Finding real ghosts at Shawshank

We had just returned from solitary confinement, and played back our EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). Ghost hunters will sit in silence and record the dead white noise, then play it back at high volumes to see if any sounds can be picked up that would otherwise be missed by the human ear.

“Stand on the toilet,” the recording seemed to say when on full volume. Our group of 15 reconvened in the conference room inside the prison to go over what we may have found so far. We all began to laugh at the possibility of a ghost, of all the things to say, speaking about a toilet.

One person, however, did not laugh, but turned pale.

“Where was that recorded?” the older man that was investigating a different area, who wished not to be named, asked.

“We were in solitary,” I said.

The older gentlemen then revealed he used to be a prison guard at the reformatory, and worked down in solitary from time to time.

“There were vents at the top of the secluded solitary cells, so if prisoners wanted to talk to each other, the only way to communicate would be to stand on the toilets and talk through the vents,” the older man said.

Goosebumps and chills instantly appeared on my arm and neck. That was just a coincidence — ghosts aren’t real. But seeing is believing…

In 2010, the Mid-Ohio Paranormal Society (MOPS) was founded, centered on paranormal enthusiasts trying to prove the existence of life after death.

My cellmate, Megan Schlingman, and I decided to join — she wanted to find a ghost and I wanted to explore structures normally off limits to the public. After doing a few “hunts,” like the Prospect Place mansion in Trinway, Ohio, we soon found ourselves organizing a private ghost hunt of the famed Ohio State Reformatory, aka Shawshank Prison.

It was $75 per person to be locked in the penitentiary until 5 a.m., with pizza and pop provided.

MOPS members and an ad on Craigslist helped fill the last spots and the 15 of us arrived at 7 p.m. for a quick tour and history lesson.

Then we were left all alone.

In true Hitchcock fashion, not only was it a “dark and stormy night,” but also the lightning was so relentless it affected some of our techniques, as changes in light can mean a paranormal presence.

With a building that massive, we decided to split into three groups, each going to a different area and doing a different “test.”

One set of investigators headed to the cellblocks, we went to solitary and another set up in the open areas around the entrance to the yard.

Every two hours we would meet back in the conference room for a review.

Ghost hunting can be a painstaking process and patience is paramount. There is a lot of sitting in dark silence, looking for slight changes in the corporeal environment.

Besides recording EVPs, we were armed with lot of other “scientific” instruments. For example, laser temperature gauges, which looked like little revolvers, could be pointed at any spot in a room to see about fluctuations in temperature. For example, if there’s no windows or draft, and a ball is moving across the floor, and it’s several degrees cooler around the ball, you might be in the presence of something supernatural. (We experienced just that scenario at Prospect.)

Thermal imaging was also utilized when we recorded video. You could be watching for 30 minutes and out of nowhere, an orange blog in the outline of a human might glide across the screen.

Nightshot or X-ray filming is hard when ghost hunting because dust particles can easily be mistaken for orbs or floating spirits.

Motion detectors were placed along hallways and stairwells. A few members had hand-held EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors for any changes to the local environment.

The other two groups didn’t have much to report after the initial review, so we set out again to do some more uncovering and reconvened two hours later.

“Look at my arm, there are scratches on my arm,” said science teacher Megan Conley, of Georgetown, Kentucky. “We were in the cellblocks and I felt something pull on my arm, and I ripped it away and I have scratches now!”

While there was no blood, it did appear that her arm had been scuffed.

Her story gave our group anxiety when it was our turn to inspect the massive, freestanding cell block.

When the reformatory was shut down, most of the cells were left as they were. During orientation, we were told not to slide the bars shut, as keys were hard to come by and we’d be locked in there for a considerable amount of time.

Near the top row of cells, I found an old “Playboy” magazine under a half-rotten blanket on a bed.

“Stop laughing!” Schlingman turned around and said to me while walking along the balconies.

The cellblock was pitch black except for the two orange sodium lights at the bottom, marking the two exits.

“I didn’t laugh,” I said.

We put some distance between us but she came quickly back to the group.

“I heard, like, a soft giggle in my ear,” Schlingman said.

Returning to the meeting room for the last time, another group played a recording of what it thought were footsteps walking around when no one was moving. We were far enough apart from one another that it couldn’t have been another group.

Close to dawn, there were many other stories about hearing noises or seeing an orb, but nothing concrete was captured. The issue is that sometimes the mind hears what it wants to, so coincidence or a creaky pipe can make people believe they just came face-to-face with a Poltergeist.

The Reformatory continues to be a ghost hunter’s paradise, with ghost hunt challenges, hunts for intermediates and experts, ghost walks, private hunts and even ghost hunting classes.

In nearly a decade of searching for concrete evidence of the paranormal, I’ve witnessed plenty of occurrences that have no simple explanation. But have yet to find any absolute proof to the existence of ghosts or spirits.

It should also be noted that — wait, there’s something knocking on my window, oh no, it’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, no, please don’t kill me——-.