Some say Eastern State Penitentiary is haunted. I don’t know if that’s true but it is haunting. Strong energy lingers and clings, calling for notice as you walk past empty, ruined cells. Block after block; these small, featureless rooms now hold only impressions of those who once dwelled there, locked in perpetual isolation.
There’s a heaviness in those cell blocks; though hundreds walk through them daily, an eerie silence permeates everything. Like the people who used to be locked inside, we sense this is not a place for frolic or happy times. Inside those lonely little rooms, amid the rusting metal bed frames and crumbling plaster, there is desolation that threatens to overwhelm.
I visited the penitentiary during my two-year road trip as a nomad, traveling in my van, hiking, seeing historic areas, and staying in short-term rentals and it’s a place that stays with me.
Why Eastern State Penitentiary is Haunting
Everything has energy and each person has an “energy” about them. Even the most skeptical can feel the positive or negative vibrations that individual humans or animals exude. Collectively, we create a shared energy when we assemble in a place or over a cause. It lingers when energy collects for long periods in one place, especially if it is the same type of energy, highly emotional, or in large amounts over long periods.
Inside Eastern State Penitentiary, you can feel the oppressive, sad, lost, hopeless energy throughout its halls. It feels heavy. There is no smiling or talking and a foreboding seems to overcome people. I suspect it’s due to respect, deference, and overpowering energy.
Why Eastern State Penitentiary is Famous
Eastern State Penitentiary is America’s most historic prison. It started as the brainchild of Dr. Benjamin Rush and other well-known society members like Benjamin Franklin not too long after the revolution. Until then, lawmen had public offenders holed up in filthy, crowded, corrupt prisons or gave them public punishments like hanging, branding, caning, stocks and other creative penalties. Prominent society members and politicians created the penitentiary idea to replace these options. They wondered if they could reform them instead of just housing or killing criminals.
“Men and women, adults and children, thieves and murderers were jailed together in disease-ridden, dirty pens where rape and robbery were common occurrences. Jailors made little effort to protect the prisoners from each other. Instead, they sold the prisoners alcohol, up to nearly twenty gallons of it a day. Food, heat, and clothing came at a price. It wasn’t unusual for prisoners to die from the cold or starvation.”
Smithsonian Magazine
Fun Fact: The word “penitentiary” comes from “penitence.” I.e., a prison designed to inspire repentance, or genuine regret, in the hearts of prisoners.
Unlike other prisons, Philadelphia leaders created Eastern State Penitentiary as a system of private, solitary confinement, strict discipline and labor based partly on the Quaker-inspired system. They used this new method to inspire regret and penitence and to end the ill treatment of prisoners – at least in theory. The new system featured private, solitary cells for each prisoner, but what wasn’t Quaker-like was the grand and lovely architecture.
Inside Eastern State Penitentiary
The first nine of 15 cellblocks radiated from a central surveillance rotunda like a starburst. Along the long hallway-like blocks were door after door after door, behind which were private cells the size of a moderate walk-in closet, each with a skylight and another door in the back opening to an exercise yard encircled by a 10-foot wall topped with sharp rocks.
What was significant from an architectural standpoint, besides the vaulted ceiling, decorative ironwork, and efficient design, was the central heat, running water, and flush toilets. Even the White House didn’t have those amenities.
In the afternoon, when I visited, golden light streamed through the large windows and skylights, illuminating crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers. A bocce ball court in the yard sat empty.
The Story of Eastern State Pen
For $19, I received headphones and followed arrows along a pre-marked path while listening to the audio tour. There were few people this weekday afternoon, and I was alone for most of the two hours I spent there. In the distance, some 60 feet ahead, was another couple, and sometimes, as I crossed through the central rotunda, I’d pass others with their headphones on, silent and aloof.
The audio tour and signage have you stop at key points as the narrator explains the prison, the system, the practices and the inmates. The plaster is crumbling in many cells and rusted metal twin bed frames are upended. In one cell is an old barber chair and in another, what looks to have once been an infirmary.
I walked slowly through the long blocks, going into the open cells and peeking through the slots of closed ones. In one cell, there was an overpowering stench like an outhouse. But nobody had used the toilet in over 50 years. In another cell, a strategically placed mirror made it look like you were staring at the ceiling as if you might have been lying on a cot in the cell.
The Penitentiary System
The penitentiary system intended that the prisoners here were not physically abused as in other prisons. However, stories of torture abounded. Initially, guards allowed prisoners outside for one hour of daily recreation. The doors to the outside were opened and closed once a day. Guards slid food through a slot in the other door thrice daily.
Though the idea was to eliminate public punishment and needless death, some criminals, they believed then, could not reform. The last cell added to Eastern State Penitentiary came in 1956: Cellblock 15, or Death Row. At that time, it signaled the collapse of the idea that anyone could reform.
Still, during the century following Eastern State Penitentiary construction, more than 300 prisons in South America, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and the UK were based on its plan. It was a famous prison for another reason, too – from 1829 until 1971, the massive prison housed many familiar names.
Famous Criminals in Eastern State Penitentiary
Aside from being the first penitentiary and changing the prison system forever, Eastern State Penitentiary is famous because of the famous criminals it housed. Few people haven’t heard of cellblock number nine and “Park Avenue”– the luxurious, hotel-like digs that some prisoners had in later years.
Al Capone
The most famous criminal to walk the Eastern State Penitentiary halls is Al Capone, aka “Scarface.” Alphonse “Scarface” Capone was a notorious Chicago mob boss who spent eight months in Eastern after police arrested him on a weapons charge. While there, several reporters visited and described his cell as luxurious.
“On a small table sits a vase filled with gladioli. Across from that is a victrola and in another part of the room is a French dresser. Two comfortable cots occupy spaces across from each other. There are a few pictures on the wall prison-made rag mats of flowery design cover the cold concrete floor, and an added luxury is a smoking stand in the form of a butler holding an ash tray. It is by no means the most luxuriously furnished cell in the prison. There are others that are more sumptuous.”
Philadelphia Public Ledger, 1929
Several cells with high-end clientele were as lavish earning Cellblock 9 the misnomer “Park Avenue.”
Other Notorious Criminals at Eastern State Pen
Another, perhaps even more famed prisoner is Leo Callahan. He’s the only person of about 100 who escaped Eastern State Penitentiary who guards never caught. He did so in 1923 with five others by making a ladder and scaling the wall. All the others were recaptured.
Freda Frost was the last female inmate of the once co-ed Eastern State Penitentiary. In 1923, officials segregated the prison and sent women to the Muncy Industrial Home for Women and others like it. Frost was serving a 20-year sentence for poisoning her husband.
“Slick Willie” Sutton was a famed bank robber who spent 11 years in the Eastern State Penitentiary. Like Callahan, Slick Willie also escaped. He and 11 others dug a 100-foot tunnel to freedom, but guards caught them a few minutes later. Slick Willie escaped from two other prisons but was caught then too. Officials say he robbed over 50 banks.
The Silence of the Halls
The audio narrator said Eastern State Penitentiary used to be a model prison where it was always silent. Proponents of the system believed that this isolation and total quiet would allow prisoners to consider their behavior and the ugliness of their crimes. Today, we know that prolonged isolation and solitary confinement have a serious, debilitating impact on people.
Not only was silence considered necessary, but so was solitary, so much so that when they moved prisoners from cells, they covered their heads in sacks with only small eyeholes. They even exercised this way, in silence and anonymity. Many considered it a symbol of progressive, modern principles.
Why they Closed Eastern State Penitentiary
The system was so famed that many leaders and even tourists worldwide wanted to visit. However, seeing the prisoners without visitors, books, communication from home or contact with the outside world started many thinking of it as cruel.
“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.”
Charles Dickens
By 1913, what had come to be known as “the Pennsylvania System” was over. By 1890, many prisoners were sharing a cell, working together in workshops due to overcrowding. They had collaborative free time playing bocce, baseball and other activities.
Once the upkeep on the now-aging building became too much, it closed in 1970. Philadelphia purchased it in 1980 and tours started in 1994.
Haunted Cellblocks
Now, many people believe that Eastern State Penitentiary is haunted. As early as the 1940s, officers and prisoners said they saw mysterious visions and creepy experiences and several paranormal investigators have called it the most haunted place in the world.
TLC’s America’s Ghost Hunters, Travel Channel’s Most Haunted Live, MTV’s FEAR, Ghost Adventures, and Paranormal Challenge, SyFy’s Ghost Hunters and Fox Television’s World’s Scariest Places have all showcased Eastern State Penitentiary.
Each October, the prison hosts nighttime paranormal tours and they’re in high demand.
If you Visit Eastern State Penitentiary
Officials have tried to lighten the vibe for regular visitors with educational information about prison reform and meaningful art installations.
In one cell, drawn faces of those who spent time in the prison hang from the walls. In Death Row, aka Cellblock 15, they have a recording of orchestra music created by one of the inmates appealing his death row conviction. It is an oddly upbeat tune for one waiting to die, yet it is intended to showcase how some reform was, in fact, possible, if even too late.
The signage and installations connect the past of American criminal justice to around 300,000 visitors each year.
The Eastern State Penitentiary, ironically also known as ESP, is not a place you’re likely to forget, whether you’re there for a lifetime or just a few hours. The energy lingers and clings.
Find it at 2027 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, PA.
Read other stories about Pennslyvania here.
