Eastern State Penitentiary

Eastern State Penitentiary is over 200 years old and was the first real penitentiary built in the US. It was state of the art when it was built. It even got running water and electricity before the White House. Before East State, prisoners were just held is cells until they were hung but at East State the plan was to reform the prisoners and then release them back to society. I must say this was not on my original list of places to visit in Philly but it is definitely one of my favourites. I can honestly say that I have never visited someplace that was suppose to be haunted and could actually feel the sprits of those left behind. This place is so creepy in everyway but at the same time so cool. The original idea around East state was that complete isolation would allow prisoners to be left alone with their own thoughts (and the bible if they could read) and that this would reform them. Prisoners spent 24 hours a day in complete isolation. For 1 hour a day they were allowed out into their private exercise yards. The prison was run in complete silence. Prison guards even wore wool socks over their shoes so that they would not make noise. Prison guards hardly new the identities of their prisoners. Contact between prisoners and a guard was kept to a bare minimum so that upon release prisoners could return to society. Of course this may have worked and it may not have but we will never know because there was no way to track prisoners upon release, there was no way to see if they returned to East State, no way to tell if they survived. It is known that many prisoners simply went insane with all the isolation and eventually the old way was replaced with the new ways including common exercise yards, shared cells, prison work programs etc

Really I could spend days walking around this place….lots of stories to hear. They give audio tours that tell stories of the prisoners and stories told by former prisoners in their own words (East State was an active prison until the early 1970’s). Female prisoners were held here for short time. There is a story that one female prisoner was living in the prison with her 5 year old son who was born behind the prison walls. Al Capone was a held here for several years. There are pictures of the cells below…can you guess which one is his. After a prison break where a prisoner actually dug a tunnel under the prison that came out at a nearby street. Several prisoners escaped through the tunnel but all were caught and returned to East State within a few days. One of them actually showed up at the main entrance on his own one night because he was hungry. In one of the old warden manuals you can read the punishments handed out to prisoners for attempting to talk to each other. There were lots of things that prisoners could do to break the rules but talking to each other was one of the worst.


Restoring East State is a huge project right now. They are even trying to rebuild the tunnel that the prisoners used to excape. Imagine trying to recreate a prison break. But what a cool place!!!




I just think if walls could talk the stories the walls in this place would tell. Although as I walked through the buildings from cell block to cell block and saw the crumpling walls, the flooding and old photos it is hard to believe that this building actually held prisoners. The things we use to do that seemed right at the time.

And is it haunted…..absolutely. Around Halloween they open the prison up at nights for what they call "Terror behind the Walls". I tell you right now there is no way you could get me in that place at night…..it was scary enough being there in the daylight.

Julie