The Ohio State Reformatory: Beauty, Brutality, and the Paranormal

A prison built to reform… that ended up breaking people.

In this episode of ObscuraCast, we explore the Ohio State Reformatory—from its hopeful beginnings in 1886 to the brutal reality of overcrowding, violence, and human suffering. Cells built for one held three or more men, and tragedy became part of daily life.

But some say the story didn’t end when the prison closed. From unexplained voices to shadowy figures, many believe something still lingers inside.

History, horror, and the stories that refuse to stay buried—step inside… if you dare.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Obscurecast. It's been a hot minute since we've done an episode. So I appreciate you guys that have stuck with us. I know that we're sort of making the rounds as far as being like global as far as our audience is concerned. So depending on where you guys are listening, I hope you guys have enjoyed the show up until this point. And we're gonna get into another episode tonight. And as always, Dan O'Neill is with me as my co-host. How are you doing this evening, sir?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Doing good, man. Doing good. Feels good to be back. Had a little break. Life got hectic and crazy, but we are back to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

I also want to remind you guys that we are live on uh Spotify as well as Apple Music. Also, we have handles on both x.com and Instagram. So at obscurecast, same name as the podcast itself. You should actually be able to find us. And we'll start posting more stuff. Like I said, we've been in sort of a hiatus for a little while, not crazy long, but longer than we'd like. So uh tonight we're gonna get into an interesting topic. We've done a couple paranormal episodes, um, and we're sort of getting into another one tonight and a little bit more of an obscure topic like we usually do on the show. Tonight we're getting to the Ohio State Reformatory that's not too far from us in Mansfield. Um, we both live in Cleveland, as you guys probably know if you've listened to any of the other episodes, but not far from us and and pretty, I would say pretty notable prison and also paranormal activity sort of epicenter in the Ohio State Reformatory. Dan, you got any thoughts on that, sort of how we're gonna get into the episode, what you're interested in talking about.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Well, I mean, it's cool because you got like the the historical aspect of it. Then you got the cool like entertainment film aspect because that's where they shot Shaw Shank Redemption, great movie. So you got like the historical film aspect, but then we also have the paranormal aspect, which also ties into history. So this is kind of like a a three for one deal here. So I'm excited for it. It's exciting. It's something that we've learned, you know, when you're young growing up in Ohio, you always hear about it and and how it's haunted and stuff. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Yeah, I mean, it it kind of if you've ever seen or had if you might guys want to look it up, like I said, it's the Ohio State Reformatory, it's in Mansfield, Ohio. At the at the you know, bird's eye view of this place, you would think it's actually a pretty cool place. And then you understand that a lot of stuff has happened within that place that was not very kosher, as some would say. There's been a lot of deaths, a lot of brutality, a lot of alleged hauntings going on, like Dan said, obviously, alluding to the Shah Shank Redemption, it's become more of a tourist attraction these days. Um, it's it's a very reputable place to go ghost hunting and all that kind of stuff. It sort of has become sort of has its own allure these days, where where before it was just a reformatory school and then turned into a prison itself, and then all of this stuff happened, and we'll get into all that as the episode goes on. But I I think it's an interesting it's an interesting topic because it's so multifaceted. I think that's probably the coolest thing about this topic is that we're gonna get into a lot of different stuff as the episode goes on.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

For sure. So they also have had heavy metal concerts there, you know, like I think Slipknos performed there.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Uh but we'll get into a little bit of the history, sort of how it started and and the way that the correctional, you know, the correctional institution sort of wanted things to go, and then sort of how it sort of went off kilter and sort of went the opposite way of what they were thinking was going to happen and all that kind of stuff. So we'll set the scene sort of from that premise. So the actual prison itself as a reformatory school was built in 1886. Like I said, it was designed to be a real rehabilitation prison. It wasn't necessarily meant for punishment, it wasn't essentially a correctional facility in a sense for that like correctional facilities are seen now as more of a reform school or a reform prison. It was the architecture itself, like the actual build of the prison itself, was inspired by European castles and churches, and it was intended for first-time offenders in youth reform. So, like I said, it was a reform school or a reform prison first and foremost. That's what the quote unquote dream was for the prison when it started out, and then all of this stuff started to happen. But there was a lot of optimism with this place from the research that Dan and I did before the episode started. It was seen as a place to sort of correct yourself and then go back out into society. And it sort of took a turn for the worst as we sort of like, like I said, we're gonna talk about it more as we get through the episode. But there was a lot of education that was supposed to be within this prison or this reform school or reform prison, whatever you want to call it. There was like a discipline model where like sort of things were sort of gonna go how they were. You were either you were either good or bad at the prison, and that would sort of define the outcome of what was going to happen to you during your stay there. And then the idea of fixing criminals was also a huge thing, as the, like I said, the research that Dan and I did. It was a reform school. It was somewhere where you went to sort of write the ship and then get back onto that in the ocean, so to speak. So, Dan, sort of from that premise, what do you s do you sort of see value in how it sort of started and then it sort of went off track depending on who was sort of involved, or how do you feel?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, I mean, from what we read and everything, it seems like you know, it was built in 1886.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

So obviously different time from when all the stuff started to happen, like we'll allude to.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, um, and you know, it the construction took like almost a decade. The first group that was 150 inmates, um, and they stayed in the west ring wing of the reformatory. That was in 1896. Um, you know, then they they finished the construction of the east wing after that and various buildings until 1919. So it saw like it saw a couple decades worth of building. There was, like you said, a lot of optimism. And early on, they did really well. Um they did really, really well as far as the rehabilitation. I I remember reading where the builder, he was from Cleveland, Ohio, that builder wanted to create a building that was like opulent and like a castle and not like just like this prison, this square block of he wanted to show like hope, um, you know, so inspiration, not tear them down. Um and you can definitely see that in the design and the architecture, the attention to detail that that guy has, you know, just really, really stands out. Um as far as fixing the criminals, you know, a lot of them were youth. And I personally, this one also hits home for me too, because I I worked for a brief time at a uh a placement school, essentially reform uh a reform school for troubled youth. And uh not gonna reach all of them, but there are there are kids, you know, some kids just get dealt a really shitty hand in life, and it's not their fault. Um I think every kid deserves a chance and an opportunity at you know redemption and and getting a fresh start, but they obviously like they gotta want to too. You can try to force somebody to do it, and unless they really truly want to change and write the ship, it's not gonna happen if they don't want to. But you know, I I think I think it was good when it started off. The original architect was Levi Schofield, and he was from Cleveland, Ohio, like I said. Uh he used Victorian Gothic and Richard Someian Romanesque and Queen Anne were his styles for the exterior of the building. And it's a uh brick and concrete design, honestly Romanesque. So so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

So we sort of transit, so we sort of gave the scope of sort of how everything started and sort of the optimistic view that they had going into things. Where things get sort of dicey and sort of get interesting is sort of what happens, you know, a couple decades later, sort of into I think with with the documentaries and sort of the research we did, sort of into the 50s and 60s is where sort of things get dicey and sort of start to take a turn for the worst. So as much as they were optimistic about the way this thing was going, it seemed like there was like external forces or possibly internal forces, depending on what side of the fence you sit on, which one had more weight or or or more sway in the or more skin in the game, as far as that's concerned, concerned. So the overcrowding thing was obviously became a huge issue. Dan, I don't know if you want to sort of allude to the fire and all that stuff that took place, sort of give us some context on why the overcrowding took place in the first place, and then the shift from reform to punishment and all that kind of stuff. So sort of give us some context on on that whole ordeal.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, like I said before, it was a success. The rehabilitation, they saw a lot of success with the rehabilitation efforts from this place. That all changed after a catastrophic event. Uh, that was in 1930. There was a huge fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus for 320 inmates perished. Hundreds more had to be relocated in nearby prisons. So suddenly the nonviolent offenders uh at the Ohio uh state reformatory they ended up being side to side with uh hardened criminals. So they went from a hundred and I think it was like a hundred and fifty prisoners. And that quickly uh that number quickly went up. I'm trying to find the exact number that I can give you.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

So basically you're shoulder to shoulder with people that are trying to correct their lives versus lifers, rapists, murderers. And we're we're not talking about we're not talking about like a five-year bid. We're talking about guys that are serving like life in prison for violent, violent, violent offenses.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there was prisoners being beat and killed by other prisoners on a regular basis. Several notorious criminals uh were there. Frank Freshwaters was sent to prison for the 1957 murder for another man. Freshwater's behavior was so stellar that he was transferred to work at an honor farm where he quickly escaped. Freshwater's evaded capture until 2015 when he was in his 80s. How'd you like to be that guy? That's crazy. By the way, this I'm getting this information off of USGhostAdventures.com. So shout out to US Ghost Adventures. Um, in the 1920s and 1930s, inmates Philip Orlick, Merrill Chandler, and Chester Probaski all murdered prison guards.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Chandler Yeah, I heard the documentary that I watched. I heard about a couple of these. There was also like a I think it was a warden and his family or something like that, or maybe a guard in his family was taken like hostage by two guys, Daniels and I can't remember the last name of the other guy.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Yeah, so it was in 1948. John West and Robert Daniels were the first.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Yeah, John West and Robert Daniels, that's who it was. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah, they kidnapped the superintendent of the prison's honor farm along with his wife and daughter. The two men murdered the entire family in a cornfield and went on to commit several more murders. Wes was subsequently shot to death by police, and Daniels was sent to the electric chair.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah, correct. Yeah, that's what I saw as well. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

And there's a lot more dark and ominous uh events. Those are just kind of more of the more uh notorious ones. But I mean, people died all the time at this place. It went from a place of hope to a quote unquote shithole very quickly.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Yeah, we're talking about I mean, when we're talking about conditions too, like people are obviously, I think we could correct me if I'm wrong, we could probably both agree that people are products of their environment. So if you're putting in an environment with harsh conditions, you're gonna become a harsh human being. It's just the way things go, unfortunately. But if we're talking about conditions, we're talking about like some seriously brutal discipline methods, like people were, like you said, were beat, cut, whatever, solitary confinement horrors. So like people were locked away with literally no, no like reality to the outside world. They were confined to like probably like a three by three or like a four by four cell and in complete darkness and things like that. There was the disease aspect, malnutrition. I think I also saw that like in the documentary that I did or that I watched, there were sometimes three people to a cell or four people to a cell on this place. Like, and we're talking about maybe a 10x10 or like a nine by nine cell, maybe three, four steps wide if you're if you're striding, if that.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah, not nothing. You also had electro torture.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah, like you said, there was there was also like the violence between the inmates, people were getting beat, you know, people were getting stabbed, people were getting beat up, all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, like you had to sort of become like battle hardened, I guess, in a way, if you were in this place. It's it sort of became a fen-for-yourself survival of the fittest type scenario. Wouldn't you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, absolutely. Another another thing that like contributed was um 1960, the conditions got way worse because the state defunded the reformatory model when they turned it into a maximum security prison. So there were even more killings among inmates and guards.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Because they didn't have the money to like fund guards and pay guards and like all the security and all that kind of stuff. Everything sort of went into sort of dissent.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, and then there was also another thing if you weren't beat to death by a prisoner or a guard or tortured or anything, you also had to worry about rat infestation. So there was disease that you also had to worry about as well. So, like, really bad. I know the maximum amount of people that there were. Now, everyone remember, okay, when this was first built, there were a hundred cells, there was a hundred and fifty prisoners, okay. So think about that.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

So we're so we're talking about what I would expect from a reformatory or a prisoner correctional facility.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

We're talking two people to a cell small yes, you want to small numbers, yes. Some people probably had us so multiple people probably had cells to themselves.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Well, solitary, so we're talking about 50 extra that probably had just cells to themselves.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, yeah. So 1978. By 1978, there were 2,200 men crammed into that prison.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Do you have like uh do you have the square footage of the prison? Can you look that up real quick? I'm just kind of curious.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah, yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

How much the square footage is depend depending on like if we're talking about a nine by nine cell, I wonder if we could do that conversion. I wonder what that would be like. If we're talking about 2,000 plus, what the square footage of the place was, and then space for people to sort of like because you're gonna have you're gonna have space for the mess hall, you're gonna have space for like yard, you're gonna have space for all that kind of stuff. So like people thinking like the square footage is all encompassing of the prison and the living conditions, you have to factor in the yard, you have to factor in solitary confinement for people that aren't in a gen pop. You have to, you know, you know, all that kind of stuff comes into play. Where if you're thinking about a prison as just a living quarters and there's nothing else going on, once you shrink that down to living quarters and everything else that's involved, it becomes a lot more like eye-opening as far as how much space was being utilized by prisoners. We're talking about four people, three to four people to a bunk or to a cell in a nine by nine cell, depending on the surface area. That should give you a little guy, guys, a little bit more context to how confined these guys and these inmates and all that kind of stuff were and how close they were to these violent offenders. Because, like I said, when this place started, it wasn't a it wasn't a correctional facility per se. It wasn't a prison. It was more of a reform school and more of a reformatory program where you were going there to write your life, get out of it, go back to normal life. Some of these guys, when they made the mesh and the and the and everything sort of came together and it became a correctional facility, you're talking about a mixed bag of gen pop as well as solitary confinement, where you're not talking about just people that are trying to write the ship. You're talking about people that are either lifers in prison, they've committed violent offenses, and they're now commingling with people that are trying to sort of write that ship and get things back on the right track. So you're you're gonna have altercations just out of sheer necessity or circumstance. I would say circumstance is probably the better word, because you have people on opposite sides of the coin. So that's obviously gonna create conflict between those those groups of people. So yeah, I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting from that aspect.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

So got the numbers, looks like so it was originally designed for one inmate per cell in in most cases.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Imagine going from living to your living by yourself to three other people being on your ass 24-7, maybe 23-7, depending on how much yard time they got.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So to give you to give everybody a little bit of a visual, cells were only about a five foot by seven football.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

So I wasn't even it's minus about two or three feet both ways.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

So five five foot by seven foot by the biggest. Triple bunking meant one bunk stacked above another, one inmate sometimes sleeping on the floor, total population to two thousand. So uh there was a little bit of a.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Like, I gotta go to the bathroom. Too bad. I'm on it right now. Like, bro, like man.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I remember so at the place that I was at on the floor that that I was on, like, the most amount of kids we ever had was like 20 on that floor for for the for the high risk kids, for the CYS kids. Gen pop, we had like 40 kids on a floor. Now, usually you would have like two kids to a room. Okay. That's like when you're at max capacity. I I had guys tell me that worked there way back in the day, way, way back, like you know, 90s and 2000s. Like they had so that floor that I told you about, the first floor, where the max we had was 20 and it was like crazy. They had 78 kids on that floor. They had bunk beds in the hallways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

That's actually wild.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah. So there's like laws and rules against that shit.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

But like how did that not? I mean, not to give too much away. I don't want you to dox yourself, but how did that get past the state?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So, but again, like they didn't have these laws. Each state's different. They didn't have laws. So now, like, there's laws in place.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

No, I'm talking about with your situation. I'm not talking about back then because things were let's let's both agree that when all of this stuff was going on, it was a completely different time. Like, if that shit was happening today, it'd be completely different.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, so it never was like that with me. Everyone had rooms, everything was fine. I'm saying like years prior to Gosha.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Okay, so like doing an inception and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Yeah, I was told by guys that had worked there for 20, 30 plus years when they were like first started working there. Yeah, it was crazy. Absolutely crazy. And there were dude, there was fucking riots that happened. Fucking because you gotta think, like, you're usually at like 12, 12 inmates per correctional officer.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Yeah, it's as far as ratio is concerned, sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, so the ratio sucks. And like, dude, some of those kids are building a brick shit house. Some of them aren't, but like, I mean, you got some, and you know, like we had we had our big thing was dealing with like for gen pop. Not the not the CYS kids, those kids are usually they just have you know other problems. But the gen pop kids, those are like gangs. So we had bloods, crips, the Latin Kings, you know, like that shit, especially the Philly kids that we were getting. It was it was yeah, not not cool. Glad it never happened when I was there. It's just a lot better now. And I I I'm gonna be honest with you. This generation of kids now, like they're just not they're all talk, they're not for the most part, they're just about the action type shit. It's not really they they talk and then they'll they'll they'll go to start. There's a handful of kids that don't have to be a good thing. Well, of course there's always going to be.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

There's gonna be kids that are about the action, but I would agree with that. For the most part, I would agree with you, especially young kids. They're trying to put on they're trying to put on for whatever they're trying to put on for. Trying to put on a show, yeah. So they're trying it's it's not necessarily that they're acting, but I sort of get where you're coming from with that.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

But like I I heard stories like you just be walking, so like, you know, you gotta anywhere you trans, like in the morning, you do roll call in the morning, everybody's gotta, you know, get out of bed, they get dressed, and then they come out in the hall. We do a head count, all that stuff. You know, anywhere you go when you're transitioning, everyone's in line, you gotta do a head count, and you gotta space out the staff between, you know, all the kids and stuff. You got the front of the line, midline, back of the line, all that shit. Well, like you several times a day, you'd walk down the line, some kid just punch you in the side of the head.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

It'd be something like that, or you're talking about the count. I think you've told me a couple times that like you're doing a count, somebody'll just fuck it up just to fuck it up, just to be an asshole. Like that like that type of stuff. Like, that's what I'm talking about is that like that doesn't prove you're tough. That just proves that you're

SPEAKER_01 22:00

You're just an asshole.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

You're just being a dick to be a dick for like for being a dick's sake. Yeah. Like I understand. Like if you come like that's just being an ass. Yeah, but I'm not sure. And you're not doing it for any other gain other than to get a rise out of somebody.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Yeah, you're just trying to be a fuckhead.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Yeah, like but like like like I said, just to sort of get back on sort of what we were talking about with the with the episode. I mean 40 was sell is insane. Right. 100%. Fortnite was all is crazy. Uh no matter how big it is. Four people cohabitating in in any size room is is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

And and you gotta think summertime, how hot it is, everything around those.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

I mean, like all that stuff wasn't a thing. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

And like the energy, everything, like the energy, you know, energy, like positive and negative, that shit. It's got spider. 100%. The next thing you know, they're telling somebody to go fuck themselves, and then they're pissed off, and a fight happens, somebody gets punched while they're trying to jump in and break it up. Like, dude, it's it's crazy. I no wonder why it went to hell.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

But yeah, I mean, we're talking about like I think some numbers to emphasize. I know you were sort of talking about like stuff with with where you worked and all of that. But like over the span of like when all this stuff started to happen and stuff started to shift towards sort of the like the darker view of what was going on. You're talking about like 200 plus, 300 plus inmate deaths that happened. Talking about staff deaths, we're not talking about inmates dying, we're talking about actual staff members, so doctors versus people that were in like the psych wards and that kind of that kind of stuff. And then you're also talking about like people that are in charge of the inmates. So like there's multiple accounts, like we said, like the superintendent story that we were talking about before. There's like multiple guard deaths in the history of this place that like people would come back after the there were there was one crazy story I think I heard.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

The warden, the warden's quarters with the it wasn't even the warden's quarters, that one.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

The crazy one that I heard is that there was like a paroled inmate that was paroled from the prison and when it became a correctional facility after all this stuff happened, came back and wanted revenge against a guard that had like been bad to him, came back, or no, no, no, no. It wasn't it wasn't a guard. He came back to like break somebody out and end up killing a guard in the process, and then ended up getting the electric chair like a year later. Like, like not only that, and then you had like the murders and the deaths and stuff, and the suicides and stuff like you were talking about. Like I said, there was somebody that I sort of heard in the documentary that I watched, where somebody like hung themselves in the cell like the night after they had gotten like Psyche Val and like were cleared to like it's just all of this weird stuff that happened that you would almost think that like the negative energy like you were talking about, it sort of like encompassed this place. Like when you got to this place, you were sort of in like another, I don't want to say realm, but like you sort of entered another reality, another world, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah, because it's just negative heavy.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Negative energy just encompassing this place. It's like a sort of like a sphere, like a like a just like a like a like a blockade. If you entered this place and were there for however long, it's sort of like encompassed you. That's the really eerie thing. And I think that's why a lot of people get a kick out of it from a paranormal aspect, is that it's just like it's like this become this beacon from what it once was, it's become this beacon of like negative, paranormal, demonic, resentful energy that is just sort of encompassed this place when it wasn't really that to begin with, which is that that's why I think it's so interesting.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

I mean, when that much negative stuff happens, I think I think you think it sort of turned the tide, like it sort of became a like a it was a positive thing, and then so much stuff happened so quickly over just such a consistent period of time that it sort of shifted stuff. Like like this is the one of the craziest things, and I'll sort of let you answer, but I sort of wanted to add this because it's good context. You know, one of the laws of the universe is that energy is neither lost nor destroyed, it just shifts from one party to another. You think that's sort of what happened in this instance? Do you think it just sort of shifted and sort of took its turn from what was really going on?

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it it shifted because, you know, not only did the prisoners that they brought in shift, but then you gotta think like with that many prisoners, you're probably bringing in guards that are underpaid because they weren't getting funded by the state anymore for reformatory. So you gotta think staff's got negative mindset, prisoners obviously have negative mindset, living conditions suck. Quite frankly, like what was there to uplift? I kind of gone, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Well, it was kind of gone, I think, from the inception of what happened with the whole fire aspect. You're bringing in all of these people that are violent offenders and trying to commingle with people that are trying to straighten their life out. Like, what did you think was gonna happen? There's gonna be conflict just out of pure circumstance. Like that I think that's what's really crazy about this, is they thought that putting violent offenders with people that were trying to right their ship was a great idea. That's the crazy thing I think about this place, and is that it was of uh, in my personal view, not necessarily avoidable because they had to put them somewhere, but like how do you feel about that? Sort of what's your view on like sort of what the decision making was and and that kind of thing? As far as to make it a uh to make it a like what made them think that putting violent offenders with people that are trying to just you know get their life back on track, what made that a good decision? Where do you stand on that one?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

I I mean it was a horrible decision. I think unfortunately what happened was is there where there was a catastrophic event, they had to put these prisoners someplace, so they kind of probably just thought, you know what, we're gonna throw them in here for now, and you know, we'll try to get them out of there as soon as we can, and then eventually it was like, well, they're there, so we're just gonna keep it going. I mean, it did they think it through? No. Can they think it through?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

So I'll give you I'll give you a wild scenario. Do you think it was a panic thing? Like uh like COVID-19, for example? Do you think it was a panic measure? Do you think like so the reason I say that is because like panic measures, so they've had to put all these people somewhere, so they had literally no way out of the situation, right? And you can play devil's advocate with the exact same thing with COVID-19 with the lockdowns. Do you think that was just an emergency response and something that they had to do given the situation for COVID? I'm saying in tandem, do you think that the emergency response was justified because they had to do something, they couldn't just do nothing?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Probably, because I mean, like, you gotta think how you can't just quick up and move prisoners. Like, everything's gotta be documented, you gotta get permission, you gotta like go through the state. So, like, I know certain I'm I know people are probably listening, going, Oh, well, they could have just transported those prisoners to you know Kentucky or Michigan or wherever. Like, yeah, they could have. Like, they didn't send all of those prisoners to the reformatory. I want to make that clear. Like, it's not like they just transport one prison to the other. So they did move prisoners to multiple facilities, but the problem is I think that the instead of them I think they saw an opportunity because you gotta remember when when a prisoner, I don't care if his youth or an adult prisoner goes to a facility, like they get money from the state because they're taking that kid on as a case. Each person is a case, so they get money from the state. So the more intake you have, the more money you're getting. I think they saw a cash cow long term after the fact, but at the beginning, it's too hard and too there's too many steps to the process to send them to Georgia or you know, Kentucky or West Virginia, another state. So um I they probably had to keep them in state, I would think. I don't know. Again, this is just me guessing, and because I've kind of worked in that system, I know a little bit of knowledge about it and how it works. That's my best guess. I would say what you were saying, they probably knee-jerk reaction. Holy shit, we gotta get them somewhere, we'll just put them here. You know, we can't let them go, obviously, and we don't want them, you know, the more time that goes by, the more antsy those prisoners are gonna get. They could riot, you know, they could whatever. So I it was probably just a quick hastily decision. And then long term they probably saw the money. Because that's the only reason you would fucking take and have two over two thousand guy prisoners for to a small to a fucking closet cell.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

I could say, did you say it was five by seven or seven by five or whatever?

SPEAKER_01 30:44

It was five by seven, four people in there.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

You're talking about somebody. Oh, if you're talking about five by seven, we're talking about width versus length. You had two feet of space if you were laying on the floor. You're not fitting, bud. I don't know what they would have done with you.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Just for reference, just for reference. Just for reference, our our co-host here, Blake, is over seven foot.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

So you work a lot. What do you want me to do? I guess fetal position. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

You'd be the guy on the floor, that's for sure. Fucking buck beds aren't gonna fit your pick ass.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

But like that that's the crazy like four people to a five by seven is insane.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, so like back to what I was saying, you're only doing that if you're getting money for it. There's no other reason to fucking not necessarily get getting money, but saving. Well, no, so they're they you get money. So like the prisons and stuff, they get money from the state to take care of those prisoners.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Well, yeah, I understand that, but also what I'm saying is they're saving money too by not having to build more cells, not have more like all that kind of stuff. That's sort of where I'm coming from. I 100% agree with you that they're they're they're getting money per capita to have those people in there. I 100% get that. But on the same on the same side, they're saving money by not having to have more surface area to build more cells or have more area for them to interact with each other. That kind of shit. That's sort of what I'm talking.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah, they didn't do any, you know, expanding.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

That's what I'm saying. Is that there's no like renovation, there's no expanding, there's no nothing.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yeah, it'd be interesting to find the uh I'm sure we could find it somewhere. It's gotta be public knowledge if we could find the uh financials of like their uh their budget. Like the before and after that kind of stuff. Yeah. I'm gonna look that up. Yeah, that would be interesting. So I'm gonna I'm gonna take a look.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah, take a look at that. So uh sort of transitioning from what we were talking about with all of this bad stuff going on, living conditions, uh obvious the obvious violence and murders and suicides and staff deaths and all of that kind of stuff, the crazy numbers as far as inmate deaths over the the span of when this stuff started to go bad and all that kind of stuff. We sort of segue into some of the real deal, like tragedy and real people that were sort of affected this place and sort of affected the way it's looked on now. And I think the one that you sort of were talking about before was the with the Arthur Glacky and the Helen Glackey incident with like the accidental shooting of Helen and all that kind of stuff. I think that the timeline of all of this was really interesting. This is probably the most notable stuff that happened at the prison. To give you a little context, Ruther Glackey, I think, was the uh he was the warden of the Ohio Reformatory for about 10 or 15 years. I can't remember exactly, but I know it was in that time frame, roughly. And essentially, uh there was an instance where his wife Helen was, I think they were getting ready for some type of event or something, and she went to go get a jewelry box. This is like the account of sort of what happened. She was getting a jewelry box or something something out of the closet in the private apartment that was in the administrative wing where her and Arthur lived. She was getting something, like a jewelry box or something like that, out of a closet, and there happened to be a loaded handgun within that closet that was near or next to whatever she was trying to grab out of the closet. Essentially, long story short, the gun fell down. It discharged around and it hit her, I think it was in her left lung, from what I remember. And essentially she was shot. It obviously incapacitated her to a point where they had to rush her to a hospital, and she never regained consciousness, from what I understand or what we understand from the research that we did. And essentially, that's what killed her. Foreshadowing about 10 to 15 years later, Arthur Glackey has a massive, massive, massive, massive, massive heart attack and dies. So, like, that's one of the probably prime examples of everything happening. You know, it's sort of a catalyst for sort of what's been going on at the prison and what it's sort of known for, and like an accidental death that ended in something absolutely 100% nobody can argue, really tragic ending.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

It just adds fuel to the whole negative.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yeah, like it sort of feeds the it feeds the narrative that this place is bad, it has a bad omen, it's bad energy, it's all encompassing with negative energy, all that kind of stuff. So with with the tragedy stuff and the real people thing, I think for me, it adds like a humanistic aspect, right? It's not just paranormal, it's something that happened to somebody real and it's reality and that kind of stuff. And it happened within the walls of this place that has a lot of negative energy. So it sort of, I guess in a way, validates the place as like a bad omen or like bad energy or that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

So what's your take? Do you like to kind of throw the question back at you? Do you think it was just a hastily made decision and they didn't think about it, like you know, the whole COVID lockdown thing, or do you think, you know, they did the bet like what what where do you stand on it?

SPEAKER_02 36:00

I think it's I think it's tough to make a rational decision or or invoke a rational response when you're put in stress. I think it's really tough. I think only a handful of people on this planet, and I'm saying handful, we got like six, seven, eight billion people on this planet, give or take. It's a really tough go to try to go into a really stressful situation and make a rational decision. I think anybody would agree with the fact that we all make emotional decisions in the moment that don't necessarily make sense, but they make sense at the time because you're not thinking clearly. Yeah, 100%. I think there's a lot of external factors that influence that decision, and I don't think you can be held, you know, it it comes with the whole insanity plea and all that kind of stuff with like court cases and all that kind of stuff. I mean, some things are not necessarily out of the person's control, but there's an extenuating circumstance that made them do it. I'm not saying that for all cases. I'm not justifying anything that anybody does because of insanity, but there is an external factor that can make that an interesting dynamic, I guess if that makes sense. I don't know how you sort of feel about that. I think it's definitely an influencing factor having somebody that's dealt with mental illness as well as you have without giving too much away. We've come out the other side. It's not undoable, it's not impossible. But I think it is a valid conversation to say that it is a factor. I think that's probably where I'm going with that. How do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Oh, I think also for context, we gotta remember where we were at in the world back in what this was 1930 that happened.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

I think it was like 30s or yeah, late 30s, maybe early 40s or late 20s, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Yeah, so I think like you know, 1930s, let's think about where the world was. Communication, like they couldn't just pick up a cell phone and call.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Right? So there's a huge fire that happens. They have, you know, I think they had rotary phones by then, right? Maybe, or was it before?

SPEAKER_02 37:58

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

So, all right, let's have two scenarios. One, they don't, and they gotta do the messages by letter. Somebody from that prison that was on fire, they probably had to, you know, they had to either buy horseback or early on with cars.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

I would say even I mean, maybe the most common communication at that time, I might be I might be trolling with this, but maybe like Morse, something like that. Well, either way, what I'm saying is like either way, either either way, it wasn't it wasn't as expedited as as it is now, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Yeah. So like they're only working with with so much. You know, now now that like I sit back and think about it, like, what would you do? That's a cur like that really is like a horrible situation to have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

I mean, you're talking about you're talking about the communication, you're talking about something that happened very suddenly, well, quote unquote suddenly. Right. Where there's and you also have to deal with the factors of like how many people died. You said there was like 300 plus deaths of people that that died in the fire. I think it was like 311 to some change, something like that. You're dealing with all of these catastrophic instances at one time. And like you said, at the time you're talking about very, very and we're talking about today's standards, you're talking about almost obsolete communication. I don't know anybody that communicates by letter anymore unless they're sort of on you know, the like the like the out you know what I mean? Like I mean, to keep it a buck, who really writes a letter anymore? It's an email, if anything. Prisoners. You know what I mean? Like that's my point, is that like it and it became like even today, vast majority, if you get a phone call as a prisoner, that's a plus. Most of the time you're writing letters or sending postage still, from what I understand.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Well, so they're they're you're allowed to get your phone calls, at least like where I was at, the placement school that I was at, they were required to get two phone calls a week. And it's not like they can just pick up the phone and call whoever, they have their counselor and they use the counselor's phone. The counselor has to dial the number. You are given as a counselor their file, and in their file, it tells you who is approved on their call list. And if they're not on that call list, they can't talk to them. They're not even allowed to talk. Like, if let's say there is a dispute with a brother or a sister, say some sibling, and it says in their file, do not let them communicate with their sibling. If I call mom and I gotta I gotta call, I gotta say, hi, this is Dan O'Neill from so-and-so. Johnny would like to talk to you. I gotta confirm that it's them, hand the phone to him, it's on speaker. And then if I hear Johnny talking to sibling or whoever isn't approved, I gotta end the phone call immediately. That's how that works. Makes sense. Now, I don't know about adult prison and how that works. Occasionally it's up to their it's up to their uh their um supervisor, their their district supervisor of whether they can do FaceTime calls. Everyone you might get a FaceTime call once a month for good behavior, but everything's documented. I would have to document each conversation that the kid had, who they talked to, what they talked about, the time, all that. I do that for every single kid that was on my caseload. And you have everywhere from like you know, five or six kids all the way up to like twelve, fourteen. You know, it just depends, you know, it fluctuates, but I mean, yeah, everything's documented. It's it's pretty crazy. I do have those numbers, by the way. Um, as far as what we were talking about, as far as like why the hell would they take it's like I understand the RAS decision like we just talked about early on, but then later, like why they keep increasing the numbers. And here is what we were able to dig up. So there isn't like a clean and widely published year-to-year budget record for the Ohio uh state reformatory because they don't have what modern prisons have, obviously. So most of what we're getting here is from the state reports and court documents, especially the 1970s lawsuit uh for because of the over uh crowdedness. Um so basically when it was a reformatory, okay, late 1800, they got between three to six hundred dollars per inmate per year. Okay. So that funding covered schooling, skilled labor programs, structured reform system. More money per uh prisoner basically meant better conditions and intend to rehabilitate. Okay. After the fire, there was reconstruction, maintenance costs rose. So that was a big reason why they didn't send them back. They fixed it, but they didn't. I I don't think they were able to fix as much as they wanted to of the original facility in Columbus. So they had a uh budget strain increased, and then they shifted from reform to containment and regular prison. So essentially the overcrowding happened because this is crazy. Guess how much, and this is 1970s dollars by the way. Okay, guess how much they were getting per inmate per year, and think like 70s, okay? What do you think? Per per year, you said per inmate per year. Before the fire and all that, it was between 300 to 600 dollars per inmate per year. And again, that's like eighteen hundreds numbers, so those numbers are like, you know, that was a lot of money back then.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

I'd say it's triple or quadruple.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Pretty close. A thousand to two thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

I was gonna say about a thousand. That's actually what I was thinking before you said anything. I was sort of thinking to myself.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

So pretty crazy. Like they're getting significant amount of money.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

So you're talking about two thousand thousand. Yeah. That's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

I mean, that's that's why they w that's why you have the overcrowding is because of money. So that's literally the only reason you would do that. Yeah. So, I mean you gotta think we'll go high, we'll go high numbers, okay? 2,000 inmates, $2,000 per inmate. That's $4 million. Back then. So $4 million in change. That's quite a bit of change. I can do that uh calculation in a second.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

What is the So you're doing like the what it would be today?

SPEAKER_01 44:30

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

What would four what would four million dollars or two million dollars or whatever be today?

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Yep. 1970s today. By the way, we're using Chat GPT, so we'll see what Chat GPT comes out with. So due to the inflation, it's thinking, it's working. Hold on. What do you think it's gonna be the equivalent to? Let me ask you that. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 44:54

Said it was two million from two million back then, two million per prisoner.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Uh I'm sorry, there two thousand dollars per prisoner. There were two over two thousand prisoners, so it comes out to like a little over four million dollars.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

So four million. What do you think that would be equivalent to today's I would say double or triple, so I would say we're probably looking at about twelve million?

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Roughly eighteen to thirty-four million.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

So I wasn't even close. It's actually probably somewhere in the middle of that. So we're talking about what twenty-five, twenty-six million today?

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Yeah. So I I between yeah. More or less. Like isn't that crazy? No wonder why they were keeping that those prisoners.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

They're getting that money.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Yeah, it was a bottom line. Bottom line decision, probably for sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

And you know they weren't they were putting the bare minimum back into the prisoners. That money wasn't being used for them, most of it.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Yeah, that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Hell no.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

They were doing the bare minimum trying to just get by, more than likely. Because they had so much to worry about, so they were probably trying to pinch pennies, trying to make yeah, that that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

Yeah, and then you gotta think, like, they probably had a decent like pension for the workers because why else would you work there and take that job?

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Yeah, with all the stuff that was going on.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Yeah, and they probably had to pay like a decent amount just in case, like, you know, workers comp or whatever, if they even had that back then.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Yeah, that's that's a fair argument for sure, too. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

So anyway, that's that's that. So can kind of understand why things got to the way they were, just with the greed and the money, not even just the negativity and all the other crazy shit that you know leads to why this place is so haunted.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Yeah, I mean that I think that's a good segue too, is sort of mentioning the hauntings and and the fact that it was just sort of an epicenter for negative energy. I think the the haunting thing is why people get such a such a jones out of being there now. I mean, they do they do tours, it's become a tourist attraction at this point. It's become sort of this allure and sort of illusory type of establishment that's not even sort of reputable for what it was made to do in the first place. It's become more of a tourist attraction, become a ghost hunting epicenter. They run tours from what I understand at this place. Like you said, it became a movie location for probably one of, if not the most famous Stephen King novel or adaptation of a Stephen King novel that there's been with respect to like Green Mile and probably like Misery and I the uh maybe um what am I thinking of? The Shining as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Shining is a good one. I mean, here's what's crazy facility, okay, the Ohio State Reformatory was operational. It shut down in 1990. So the year I was born, it was still running for a little bit. That movie was filmed in like I want to say three or ninety-four. So it was only vacant for a couple of years when they actually started like filming that movie. Um, so you know, 94, just in case you were curious, 94. Okay, so 94. I wasn't I wasn't far off at all. You weren't far off at all. Yeah, that's that's only a couple years after it was shut down. But now, if you go there or you look at pictures online, I'd I suggest anybody that's into this stuff, go take a look at the pictures. It looks dilapidated, the paint is peeling off, it looks like it's deteriorating. It kind of looks like what you would think of for an extremely haunted uh you know prison and a place of horror. So the building itself kind of looks like it's got, you know, scabs and dead skin and stuff. So, you know, you can actually people say that they can hear screams, voices, even snoring can be heard in the abandoned cell blocks. And interestingly enough, hauntings were first reported there even back when it was still functioning. So it's it's inmates said that they would report seeing a woman who would visit the cell blocks and tuck in their blankets at night. Of course, no such woman existed, though it may be the spirit of a nurse murdered at the prison years earlier. And again, that's from USGhostAventures.com.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Well, that was also the thing with like the the the Glacky whole scenario, too, is that like when people would take tours of this place or have taken tours of this place, they'll talk about like a woman that like if you approach them or approach it, it'll just her or her, it will sort of disappear. And it's sort of like the like the all-encompassing like apparition of her still being in like the Warren's quarters. That's essentially where it takes place, is in like the Warren's courts with all of the stuff that we talked about earlier with her being accidentally you know killed by the discharge round from the from the gun that fell and all that kind of stuff. So like there's been like claims of like shadow figures, voices, like you said, cold spots, objects moving, that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of paranormal activity that happens within this place that people have seen all over the place. It's not just one centralized area, it's pretty much everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yeah, and especially down in the uh where the um like the solitary confinement and all that kind of stuff was.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Yeah, yeah. Like the I was gonna say the three hot spots that I sort of saw that were probably the most prominent were like the chapel, so like where like they had all of like the the the mass for like religious purposes and that kind of stuff. Solitary confinement, like you said, the whole, which again, like I said, you guys think that like just the gen pop stuff was bad as far as like prisoners to a self, solitary confinement. I think they said that like they packed like three like 150 to 200 people in the same room as far as solitary confinement, and that like led to a lot of murders and fights and that kind of stuff. And then you also had like the warden's quarters, like we were talking about with the Helen Glackey and the and the Arthur Glackley stuff.

SPEAKER_01 50:36

So yeah. So this is interesting too. A paranormal investigator, like this prison, just to give everyone like a you know a vision here of how crazy this place is. This is on like a list of I think like top ten most haunted places in the country or world or something like that. Like it is extremely haunted. Paranormal investigator Greg, I'm gonna mess this up, but that's okay. Greg Feketic had never seen a ghost until he came to the Ohio State Reformatory. So he didn't believe in them, thought was bull crap. According to him, he saw a shadow figure walking up a flight of stairs while touring the reformatory. His quote is, as I'm contemplating what I saw, I heard growling coming from the other room. Fedick recalled, I'm like, that wasn't good, but shortly after that, he heard church bells. Mm-hmm. Very interesting. Very, very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

As far as the hotspots and stuff, I think like the like it's also not just one thing, but like there's been, like you said, there's numerous paranormal investigators that have had accounts of things going on. It's over a multitude of years. It's not just something that happened through happenstance or like a couple instances. Like you said, this is probably I I would actually venture a guess that it's probably like you said, top 10, top 20, top 10, top 20 most haunted places, at least in the country. I think that's probably not even a stretch. As far as like a place that has just all-encompassing paranormal activity, it's not just like a, you know, it's not a farm where like the the barn is haunted, it's the entire complex.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Yeah. Yeah, it's even like the graveyard. So there's over 200 inmates died in the Ohio State Reformatory, mostly during its infamous years of overcrowding. So, due to the nature of many of these men's crimes, their families never came to claim their bodies. Uh, so they created the uh graveyard on the prison grounds, and each one was given a headstone, but instead of their name, they only had their prisoner number etched into the stone. So that dehumanti dehumanized them, which I'm sure left some spirits very upset and restless. There's been a ton of reports of shadow figures wandering the graveyard clinging to their final resting place. So that's you know, that's sad. I mean, to to not even put their name.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

That's really well, depending on the person, they went through a life of absolute torment and trash and that kind of thing, and then they're dehumanized even in the afterlife by only putting their number on a headstone. That's yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

Um, and if you want to peep anybody is interested in, you know, going and doing a tour there, you can absolutely do that. They even do where you can do lockdowns or you can stay overnight. I'm out on that, I think. I don't think I would do that.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

Yeah, the overnight what I mean I'm squeamish when it comes to ghost hunting in the first place. I don't like as I've said in other episodes, I don't fuck with shit that doesn't need to be fucked with.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Um yeah, yeah, I used to.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

And overnight thing would be a little bit boastful from that perspective. I don't think I I I mean the ghost hunting is one thing if you're gonna do it during the day and just tour the facility, but if you're there to like, I don't know, I I guess egg it on, that's a little bit different.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

Yeah, I mean a lot of people do it for research purposes and stuff, and like I get that. Um the problem is even touring it during the day, people still get messed with during the day. Right. Secondly, that shit clings to you.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

It follows people to their homes and their families and stuff, and like a lot of those paranormal research people, um, it fucks with their life in a not good way. People's marriages end, like it it their health goes bad, people end up you know dying. Like, literally, like it's not there's that's happened quite a few cases with paranormal researchers. Something that's really crazy is the original electric chair, which was nicknamed Old Sparky, uh while in service, it's still there, and a lot of people they'll actually when they're doing their investigations, they'll sit in it and they'll ask the prisoners questions. That's actually insane. Mm-hmm. You can uh probably go ahead and assume that they get some not great responses when they do that. Um yeah, they got over 120,000 visitors each year, so it's you know, they they do a lot of uh a lot of stuff there. They actually have a paranormal institute there. I didn't know that. Did you know that? They actually have where you can go and learn how to become a paranormal investigator. That's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Wow, it's not a bad environment to learn how that stuff works, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

No, it's a four-hour investigation too when you get done with the class.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

Interesting. So that's sort of like your it's like your test at the end of the road type deal.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Pretty much, yeah. Kind of like put everything that you learned into real uh real use and stuff like that. I mean, some of the stuff, some of the you know I don't know uh if any of our listeners watch it, but Expedition X on Discovery Plus, I love that show. I also watch Expedition Unknown, a little different. That's more like adventure and like trying to find treasure and lost cities and stuff like that in the Amazon, whereas Expedition X is more kind of like what our show is like, you know, cryptids, haunted stuff and and all that. The tools that they have, and ironically, you know what's crazy, Blake? Did you know one of the biggest paranormal investigative equipment? Guess what it is, what it stems from that they use now.

SPEAKER_02 56:07

I'd have to say it's probably like EMP or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

It's well, so I'll give you a hint. It comes from an accessory to a video game system, accessory to a video game system. And I they don't make it anymore, but they used to like they found out that this accessory was actually showing paranormal spirits, so now they use it so you can you can actually see spirits like legit, it picks them up.

SPEAKER_02 56:35

Probably some uh like an Xbox uh the craziest thing I can think of is like an Xbox Connect camera or something.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Yes, that's it. The Xbox Connect cameras can actually pick up spirits.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

It's crazy. It's really crazy.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Yeah, it's like the only thing I can the only thing I would think of. It's crazy that I got that though. The only thing I can think of is like a PS like some kind of camera. That's why I sort of went to the camera, because it would have to be something visual.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

Yeah, because yeah, so um that's like one of the one of the bigger uh discoveries in the last like decade, I want to say. More than trying to more than decade.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

That's kind of crazy that I got that on the first try, though.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

That is, that is crazy you got that.

SPEAKER_02 57:16

But as much as this place has been like, you know, it should be respected and that kind of thing. I think we should talk about the pop culture aspect and sort of like the modern day and sort of round that out as we sort of get towards the the end of the episode and sort of what we're talking about. Um, like we said, it was the filming location for Shaw Shank Redemption, very, very powerful, very, very popular movie. If you haven't seen it, it's Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman at their absolute peak. It's it's a very good movie. It's an adaptation of a short story or a short novel or novel by uh Stephen King. So if you have not either seen the movie or read the novel, highly recommend it. I think Dan, you've seen it as well, correct? Shaw Shank, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

Well great movie. I I I mean, now this place is sort of seen as a novelty. It's sort of seen as like a museum. There, like I said, we give like like like we give they give tours of uh complex in general. Like we said earlier, there's also like uh paranormal tours that are taking place that take place as well. There's ghost hunts, all that kind of stuff sort of takes place on a regular basis. So it sort of went from a nightmare and like a black mark on the history of at least Ohio, if not the country, if not the world. Definitely say the prison system in Hollywood. Yeah, 100% handled. It's definitely a black mark in that industry for sure. It became a tourist attraction and something that's sort of a novelty at this point. So I guess the ethical question to ask, Dan, from your perspective, and I'll sort of give mine as well. Should a place like this be used for entertainment? Should it be respected, or do you sort of tow that line and it's so where do you sort of stand? Should it be one or the other? Should it be sort of married with the two?

SPEAKER_01 58:52

It is a part of history, so I think you know the restoration is good. I will be honest with you, as far as the heavy metal concerts and stuff like that, I don't agree with that at all. I can see why people would think that's cool. I think that's highly disrespectful. I don't think anything good comes from that other than PR marketing people making a lot of money. I just think it's disrespectful to those spirits, you know. People doing research is one thing, trying to, you know, I think if you're trying to go there and help these spirits find peace so they can move on, that's a good thing. Trying to agitate them and push them, like just let 'em be. But again, like to each his own. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 59:31

I think the celebration of the place is good in two different contexts. So it's opposite sides of the same coin. I think the celebration of the I guess like the boastful celebration of it being haunted and like so much bad happened there is probably the wrong way to go. I think that's probably the wrong, wrong way to tackle things. I think as a history buff and somebody that likes history and likes paranormal activity and understanding why things happened and why things are still happening the way they are and that kind of thing, I think that is beneficial because it allows us to understand and sort of come to terms with a bad part of Ohio history as well as a bad part of just US history. I mean, like this thing has become to the point where it's a black mark and it wasn't sought out, it wasn't initially sought after as that in the first place. It was something that was supposed to be a positive thing. I think the way it sort of turned from one instance being that fire that we talked about at the beginning of the episode, I think that's interesting. I think it's under I think it's I think the history of the place is important, but I don't think it should be celebrated from the standpoint that it's like a boastful celebration, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think it should be I think it should be celebrated for a piece of history and exactly what it has become and what it was and that kind of thing. But I don't think it should be used as a a fun house, if that makes sense. I agree with that. I think we should respect what happened there and what's going on with it now, but we shouldn't celebrate it from the standpoint of it being selfish. I think we need to respect what it is and what it was and what it tried to be and what it is now, but we don't need to celebrate the fact that it's evil for the sake of being evil. Does that make sense? Yeah, I agree with that. Um but like I like I said, this this thing sort of went from one extreme to the to the other. It's not necessarily something that was it's not some something that we should be proud of, I guess, is my point. The way it turned out. The way it started out seemed to be very beneficial. And like you said, we sort of alluded to some of the statistics at the beginning of the episode of why it was successful and how successful it was at its inception. I think you can boil it down, and this might be sort of a weird view on it, but shit sort of happens. We're not always necessarily in control of what happens. I think we sort of touched on the fact that it was an emergency response, what initially happened, that sort of made, I would say, the cosmic turn to what it turned into versus what it was. Um it was a panic decision, and we sort of have to live with that fact and sort of celebrate it for what it is to a certain degree, but we don't celebrate it for the wrong reasons. It's a piece of history and we can't turn away from the fact that it's history and we should learn from it. Um, but we shouldn't celebrate it in the wrong context, I think is sort of where I stand. How about you?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

It's a good case study, right? For like anyone in like taking like a criminal uh you know, major in college or something like that. Like, hey, like it's a good historical look back at like, what can we learn from this so this doesn't happen? Why don't we do X anymore? Um, you know, I think that's you can definitely use it as a learning experience, but yeah, no, I I I mean, like I said before, like you want to do ghost tours or whatever, that's fine, but like be respectful. I don't think they should be doing I mean dude, I I I'm looking I was looking through like all the entertain entertainment stuff they do, like several artists have shot music videos there. WWE did a promo uh there for uh The Undertaker, like they've done they do a lot of entertainment stuff there, so it's still bringing in money all these years later.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

Yeah, from an 1886 it's still making money and still pulling revenue.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

Yeah, so it's pretty uh pretty crazy stuff. But I mean it's very interesting. I'm glad we did this because it definitely is one of the most haunted places in the world, and it's right in our backyard. So that is, you know, it's cool and interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

Yeah, I I think I think the most interesting thing, like I said, is sort of what it was built for, and it was built to sort of reform and get people back on the right track and that kind of thing. And then in true ironic fashion, it's sort of turned into something that broke people and sort of destroyed what it once was, and sort of the ivory towers turn into sort of like the black black towers or the dark towers, that kind of thing. So it's it's an interesting contrast from what it could have been to what it turned out to be. And it's it's dark, it's gothic, it's it's unfortunate, but like I said, we all have stuff in our lives, and all the the the good and bad comes with everything, but bad isn't always bad. You can always learn from something, and even if something is good, it's not always just 100% silver and gold. It's you can still learn from something good, even if it feels a little bit better than the bad. I think a lot of the reason that it still has this allure and still the illusory that sort of evades people is that there's a lot of unanswered questions about you know the documented history, because again, we're talking about 1886 when this thing was constructed and finally finished. And then we're also talking about probably like a 10 to 20 year period where it was still sort of forming itself and that kind of thing, and then you have the lat the latter part of everything where it really turned bad and got really gruesome and and dark and and uh ominous.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:43

Yeah, and they didn't keep records like they do today. 100%, and that's sort of what there's there's laws and regulations because of what happened at at Mansfield of why you have to keep those documented uh, you know, numbers and everything like that. So again, like some good some good came out of it, but you know, it's yeah, I think it can be used as a a good lesson. Started off good, went down a different road because of one in like one instance. One incident that derailed the whole thing. That's like how fast life can change. Things can change in situations. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:17

Yeah, it's it's just it makes you think about like it might be getting a little cosmic for a couple of people on the that are listening, but like it's sort of it brings back the butterfly effect, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:31

And anybody that has any any instance of the butterfly effect, if you're not familiar with what it is, it's a pretty common, pretty common, you know, phenomenon that happens. It's kind of like the Mandela effect, which we've alluded to a couple episodes. I think we did one on the Mandela effect for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

We talk we've talked about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

We've talked about it in depth for sure. And it's one of those things where it's crazy how the smallest little detail can change your entire outlook or the entire outlook of what happens to you. While you're going through life for him in even even an instance, that fire doesn't happen. Maybe this doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

It's Dude, that fire doesn't happen. This might have been one of the most positive success stories for rehabilitation.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:13

At least for that time period, if not. Right. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

It c it could be a hell of a success story instead of like, you know, a roller coaster where it goes up and then just fucking crashes.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:24

So yeah, absolutely plummets for sure. But like I said, it's one of those things where it started off great, everything was everything was roses, and then all of a sudden, because of one instance, like you said, it just absolutely nosedives and just plummets into the ground, and even further so. Well, like I s like I said at the beginning of the episode, a lot of the stuff that we talk about is is one of those things where or some of those things where like something can drastically change based. I know we did the JFK episode. We've done a couple episodes on on conspiracy theories and like sort of like the Illuminati and all that kind of stuff, and it all sort of spiders to the same thing I think that we've talked about in this episode too, is that like one instance, one bad decision, all that kind of stuff sort of snowballs into something that wasn't necessarily what it was set out to be, but it becomes that because of a couple things going wrong or a couple of things going right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:20

Oh, there's that the famous quote, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Yeah. It's you can have great intentions, but at some point greed, power, money, all that kind of is overpowering. It deters, right? Yeah, it can take a beautiful person just like a drug can, because I think I think greed and power and money is a drug. Just like, you know, a uh any drug can turn a beautiful person into somebody who lies and manipulates and cheats and does all sorts of horrible stuff. Well, so can money, power, and greed. And I definitely think they got a little greedy with uh with this one. And unfortunately a lot of bad things happened and a lot of people died.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

A lot of people lost their ass too, I'm sure. Not just not just the the physical torment that people had to endure, but like imagine being a guard or imagine being a warden or something and have to oversee something that's just catastrophic and just plummeting right before you. Like it's just things are going from bad to worse to absolutely catastrophic, and you have no it just feels like you're up against it. You know what I mean? Like there's nothing you can do to change it. It one bad decision or one rush decision or one emergency decision turned this place into an absolute just eyesore for not only Ohio, but the country and maybe even the world, considering, you know, d depending on where it is on the paranormal activity scale, as far as um popularity and like notoriety as far as where the scale's on that list. The people that the people that started this place couldn't have thought in their wildest dreams that anything like this would happen or would have the the reputation that it does today. There's there's there's no way. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. So, but I think it was a good episode, dude. Like I said, it w it was one of our episodes that we we sort of delved into a lot of different aspects. We sort of went through the haunting thing, sort of where it was as it had its inception, what it was set out to do, and then sort of how it took a turn for the worse. And it's not necessarily uh a fun topic to talk about, but it is, like you said, a cautionary tale. I think that's what people can probably, if you guys are listening to the episode or do any research on your own or sort of take it to heart what we sort of talked about, it's a cautionary tale, I think, at the end of the day. It's one of those things where like it could have gone the complete other direction. And unfortunately, some things in life and some things in this world just don't go the way you planned, and things happen, and you sort of have to deal with the fact that you have to respect the fact that it happened, but you don't like I said, necessarily celebrate the the fact that it was it was bad and you're celebrating that fact for for uh monetary value or anything like that. You respect the fact that it happened, it's a piece of history, and we move on. Yep, for sure. But as always, like I said, this is our first episode in a while. Um, we're gonna try to get back as much as we can, trying to get back on regular postings on both Instagram and Twitter for you guys or rather X for clips of the show, as well as trying to do an episode a little bit a little bit more on a regular basis, just as we sort of come back into the folder, trying to get you guys more episodes and trying to get the show back on track from where we were. Because, like I said, I think Dan, you said we're in what, like 12 or 13 countries now or something like that? We're in 19. So 19, so I was even way off. But even, you know, we did a little bit of a talk or a little bit of a conversation, I think yesterday or the day before, where we were talking about the fact that it's it's skyrocketed and the fact that we're we're sort of global now in the grand scheme of things where we were before we had like four or five countries where we were sort of being listened to. So it's sort of all over the place. And uh at this point, I think that's a good thing. Um before I plugged the socials and all that kind of stuff, before we end the episode, you got any final thoughts about sort of where we're at in the in the show or or or sort of how the episode went, what are you thinking?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:59

I thought the episode went great. You know, it wasn't a fun topic, but it was interesting, and you know, I'd I uh I enjoyed, you know, getting your perspective and and learning more with you. As far as, you know, everyone that's listening, we appreciate all of you um a lot for I mean we started this off just you know for fun and you know it's still fun and we enjoy what we're doing. So we apologize for the break, just we got some some life stuff going on, but we're we're gonna be back on here more consistent. And if there's any topic or anything that you guys think would be interesting that you want to hear us do an episode on, please send us a a comment, comment on the episode or our our social pages that Blake will share here. We'll send out some highlight reels too of the episodes, and uh we really appreciate you uh a lot. So thank you. Wherever you're at.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

Yeah, so like Dan said, we'll plug the socials. So if you guys heard at the very beginning, we're but we're live on both Spotify as well as uh Apple Music. I think the Apple Music has sort of been our our biggest contributor to toward the uh listening and that kind of stuff as far as engagement and things like that. But like I said, we're available on both platforms, so make sure you guys follow the uh Spotify as well as subscribe or follow the Apple Music as well. Like I said, we're live on Instagram as well as x.com. So if you guys follow at obscurecash, it's the name of the absolute or the name of the actual podcast. Um, you guys will be able to uh find us on the socials. Like I said, we're gonna get back on posting stuff to Instagram as well as uh retweeting and getting some sort of stuff out on x.com about the episode to make sure you guys are up to date with what's going on and sort of the content and that kind of stuff getting snippets. And maybe if you don't listen to the whole episode, you'll get a you'll get a piece and maybe transition to listening to more full episodes and and sort of get us some more engagement, some more viewership, some more uh some more listening engagement, and that kind of thing. So without any further ado, I appreciate you guys. Just like Dan said, make sure to follow us on all the socials, make sure to listen on Spotify and Apple Music, and we will see you guys on the next episode. Appreciate you guys, and uh, we will talk to you guys soon. See ya.