Trips home to Pennsylvania are usually very relaxing and rarely ever filled with too much excitement. This time however I was lucky enough to have some company for the first week of my visit. Caroline drove across the dismal middle western states with me and my friend Tynan rode his bike in from New York. The three of us were set for a day of canoeing, fishing and hiking. And then the rains came.
We decided to drive into the town of Jim Thorpe, which is not only named after the finest Olympian athlete (possibly) ever, but it's also home to his bodily remains. While we chose not to visit Jim's memorial, we did decide to take a tour of the old jail.
Famous for becoming a house of persecution and torture during the days of the Mollie Maguires, The Old Jail, as it is affectionately named here in JT, was still used as a county prison until it finally closed its doors in January of 1995.
Who the hell is Mollie Maguire you ask? Well, it was a term used to describe a secret society of Irish-American coal miners accused of sabotaging daily mining activities as an act of rebellion against the powerful mine owners. For a more detailed explanation I suggest watching a movie entitled The Mollie Maguires, starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris.
Like all great places that committed crimes against the (mostly) innocent, the Old Jail has its fair share of ghost stories. Inside of the waiting room was a poster full of photos that contained suspicious white and yellow orbs. These orbs are allegedly ghosts of Mollie Maguires past, (certainly not just specs of dust on the camera lens). The tour concludes with perhaps the most famous ghost story in all of Carbon County, that of Alexander Campbell.
Moments before being led to the gallows, Campbell rubbed his hand in the dirt on the floor of his cell and then placed it firmly against the wall above his bed. He proclaimed that if he is innocent his hand print would last forever. According to lore, the wall had been repainted, sandblasted, and even knocked down and rebuilt; but alas, the hand print remains. Of course his cell is also permanently locked and photographing the inside is not allowed.
Ghosts or no ghosts, it was definitely an eerie place to spend a rainy afternoon.
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| The Old Jail |
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| Haunted staircase |
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| Haunted chair |
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| Haunted toilet & tub |
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| Permanent resident |
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| Haunted showers |
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| That's not a ghost orb, just an air vent |
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| Solitary |
The entire basement was used for solitary confinement. The cells were dank and small. There was hardly enough space to fit a cot and often times multiple prisoners slept in piles on the floor. The basement was also kept completely dark because according to the warden: "Light is a privilege."
The cell pictured above was considered luxurious because it had a toilet, which was actually just a hole in the corner with a wooden seat above it. This part of the tour creeped me out a bit. It felt like I was about to interview Hannibal Lecter.
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| And then we ate apple dumplings off the hood of my car. |
