Richmond Haunts long-form
Haunted Prisons: Alcatraz, Eastern State and Virginia Penitentiary
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About this episode
| Prisons preserve difficult histories of punishment, confinement, labor and death. This episode visits four former American institutions whose documented pasts have also produced stories of apparitions, unexplained sounds and other reported encounters.
The route begins at United States Penitentiary Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It then travels south to Charleston’s former Old City Jail, often called the Old Charleston Jail, before ending at the former Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. The Virginia prison closed in 1990 and was demolished in 1991 and 1992. The episode keeps institutional history and the experiences of incarcerated people distinct from later ghost lore, treating supernatural claims as reports rather than using real suffering as scenery. |
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