attempted an EVP session with him. No activities occurred at that time, and the group continued walking around about five minutes.
Hearing another group in the Chapel area, the group hung out around the “Brooks Was Here” room, which was used in the movie “Shawshank Redemption”. They then proceeded toward the Chapel, but Karen noticed a stairwell that appeared to go up to another level.
Half the group then decided to go up the stairs to see what was up in the area. Upon getting to the top of the stair case it was noticed there was a large empty room with several side rooms attached to it, which was considered the “TB Ward”.
Karen at one point felt there was a gentleman who at one time was hit in the head by a prisoner, but no other details were determined.
After taking a few moments, the group then headed up yet another set of stairs that led to a small space that actually had a door that led to the roof of the building. At that time they headed back down to the Chapel, and decided to do an EVP session in that area.
At 9:35 pm the group spread out in the space and conducted an EVP session. By using traditional church prayers and religious references the group hoped to stir some type of reaction, but again no activities occurred. The group completed the session at 9:47 pm.
Going into the East Cell Block the group separated into two groups of three and went around each side of the 6th floor cell block area. Karen’s group ended up catching up to Noah’s group before his group got fully around. They mentioned there was a particular cell Michael picked up on a male who didn’t want to talk to him, so they wanted Karen to try talking to him.
The group also used trigger objects. John brought two police batons as well as a pair of handcuffs to see if it would stir any type of reaction with any spirits.
After several minutes no activities occurred, and other people from the large group were coming into the area so the group decided to head to a different level.
As soon as they moved, two cells from where the EVP session was done Karen heard an extremely loud bang come from something metal in it. While trying to communicate with any spirits in it she noted she saw a red light pop up above the top bunk which disappeared right away. Gravy then mentioned it was the same cell he saw a red light briefly before it disappeared. Unfortunately this was not captured on any video evidence.
The group then headed down to the 2nd level of cells as that was the level The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) marked a cell in relation to activities they picked up on during an episode of “Ghost Hunters” (2nd season).
After Karen found the “X” above the door at 10:22 pm she stepped inside and attempted to conduct an EVP session while a few other members went to other areas of the cell block level. John stayed back to make sure things went okay.
No activities occurred after about five minutes, and the group decided to head down to the first level into the East Cell Block Shower Room.
There was one other person in the room when the group arrived. They took a few minutes of silence and then conducted an EVP session around 10:45 pm. Karen would note while in the room she picked up that several smaller males were the main victims when it came to other inmates’ brutality.
Voices could be heard from others who were entering the room seven minutes later, and the group decided to move to the Toilet Room to investigate that part of the building.
Once in the room, the group inspected all the different rooms amongst all of the old facility toilets and sinks.
Deciding to head to the back of the room, Karen waited for Noah and John to get over to where she was, which was by a metal staircase that headed up into a small room.
At 10:57 pm a loud bang was heard coming from the stairs. Initially Karen thought the guys kicked something that made the noise, where as Noah thought Karen hit her camera on the stairs. At that time though Karen was several feet away from the stairs and didn’t move when the noise was heard.
The group tried recreating the noise by throwing things at it, which didn’t resonate at the same tone. It was noticed that if the staircase was kicked or hit the same sound was heard.
The group then tried an EVP session to see if there were any spirits that might want to communicate with the group. Gravy placed a baseball on the stairwell to see if the spirit could move it as well. After no other activities occurred they continued on their way to “The Hole” area – Gravy left the ball temporarily. Unfortunately there were several individuals in “The Hole”, so the group continued to head to the basement of the building where there were several passageways.
Michael picked up on a male spirit who appeared to be in his teens or early 20’s. Michael stated the male was curious of all the people, but didn’t appear responsive to any of the questions.
Two girls from another group came into the room, and Michael stated the male appeared interested in them. He asked Karen to see if they would be interested in doing an EVP session with her to see if the male would respond – they declined.
Deciding to keep moving forward, the group headed to the upper floors of the West Diagonal wing to the Court Rooms/Visitation area. Although the group didn’t conduct an EVP session in this area, they continued to walk around until it was decided to take a break around 11:45 pm in the Bullpen.
Jared at that time let the group know he was going to be heading out as his foot injury was making it difficult to walk. The group said their goodbyes, but he would be back to pick up the majority of the group members as they all drove in one vehicle (except for Michael).
Deciding to check on the ball in the Toilet Room, Gravy and Karen headed that way while the others followed behind. The ball had not moved, and no other activities occurred while they were in the room.
The group then headed up a set of stairs that were near the room which lead up to the “Hospital” floors.
They started in the “Hospital” on the 2nd floor. Michael picked up on a female nurse who appeared to be in one of the side rooms. The group then conducted an EVP session, but no activities occurred.
Gravy was then asked to try to pretend he was injured to see if the female nurse would assist him. No activities occurred, and the group decided to head up to the 3rd floor Hospital/Library level.
Only looking around, the group didn’t spend much time in the area as it was similar to the 2nd floor, but had a circulation desk along with some torn up books and journals.
The group then headed into the West Wing of the reformatory. This side was noticeably different in relation to the style of the cells (it was documented that this was the older of the two cell blocks).
They found the “West Wing Shower Room” and conducted an EVP session where Gravy pulled out a bar of soup as a trigger object. For several minutes the group attempted to communicate with any spirits that were in the room, but no activities occurred. It was noted that a few cats were seen in the window of the room, but appeared to sneak back out of the building.
Heading up to the “Jesus Room” and the “Quartersmasters” areas, the group didn’t conduct any EVP sessions as they had to be back to the Bullpen by 2 am to meet back up with Cathy. They came back down to the main level of the West Wing and walked around the other side of cells and then headed back to the Bullpen.
They joined Cathy and a few other individuals for an informational tour about a few areas of the building. This lasted about an hour, but Michael left half way through as he also was having a hard time walking. The group said goodbye to him and after the tour concluded decided to investigate by themselves again – starting back in the Warden’s Administrative office area.
The group started on the 3rd floor of the offices and attempted to conduct an EVP session. No activities occurred, and after a while decided to head to the 2nd floor to see if they could talk to “Helen” again.
No activities again occurred, and to wrap up the night’s investigation they headed down to “The Hole”. Noah would call Jarod around 4:20 am informing him the group would need to be picked up shortly.
After trying to provoke the spirits in this area, the group concluded the night’s investigation at 4:30 am. No activities occurred during this part of the investigation.
The group was the last set of people to leave the building other than the volunteers and waited for Jarod outside. They packed up the van and left around 4:45 am.
Conclusion
No evidence was captured during the investigation.
This was an amazing investigation for PIM. Although we didn’t have the place to ourselves, we really were able to get decent investigation time in at several locations. PIM would really like to go back sometime when we would have the place to ourselves. Although we had several personal experiences, we didn’t come up with any hard evidence from this investigation. Part of that is due to the number of people there. We did have one event documented on video but, even though we had three separate camera angles, we could not determine where the item came from that hit the stairs. As such we have not included it as evidence. PIM really looks forward to having an opportunity to investigate the location sometime in the future
