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BAGAN’S PENITENTIARY
- 12:01 am
- 99% battery
Prologue - Paranormal Curiosity
My name is Sarah and the paranormal has interested me since I was a little girl. It all started with the death of my grandpop who haunts our house. We tried to talk to him through voice recorders which catch EVPs (electrical voice phenomena) and all we got from him in our hour and a half session were the words, “must protect her”. The only possible meaning these words have are that my grandpop can’t pass on yet because he still wants to protect me since he was already very protective of me in his earthly life. He hasn’t really talked to us since then, but I still feel his presence in my life. Dolls and toys will be put on my bed while I’m sleeping and other things in the house will move, especially food-related items when I have friends over. Heh, it’s as if grandpop is trying to make or give us his special Italian cooking even though he’s dead.
I became a solo paranormal investigator because of him and decided to find proof of ghosts and other entities to show the world their existence and life beyond death. I have investigated many haunted houses, prisons, and hospitals all by myself, but tonight is a special one. Bagan’s Penitentiary is one of the most haunted places in the world and tonight I’m going to be spending the night there all alone with all of the exits and entrances locked until sunrise.
I meet up with the owner of the penitentiary at the front gate and he tells me that he did as I asked and wishes me good luck. Armed with only a night vision camera, a flashlight, two different voice recorders, and extra batteries, I begin what I believe to be the longest night of my life.
- 12:21 am
- 95% battery
Chapter 1 - Clues to the Past
I decide to go to the hospital section of the penitentiary since it seems the most promising. It has a dark history of patient abuse, corrupt and crazy doctors, and an unsanitary environment. Some even say that the way the hospital looks now, is better than the way it looked before when people worked here. I enter the building and start to wander the dark and dirty hallways. There’s nothing, but dead silence in the entire building. Each of the rooms is messy with dirty floors, cracked ceilings, and broken walls. The old bloodstains from the past surgeries can still be seen where it was spilled, which makes me imagine gruesome scenes of doctors and their old ways of treating insanity like drilling the head of a patient who are awake and aware of all the pain. Wait, maybe these are visions of the past given to me by the spirits.
“Hello? Have you been showing me what you’ve been going through? I can feel your pain,” I say trying to get a response as I turn on my spirit box, which constantly switches frequencies to try to catch the voices of spirits.
I walk through the different floors of the hospital to try to get the spirits to talk by asking them different questions about; who they were and what they were going through.
A voice then suddenly says, “Suffering.”
“Suffering?” I ask, “Who made you suffer? The doctors?”
“Him,” a voice says before something gets thrown across the hallway.
I search the hallway to see that a piece of concrete was thrown across the hallway.
“Is the doctor here with us?”
There is silence of five seconds until I finally here the words, “I am,” come through the spirit box.
I stand in shock as a spirit who claims to be the doctor answers me.
“Are…are you the doctor who made the patients here suffer?”
…
“Yes.”
I then quickly ask without thinking, “Why did you do it?”
“Family.”
“Family? Did they make you do it? Or did you hate them which caused you to vent your frustrations onto your patients?”
…Nothing. No voices come through for the next ten minutes and the energy that was building up, has died down. That’s the nature of this kind of work. When the energy dies so does the activity. Those spirits must’ve had the energy to only give me those few cues as to what was going on in there. The last few things I found were some residual energy, feelings, or voices of the past that we can’t interact with. I hear the blood curling screams and cries of the patients here and how they cursed the people who were treating them. Things were going great so far and now I’m even more excited to see what’s next.
- 1:30 am
- 88% battery
Chapter 2 – Insanity in Perpetuity
This next part of the prison was a long series of cells meant for psychotic individuals or at least who they thought were psychotic. Around the time this building was made, you could be called psychotic if you were simply a little weird or if you disagreed with the laws of the town and someone ratted you out. Imagine living in these cells alone or even worse, imagine sharing these cells with actual psychotic people since all the cells were getting full. These cells have scratch marks and holes in them as if the inmates were trying to escape even though it was nearly impossible, but that didn’t stop them from trying. There were reports of inmates clawing their own nails off to try to escape or use their own heads until they gave themselves concussions. A silly way that was also used was when they used each other as battering rams to break out, but none of the methods that were reported worked. The only results of their attempted escapes were major injuries or death, which was supposedly the only way to leave the prison.
I just caught several glimpses of shadowy figures moving throughout the hallway. I even saw someone with an elongated neck in one of the cells, must’ve been one of the inmates who committed suicide. Due to the high amounts of activity, I started another spirit box session and started to ask questions.
“Hello? Is anyone there? I can see you walking through the halls.”
A distorted mumbling sound is coming through the spirit box, which I took as a response.
“Who are you? What is your name?”
“I…don’t remember,” a voice says.
Don’t remember?
“Why don’t you remember? Did the people do something to you to make you forget?”
There is silence for a few seconds until a loud scream comes down from the hallway and footsteps that sound like running is coming right for me. I see the flash of a distorted human face before I feel a cold rush of energy pass through me. My whole body is freezing and I’m shaking as I feel unable to move. I have to sit down on the floor for a few seconds to catch my breath since I feel so drained. A loud bang sound is made down the hallway so I have to get up to investigate it and what I find is odd. There is a chair with fresh skid marks on the floor.
“Did you try to give me a chair to sit on?”
“Run,” the now familiar voice says.
“What? What’s happening?”
I turn around and see three claw marks on one of the walls and I now know what is threatening me. There are demons and poltergeists in this place and they are incredibly active today, but I’m not going to back down. No, this is getting too exciting. I keep moving forward through the cells as I hear the whispers of the spirits throughout the halls and the opening of doors. This night is just getting started.
- 3 am
- 78% battery
Chapter 3 – Graveyard Shift
The graveyard is the next place I find myself in and this was one of the places that prisoners would work in. Prisoners would work every day in all kinds of weather from the extreme heat of the summer to the bone-chilling cold of the winter. They would be constantly monitored by the guards who would beat up anyone who; take unauthorized short breaks, slightly go outside of the rules, and if the guards were just in the wrong mood. When the prisoners would die, the others would be the ones to bury the bodies, but since burials weren’t a top priority, bodies would be left where they died and rotted there until they were skeletons. This was true of all the prison, which lead to the cells and the entire prison being littered with decaying corpses at one time. Because of these conditions, prison riots would happen at least five to eight times a month with lots of casualties on both the guard and prisoner sides. They eventually improved conditions by burying bodies, giving prisoners longer breaks, more flexible rules, but so many people had to die to make it happen that it made the newer condition seem not worth the effort.
The buildings I go through still echo with the sounds of men and women working themselves to the bone. I can hear their suffering without the spirit box, but I still decide to use it to clearly hear what they’re saying.
“Get out of here,” the same familiar voice comes through.
I obviously have a spirit attached to me. They tend to do this when they find themselves “liking” a certain person.
“Why are you following me?”
I don’t get an answer so I go to the graveyard to see if I can find anything else. As I walk around, black figures will dash around not only outside, but also inside, near the windows with the occasional white orbs passing by.
“Hello. I know what happened here. Can you tell me more about it?”
A couple seconds pass by.
“Undeserved suffering.”
“I know. The prisoners would suffer because of the guards and-”
“No!” a loud voice says, “Guards…suffered…more.”
“Wait, what do you mean? How did the guards suffer more than the prisoners?”
Four seconds pass by.
“Other…people.”
“Other people? You mean the wardens would make you suffer or the violent prisoners?
…Nothing. Nothing, but the continuous whispers and rattling of the spirits come through the spirit box so I turn it off. I hate it how I would come close to getting answers others don’t get then the spirits get quiet.
“I’m sorry,” a voice says close to my ears.
I jump back, my heart beating incredibly fast because I didn’t expect to hear a disembodied voice so close to me and so clearly.
“Sorry?”
I turn the spirit box back on.
“Sorry for not saying-”
“Quiet!”
Another voice interrupts which is followed by a loud hitting sound and someone screaming.
“Sorry for what? Don’t let anyone prevent you from telling the truth just tell me what happened!”
…Nothing, again! Even in death, these people are being worked to death, whether they’re guards or prisoners because they can’t get over what they went through when they were living. I’m going to make sure that stories like theirs are told so they can find peace, but for now, the night continues.
- 4: 30 am
- 18% battery
Chapter 4 – Crowded Emptiness
The second to last area is the holding cells, the center of the riots and where the most violence took place. Suicides, beatings, and stabbings were a daily occurrence in every section whether it’d be the male or female wards, which were separated by a single wall in between the large and long building. Even though this wall was guarded, twenty-four seven, prisoners, both male and female, would dig holes through to the other side to rape and/or kill others or in some cases, make plans to escape the prison. Few of those escape plans worked and the rest that didn’t end in the prisoners either being executed or put in the psychotic holding cells. There were also satanic rituals being held here at night that some of the prisoners would use to try to escape since praying to God didn’t help them much. Portals would be opened with these rituals that let out demons and would later give out energy for spirits to use. Demonic possessions would also happen to people, even today, and it would cause people to hurt and even kill others and disappear, never to be seen again.
I was blessed before coming here tonight and went over certain prayers to say over in my head to protect me. As I wander the dark, dirty halls, I hear the whispers of angry spirits and see heads peeking out of corners and irregular looking shadow figures roaming the halls, so I started up the spirit box and start to ask questions about the wards.
That same familiar voice comes through again and says, “Get out of here!”
I then feel a push behind me.
“Hurry!”
“Why do you want me to leave so badly? Is it because of the demons?”
“You should listen to your elders,” a different voice says.
“I’m not afraid of anything here.”
“You should be,” a deep voice says before something or someone smacks the spirit box out of my hand, which breaks when it hits the wall.
Damn it, now I need to use a normal voice recorder, but before I use it, my camera’s batteries run out. I also feel drained, but I’m not going to let it bother me this time, so I continue and replace my camera’s batteries. I’m now in a big empty hall and walk to the middle of the male ward and the female ward, a great place to record voices.
I ask, “Are you afraid of the demons here? Can you do anything about them? Do you still feel the suffering of your past, even till this day?”
I stopped a few seconds after every question and asked another once the whispering stopped. I then re-wind the voice recorder to understand what they said.
“Yes. No. No. Yes.”
Were the answers to the first question.
“No. No. No. No.”
To the second.
I suddenly feel terrible and tired before I hear the third answer. I can’t explain it, but I get my answer as to why I’m feeling when I hear their answer.
“Yes. Feel it with us.”
As soon as I look over to the nearest ward, I see hundreds of people with the injuries and scars they died with staring dead at me. I jump back and turn the other way to see another group of the same kind of people. They all then disappear and my energy is given back to me and the pain goes away. It’s almost time to leave and I have one more area to go and I save the best for last.
- 6:66 am
- 5% battery
Chapter 5 – Dead on Arrival
The last and final area, believe it or not, is the entrance to the prison and there’s a good reason for that. The entrance was not only where new prisoners would be taken in, but it was also the place where they held public executions for those on death row. This was to show the prisoners what they were in for and so other people could see the death of famous killers, criminals, and innocent people without having to go through the prison to see the horrors of the penitentiary. New prisoners would sometimes attempt to escape and be put to death almost immediately. In one rare case, a famous killer was going to be executed, but as he was about to be hung, he ran off and broke the wood holding the noose in place with his neck and killed almost twenty people before being killed by the guards. Some say he was possessed by Satan while others say that he broke free because the noose had been used so many times that the wood had been extremely weakened.
Tonight, the penitentiary is absolutely pulsing with energy, like I heard it was supposed to be from other people and now, I was at the place flowing with the most energy. So much in fact, that I feel it as soon as I entered the area which makes me excited to see what I can find, but as it turns out, the spirits are more excited. A chair is thrown at me from across the room, hitting me which makes me fall down and accidentally break the voice recorder in my pocket. Things are getting intense and it doesn’t stop there as my camera is smacked out of my hands and kicked to somewhere in the room. I try to search for it in the darkness by following the sound of it being moved around the room and wherever I go I can feel incredible energy.
Despite not having a spirit box or voice recorder, I can still hear the voice of that familiar voice clearly saying, “Leave now. They want you dead.”
I’m not going to leave, not yet. I still have some time left and I’m not going without my camera with all my footage on it. The whole section I’m in is rife with high spirit activity with black figures walking around with rocks and glass being thrown around, some of it hit me. This doesn’t bother me, no, I’m not going to let this defeat me, not now and not ever. I keep on searching the room multiple times as I endure the evil spirits’ attacks until the sun starts to shine. I can finally see and I find the camera in the center of the room, cracked with the time stopped at 6:66.
The entrance opens and the owner sees me and asks, “Are you ok? You look like you’ve been through a lot today.”
“Yeah,” I say covered in cuts and bruises, “Thanks again for letting me be here tonight.”
“No problem.”
I begin to leave the penitentiary, but then I am stopped by someone saying, “You can’t leave me yet.”
I turn around to see the owner giving me a certificate and a large check.
“You’ve earned it.”
I thank him for my reward and I leave feeling accomplished, but not relieved. I’m tired as hell.
- BROKEN
Chapter 6 – Found Peace
Once I arrive home, I immediately put my broken equipment down, take out the pieces of glass out of my skin, bandage myself up, and go directly to sleep on my couch. I start to dream of that last part of my investigation, walking around in the darkness while being preyed on by angry spirits, poltergeists, and a demon. I can see it staring at me in the darkness.
He lunges at me and says, “You can’t leave me yet.”
I instantly wake up with the house being dark for some reason. Wait, no it isn’t. Is it just my eyes? What’s wrong with them? What in the hell is going on?! Things I have around the house are falling down and laughing is echoed throughout the house. Crap! The demon must’ve followed me and is still trying to kill me! I quickly start a cleansing ritual, which the demon doesn’t take kindly to. It scratches me with its sharp claws and throws vases and hard objects to try to stop me, but I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to let this be the end of me.
Suddenly, I hear the same recognizable voice from before saying, “Get away from my granddaughter!”
Of course! My grandpop was with me this entire time I was in the prison. How could I not have realized that?!
“Don’t worry grandpop, the ritual is almost complete!”
“Pathetic mortal! You cannot prevent me from killing her!”
“I might’ve been weak in life, but death has given me strength! You will not harm her and you will go back to hell!”
Almost…there…done! I hear screaming as the house shakes and after a while, everything calms down.
Light returns to the house and I finally feel relief.
“Grandpop, we did it!”
“Good…now, I’ve found…peace.”
The house lights up like the dawn of a new day for a few seconds before dying down and the normal morning light shines through the house. Did my grandpop just leave this realm and enter Heaven? I believe so. He protected me throughout my life up until the moment I needed him the most. He deserves peace and so does the rest of the good spirits in this world so that they will be free of their worries, keeping them here after death.
END
Behind the Scenes
- This story is inspired by paranormal reality TV shows like Ghost Adventures or Ghost Hunters.
- The name of the asylum is inspired by the host of the Ghost Adventures show, Zak Bagans.
- For the design of the penitentiary, I used Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia as a palette since it’s the only penitentiary I’ve been to.
- The idea behind the grandpop was from my Pop Pop who I haven’t met since he died before I was born. I put him in the story because I feel a connection to him and thought that he would’ve liked to be in one of my stories.
- There aren’t too many extras since this is a pretty short story that’s just meant to be something short and fun to read.
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