The Haunted History of the West Virginia Penitentiary PDF Download

Author: Sherri Brake
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781452835044
Category : Haunted prisons
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Afterlife with no parole.If you die in prison, your soul stays in prison. At least that's what many inmates believed. 998 murders and suicides combined with 85 hangings and 9 electrocutions all make for a dark and violent past. The Cincinnati Ohio Enquirer called it a "Hell On Earth" in 1886. The New York Times branded it as "One of the Most Violent in the Country". Inmates called it "Bloody Alley" and for good reasons.The Haunted History of the West Virginia Pen is brought to light by Paranormal Investigator, Haunted Heartland Tours owner and author, Sherri Brake. Built in 1866 in Moundsville, West Virginia and situated on 10 acres, this mammoth fortress held some of the country's worst criminals. Explore Moundsville's bloody frontier history, the Grave Creek Mound, the building of the Pen, and the Wardens. Read first hand accounts from past guards and inmates along with newspaper articles, some collected from over 100 years ago. Accounts of executions, torture, escapes and notorious inmates are revealed. Examine over 100 ghostly accounts as paranormal investigators look for Shadow Men, ghosts and proof of the afterlife. Check out the Paranormal Directory and Vocabulary section. Use the Paranormal Guide to the Pen to help you investigate on site or simply read about the Sugar Shack, the Boiler Room and North Hall, all from the safety of your chair.This book is an excellent resource for gaining insight on the history and hauntings of this gothic prison. It is a first hand look into the dark dimensions of one of America's most haunted locations.

Author: Lisa Owings
Publisher: Bellwether Media
ISBN: 1681032244
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
People have reported hearing footsteps and seeing shadowy figures at prisons that have been empty for years. Could phantom inmates still roam the halls? Read eerie stories from famous prisons to decide for yourself in this title for reluctant readers.

Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Whitechapel Productions
ISBN: 9781892523990
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
From the mediums of Spiritualism's golden age to the ghost hunters of the modern era, Taylor shines a light on the phantasms and frauds of the past, the first researchers who dared to investigate the unknown, and the stories and events that galvanized the pubic and created the paranormal field that we know today.

Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Whitechapel Productions
ISBN: 9781892523563
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Join author Troy Taylor for the inaugural book in the -Dead Men Do Tell Tales Series-, a gripping, blood-soaked look at American crime, mystery and the hauntings that show how the consequences of murder sometimes extend beyond the grave! In this book, many of Taylor's files are opened for the first time as he presents new, revised, updated and expanded stories that were often cut from some of his earlier books because they were too graphic and frightening. Journey back in time and experience first-hand some of America's strangest murder cases; ghostly tales of violence and murder; gangland ghosts and never-before-told stories America's Depression-era outlaws; unsolved deaths and mysterious disappearances; ghost-infested prisons and jails; and famous cases and accounts like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Ed Gein, Albert Fish, H.H. Holmes and his -Murder Castle-, Dillinger, the Kansas City Massacre, Alcatraz, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Mansfield Reformatory, the Villisca Ax Murder House, Lizzie Borden, the Black Dahlia, and dozens more! You don't want to miss this title with dozens of Troy's stories that are uncut and uncensored for the first time. It's not a book for the faint of heart!

Author: Austin Reed
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0812986911
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America. “[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than one hundred and fifty years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed’s text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution. Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed’s story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Reed was placed as an indentured servant to a nearby family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to ten years at Manhattan’s brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor. Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York’s infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America’s first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate’s point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York. Accompanied by fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of nineteenth-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed’s memoir illuminates his own life and times—as well as ours today. Praise for The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict “One of the most fascinating and important memoirs ever produced in the United States.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . triumphantly defiant . . . The book’s greatest value lies in the gap it fills.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Reed displays virtuosic gifts for narrative that, a century and a half later, earn and hold the reader’s ear.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle “[The book’s] urgency and relevance remain undiminished. . . . This exemplary edition recovers history without permanently trapping it in one interpretation.”—The Guardian “A sensational, novelistic telling of an eventful life.”—The Paris Review “Vivid and painful.”—NPR “Lyrical and graceful in one sentence, burning with fury and hellfire in the next.”—Columbus Free Press

Author: Steve E. Asher
Publisher: Permuted Press+ORM
ISBN: 1618686925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The darkest stories from the nefarious “Castle on the Cumberland” from a former prison guard and paranormal expert. “The place sits on blood as surely as it does on stone and earth.” The Kentucky State penitentiary opened its heavy iron gates to the condemned over 100 years ago—yet many of them, long deceased, still walk its corridors. Noted paranormal researcher Steve E. Asher provides true, first-hand accounts of the paranormal as well as his own personal experiences at the state’s most violent, controversial—and haunted—prison. He uncovers the shocking testimonies of the men and women who have actually worked behind the prison walls and their encounters with the spirits of dead inmates. The compelling facts found inside this book will leave you questioning everything you ever thought possible about life after death.

Author: Jamie Davis Whitmer
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738750107
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Phantom footsteps pace the stairs at the Myrtles Plantation. A seductive spirit tugs on the sheets at the Copper Queen. Ghost children whisper and giggle at the Kehoe House. Journey into the mysterious world of haunted hotels, where uninvited guests roam the halls, supernatural sounds ring throughout the rooms, and chills run along the spines of those who dare to check in for the night. Join Jamie Davis Whitmer, author of Haunted Asylums, Prisons, and Sanatoriums, as she explores some of the most haunted hotels across the United States. From the Jerome Grand Hotel in Arizona to the Palmer House in Minnesota, each hotel is discussed in great detail, covering everything from the building’s history and legends to first-hand accounts of spooky sounds and smells, ghost sightings, EVP sessions, and more. You’ll also find photos, travel information, and everything else you need to plan your own visit to these iconic hotels.

Author: Robert Perkinson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429952776
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.

Author: Ursula Bielski
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625850956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
“Highlights the most infamous and spine-tingling haunted places scattered throughout Northwest Indiana” (The Times of Northwest Indiana). In 2014, the story of Gary’s “Demon House” shocked the world, drawing millions into the terrifying tale of a contemporary exorcism. For many residents, however, ghosts are just part of the community. From the haunting of the Jackson Five to the ghost ship Flying Cloud, local legends abound. Ghostly echoes may linger from a fiery 1918 train wreck that claimed the lives of eighty-six circus performers. A young murderess, said to have drowned her children in the Little Calumet River, reportedly haunts the Cline Avenue freeway. And the spirit of Alice Gray, the most famous of myriad recluses, is said to remain in Duneland. Meet these and other eternal inhabitants of “America’s Ghost Town” with author Ursula Bielski. Includes photos!

Author: Rosemary Guiley
Publisher: Clerisy Press
ISBN: 1578603536
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Rosemary Ellen Guiley is a renowned expert on paranormal, visionary, and spiritual topics. She puts her expertise to use in this guide to the scariest sites in the Keystone State. Each destination includes a detailed description and photographs so readers may test their own ghosthunting skills or visit from the safety of their armchairs. Firsthand accounts of otherworldly encounters bring the spooks into view, while a Ghostly Resources section points ghosthunters to further information.