Haunted prison a place of sadness and despair
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer

PHILADELPHIA - Even the weather cooperated when the Garden State Ghost Hunters Society visited the abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia in June.

Thunder boomed. Lightning flickered eerily from the skylights and across the stone walls of the medieval-looking prison built back in 1829. Except for their camera lights, the crew was in total darkness for the two nights they spent in the prison.

Society members were filmed by the Travel Channel, for the cable station's "Mysterious Journeys" program. The show is slated to air at 9 p.m. on Oct. 26 and on Halloween night at the same time.

The team, led by co-founders Boni Bates and Robert Reid, researched the penitentiary's history before the show filmed. What they discovered wasn't pretty.

The prison espoused a revolutionary form of incarceration. Solitary confinement was considered the way to rehabilitation and reformation

Prisoners were isolated and forced to wear hoods when they came into contact with other inmates. There was little light in their cells.

"You were dealing with a bunch of people that were pretty much insane," Bates said. "It was not a happy place."

Bates and Reid said they couldn't release too many details about what they encountered during their two-night sojourn into the prison, because the show hasn't aired yet.

"One of my team members actually got physically ill setting up equipment," she said. "He was visibly shaken from an encounter."

The person felt fine when he entered the prison, but quickly because nauseated when he walked down a hallway to set up some equipment," Reid said.

"He got sick to his stomach," he said. "You feel the negativity in the air. Even people that aren't into ghost research feel it. The producers and camera people felt it too. They let us know."

Reid said he found the prison atmosphere "overwhelming."

"Yes, I think it's haunted," he said.

The reasoning behind the isolation of inmates was rooted in the Quaker-inspired belief that isolation allows criminals to reflect on their behavior. That would help them become penitent - which is why the prison was the first to be called a penitentiary, according to ushistory.org's Web site.

But Bates said she felt sadness almost as soon as she walked into the prison on a hot, humid day.

"It was not happy," she said.