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In the
middle of San Francisco Bay is an isolated and rocky island once
referred to as Isla de los Alcatraces (Island of the pelicans) by
the Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala. Frequently wrapped in a
cloak of dense fog and surrounded by deep cold water and notoriously
strong currents, it is indeed a foreboding place. Now known simply
as Alcatraz (or The Rock) the island has an unquestionably dark and
unsettling history.
In the early1850s it was determined that the desolate island was
the perfect place for a military fortification and 85 cannon
emplacements to protect San Francisco bay. During the American Civil
War the armament was increased to 105 cannons. Due to the challenges
of getting to and from the island, it was in this point in its
history it started to be used as a prison. In 1868 Alcatraz was
designated a military prison.
As a military prison, Alcatraz developed a well deserved reputation
for tough discipline and harsh living conditions. In the 1930s
Alcatraz was designated a maximum security Federal Penitentiary and
became the residence of some of the most notorious gangsters in
American History. The infamous Al Scarface Capone, Doc Barker,
George Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin Creepy Carpis, and Robert Stroud
The Bird Man of Alcatraz all did hard time on The Rock.
Alcatraz was not only a place of despair, lost hope, and isolation
it was also a place of death and violence. Prisoner on prisoner
violence took many lives, as did suicide and illness. It should not
surprise anyone that throughout the years, inmates, guards, current
National Park employees, and park visitors as well, have reported
unnerving encounters with ghostly apparitions.
An unsettling reality:
In the main cell house the three story central corridor is referred
to Broadway and back-in-the-day it was an active hub of prison
life for the inmates. Today, the night-shift guards, watching over
the old prison after the tourists leave for the day, frequently
report muffled sounds of male voices, whistling, clanging metal
doors, footsteps and even unexplainable foul odors that mysteriously
dissipate as quickly as they manifest. Human apparitions are not
uncommon here. More than one guard (or Park Ranger) has been
startled by the appearance of a man in prison dungarees suddenly
standing at the opposite end of the corridor, who briefly glances
over his shoulder at them and walks out of view toward cell block D.
As you might expect, when they rush down the corridor to find out
who he is, no one is ever there.
Nearly every building, corridor, workshop, infirmary and
subterranean tunnel on Alcatraz has been the site of a ghostly
apparition, disembodied sound or unsettling occurrence. In the years
when Alcatraz was a fully functional Federal prison, it was a common
practice to place less cooperative or troublesome inmates in
solitary confinement (affectionately referred to as "The Hole") in
one of the six windowless steel-walled cells in D Block. . . .
On several occasions inmates did not return from D Block.
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This quite remarkable photograph was
sent to us by Mr. Fred Leuchter, an "Execution Technologist" who has
worked as a consultant for the Tennessee Department of
Corrections.
In his letter to us, he states that
several years ago he had been retained as a consultant to direct the
removal and replacement of "the chair" and the supporting
electrocution systems for the State of Tennessee.
To maintain a State tradition, the new
electric chair was to contain a piece of wood from the old chair.
It seems that the wood used in the construction of the earlier
electric chair had actually been salvaged from the State's original
gallows, sometime near the turn of the century.
As part of "standard operating
practice," documentation photos were taken of the old chair just
prior to removing any of the original wood. To the amazement of
many of the prison officials, and the team working on the project,
the photograph contained some very strange, inexplicable images.
Within the images there are five identified entities. |
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The puzzled officials, had the
photograph analyzed and authenticated by Eastman Kodak (who did not
identify what was photographed) but determined that the images were
indeed real and part of the photo negative. While the original
exposure was reportedly made under some unique circumstances, when
the Execution Technologist tried to duplicate the photographic
results even by recreating the exposure conditions, he was never
able to reproduce these eerie results.
For your review we present the photograph: Look closely, the faces
of the condemned peer back at you . . . .
by:
Dr. Von Zuko 1998 |
