A L C A T R A Z
A SHIVERY
ACCOUNT BY A
FIRST TIMER TO
THE ISLAND
“
The penitentiary is
rumoured to be haunted by tormented souls; that even Native Americans claim it is the energy
portal where evil spirits are allowed to come through and is whispered to be the last stop before
entering hell.”
As a writer of ghost stories and strange
tales the eerie stories and dark
mystique behind the world’s infamous penitentiary
had always fascinated me and so when the opportunity to see the place came, I
decided to see the island up close.
I
am a regular visitor of the United States, vacationing long stretches of time
with my maternal relatives who are residents of California and yet for some reason
I missed historic San Francisco in my forays to the scenic, historic and
interesting places in the area. So as early as September of last year after I
had made up my mind to visit them again, I asked my sister who was to be my companion to immediately book us on a December tour of
San Francisco in order to avail of the marked
down prices. And one of the places included
in our tour of the Bay Area was the infamous Alcatraz Prison.
It was stormy weather in San Francisco but the tour pushed through as scheduled.. The strong wind and icy rain in the Bay Area
however, did not stop us from taking
pictures of the Golden Gate and other interesting structures within the proximity of
the bay. It was not easy keeping the rain
from our faces and camera while holding
on to an umbrella that was being ripped off our hands by the blustery wind. The
pictures I took turned out to be blurry but printable. But shooting
from the ferry boat ride to Alcatraz Island was a different story - the heaving sea, the lashing rain and the
howling wind made picture taking almost impossible. And added to the motion problem were the grimy
glass windows that made it very difficult to get a clear view of the island.
It
took almost an hour for the wind and rain to subsided.. This time, a ferry
attendant, prodded by an irate passenger to clean the smudged glass windows hurriedly
took a sqweegee and scraped the glass panes for clearer vision. But it was a
trifle too late. We were now returning to the wharf and “The Rock” was fast
disappearing behind us. My sister, however, managed to get some pictures from
her precarious post outside the safety of the covered Passengers Area.
As we neared the dock, I overheard an
elderly stranger across us tell his companions that the Island also sported another name
- “Hellcatraz”, and rightly so, he
stressed because “ the place is
rumoured to be haunted by tormented souls; that even Native Americans claim it is the energy
portal where evil spirits are allowed to come through and is whispered to be the last stop before
entering hell ; that even for the
living, the fatal confrontations between fellow prisoners,
guard beatings, and failed escapes already made life within its walls hell on
earth.
This got me interested and so I
introduced myself . He turned out to be
a friendly and loquacious guy, a retired Professor of Humanities and the three guys he was with were relatives from
his old country., Sweden. When he learned I was a writer from the Philippines,
our conversation became even more animated as the three of them shared their
experiences with the occult. The professor confided:
“As
you step off the boat, immediately goose bumps take hold and the hairs on the
back of your neck stand on end. With so many deaths that occurred in the
island, you lose your soul to it. Alcatraz is here for one thing, to punish the
bad. That is why when you walk around the place, it is the dark energy of all the souls that
got beaten and left in their own squalor for days in the dark dungeons and all
the murders and deaths by illness that happened in the condemned island that
takes hold of you.”
I jotted down eerie bit and pieces of information about the notoriously haunted
penitentiary made famous by Hollywood block-buster movies :
Numerous investigators and psychics together
with their paranormal teams have sought to contact spirits at Alcatraz and a
lot of stories about phantom encounters had been recorded. One of the areas of the prison most often
claimed active with paranormal activity is a utility corridor where certain
inmates were pummelled with bullets after a failed prison escape.
Cell 14D is also believed to be very active with spirits. An gruesome tale from
the 1940s tells of a prisoner that was locked inside screamed
throughout the night that a creature with glowing eyes was killing him. The
next day the guards found the man strangled to death in the cell. And yet, when
doing head count, some of the guards claimed to have seen the dead convict in
line with the other inmates but only for a second before he vanished.
Fifteen inmates were reported to
have died of natural causes within the prison’s maximum security wall, eight
people were murdered by other inmates and five others committed suicide. And
so, the prison is brimming with ghost stories. Considering all the terrible
things that must have happened at Alcatraz over the years, it is perhaps not
surprising that the sounds of crying and moaning are often heard and cell doors
can sometimes be heard clanging shut on their own. Guards and police officers
reported seeing and hearing strange apparitions hile they guard the deserted
rooms.
Among those who served time at the
maximum-security penitentiary were the notorious gangster Al “Scarface” Capone,
and murderer Robert “Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud. Other infamous Alcatraz
inmates were George “Machine Gun” Kelly
who spent 17 yrears in prison on a kidnapping conviction and gangster Alvin “Creep Karpis” Karpowizc , listed as
Public Enemy No. 1 by the FBI who spent 25 years behind bars there. Although so many attempts were made to escape
“” The Rock” – the most famous of which involved 36 inmates resulted in a
battle in May 2-4 in 1946 – resulted to 26 of them captured, six were shot and
killed, two drowned and 5 went missing and were presumed dead. The chilly and shark infested waters that
surrounded the island was just too much even with the best swimmer to handle.
No inmate has ever escaped the penitentiary.
* * * * * * * *
SHADES OF DARK TOURISM
In a recent in-flight magazine, the kind that publishes
glossy pictures of exotic and intriguing places on a airlines route ,
passengers are tempted with a feature on the “joy of prison museums”. The
article opens by reassuring readers that a taste for touring former places of
suffering and death is nothing to be worried about.. After all, sites such as
the Roman catacombs have been respectable tourism spots for centuries. Defunct
penal institutions “give us a thrill” but these sites also provide matchless opportunities
for spiritual and political reflection: “ once we can imagine these
deprivation, we can learn to cherish freedom. In sum, touring old places of
punishment maybe gruesome but is also good.” (Dobbs, 1999-35).
A tour ALCATRAZ, anyone?
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