The Missouri State Penitentiary

So, we spent Saturday night in prison.

 

 

If you didn't know, you can tour the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. The prison was opened in 1836, closed in 2004 and recently reopened for "ghost tours". We bought tickets for the 9:00pm tour and arrived a little early to grab dinner and some brewskies at a local restaurant Prison Brews. Thanks for the great recommendation Elizabeth!

 

After dinner, we walked/wandered to the prison about two blocks away. We got a little lost along the prison wall, but we weren't too worried since we always had monkey boy to hop over and check things out:

We walked through each of the rooms and an old prison employee told us historical facts and suspected hauntings. The building was well worn and not very well kept.

The female cell blocks...

 

We were allowed to wander through the cells and showers of the female cell blocks as wells the honors building. In the honors building, we heard some stories about gruesome murders and were allowed to go into the rooms where they had happened. On a lighter note, we saw the cell where Sonny Liston lived before he became a great boxer and challenged Muhammad Ali for the WBS Heavyweight Championship.

 

 

I'm not sure why there were phone booths, but we took advantage of the photo op.

Below the honors building were the...I'm not sure what they were called...the isolation cells? After hearing stories of men being locked in these entirely dark rooms for up to 18 years straight, the tour group filtered into the isolation rooms and the lights were turned out. We could barely stand the one minute of darkness, so to imagine 18 years is horrifying.

We made our way to death row. There were a plethora of ghost haunting stories that occurred in these cells and equally interesting, there were poems, stories and curses written on the walls.

 

Dropped the soap :/ Doesn't seem too upset about it though, does he?

Our final stop was at the gas chamber. Here we heard some stories of executees and checked-out the framed composite of each. There were, I think, 22 people executed in these chairs...I doubt they were as pleased as we look.

It was a lot of fun! Who knew Jefferson City held such strange and interesting landmarks. It was a great activity for a Saturday night, though we didn't get to see or hear any ghosts or spirits...bummer.