Tallmadgeexpress.com - A visit to Dracula's castle? No! Way better ... Mansfield Reformatory!

Column: Kaleidoscope
by Ken Lahmers
Editor, Aurora Advocate

A visit to Dracula's castle? No! Way better ... Mansfield Reformatory!

Recently, I spent time in prison. I didn't do anything bad and I wasn't locked up there.

The day before Labor Day, I took a two-hour tour of the horribly decrepit and now-closed Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield.

And what an eerie experience it was seeing many areas of the dark, dusty, 250,000-square-foot castle-like stone ediface.

It wasn't the first time I've seen the prison, but it was the first time I've been inside.

Back in the 1960s when my folks and I visited a cousin of Mom's who lived in Mansfield, he took us past it. I recall thinking it was the creepiest place I'd seen.

Now that it's abandoned, it's even more creepy.

I figured Labor Day weekend would be a good time to visit. A "Shawshank Redemption" reunion was going on. That movie was filmed there in 1993, three years after the prison closed.

Over the weekend, many of the local "extras" in the movie toured the prison and other movie sites in Richland County, Ashland and Upper Sandusky.

Some prison history

Work on the structure began in 1887, but because of many delays, it was not opened until 1896 and not fully completed until 1910.

Architect Levi T. Scofield used the Cathedral style, hoping inmates would be inspired to become better people. Initially, the prison housed mostly young, first-time offenders capable of being reformed.

Later, it housed many violent offenders, including murderers and people on death row. Prisoner abuse was commonplace in the first half of the 20th century.

Two correction officers were murdered there, and one warden's wife died in 1950 after being shot when a handgun fell off a shelf in a closet and discharged.

That was the official story, although many believed the warden had something to do with her death. That warden died of a heart attack in his prison office eight years later.

In 1948, two discharged inmates went on a murder spree, killing a half-dozen people before being caught. They were dubbed the Mad Dog Killers.

In the mid-1900s, an inmate hung himself in his cell, one burned himself to death with hot oil and one was killed by another inmate who shared a solitary confinement cell with him.

In 1957, inmates rioted, an act which incensed the warden. For 30 days, 120 of the men were confined to the 20 cells in "the hole."

In that solitary confinement area, inmates were given one slice of bread and one cup of water a day.

They saw daylight through the windows outside the cells for only a minute or two a day when the guards brought them their bread and water.

In addition to "Shawshank Redemption," three other movies were filmed there: "Harry and Walter Go to New York" and "Tango and Cash" when inmates still resided in the prison, and "Air Force One" in 1996.

In the latter, which starred Harrison Ford as the U.S. president, the facility was used as a Russian prison.

When the prison was closed in 1990, many inmates were transferred to ManCI -- the new Mansfield Correctional Institution -- built behind OSR and on part of its old recreation yard. It now houses about 2,400 inmates.

Also behind the former prison is the Richland Correctional Institution, opened in 1998.

The state had planned to raze the OSR, but the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society stepped up and saved it, taking possession in 1995.

The society hopes to some day restore the prison, but our tour guide said an extensive restoration would cost $23 million.

What is on the tours

From Tuesdays to Fridays, a general tour is offered during warm weather months.

On Sundays during the same months, tours of different areas are offered. On the Sunday I went, only general tours were given because of a lack of staff.

Our tour started in the front of the building. Administrative offices once occupied the first floor, while the warden and his family lived above on the second floor.

Photos in the facility's museum show the warden's living quarters to be pretty nice, but years of neglect have turned them into a mess.

Once lavish woodwork is dull and dusty. The guard rooms, common areas and cells have walls and ceilings with peeling paint and rusty/corroded steel.

The real warden's office on the third floor above the front entrance was used to film the scene in "Shawshank" where the warden shot himself in the head. The chaplain's room, where confessions were heard, and the parole board room also are on the third floor.

Further back on the top level is a large chapel that still contains a few pews.

Beneath it is the central receiving/guard area, where inmates arrived to start serving their sentences and family members came to visit them.

That area, part of which has been renovated, is popular for weddings, wedding receptions and business conferences.

On the wings of the building are the cell blocks -- West with about 500 cells (five levels) and East with about 600 (six levels).

The latter is said to be the largest steel cell block in the world. In later years, it housed the most violent offenders, including death row inmates.

Each cell is about 7 feet square, with a bed, toilet and steel-barred doors only about 2 1/2 feet wide. Rusty steel-coil bed frames are visible, but no mattresses remain.

An entire row of cells were locked down not by electronic means, but by large steel levers opened and closed by hand by the guards.

There's a guard tower above the West cell block with a steel spiral staircase leading up to it, but we didn't get to see it on our tour.

Our guide was a volunteer who played three years of pro football with the Kansas City Chiefs.

We walked down the narrow, dark hallway outside the windowless cells in "the hole," which was probably one of the most despicable places on Earth.

In the prison's museum, visitors can see a replica of "Old Sparky," the name for the decades-old electric chair once used to execute prisoners.

Executions never took place at OSR; they were all carried out at the now-razed Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, which housed prisoners for 150 years until 1984.

Ghosts in the house

In the years tours have been offered, tourists and staffers claim to have observed unexplained encounters. Many believe ghosts exist there.

The society offers ghost hunts and overnight stays regularly, and they sell out months in advance.

Our guide said his fiancé will never enter the building again after she claimed a pair of hands touched her during a tour, and nobody was standing near her.

Our guide said he has heard cells clanking and seen lights turn on when he was alone in the building. He once left a tape recorder running on a ledge in "the hole" while he walked away for about 20 minutes.

He said the tape revealed sounds of cell doors closing and a crash like the recorder being knocked to the floor. When he returned, though, it was right where he had left it.

"Whether there are ghosts, who knows?" he said. "But there have definitely been some very strange things heard, seen and felt here."

Although conditions in prisons today are much more comfortable than in the OSR's heyday, they still are not places most of us would want to stay for any length of time.

E-mail:

klahmers@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3155