The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio has had a troubled past. From 1896 to its closure 90 years later it served as an intermediate penitentiary, acting as a makeshift prison for young men who had committed lesser offenses but were too old still be allowed juvenile detention-a tragic and ironic predicament they found themselves doomed to. In addition to this unfortunate history the reformatory is also known around the world due its being featured prominently in "The Shawshank Redemption".
After immediate success came decades of budget cuts. Eventually, it was converted into a maximum-security prison.
By the 1980s, conditions had become deplorable and according to Theresa Argie, author and paranormal investigator known as “The Haunted Housewife,” it was a horrible place. “It had this incredible vein of violence that ran through it almost from the beginning," she told TODAY.
According to Argie, several suicides, murders and riots took place there, and eventually it was shuttered in 1990.
“You can imagine why a place like that would be haunted,” Argie told TODAY. “There’s something negative there, you can just feel it in your bones.”
And, indeed, there are plenty of ghost stories from the old prison.
“We ran into female spirits there, which I thought was incredibly interesting,” Argie said. One, she said, is the wife of a former warden who was shot with a gun sitting atop a box that she was pulling down from a closet shelf.
According to Argie, they've captured recordings of a woman crying — the warden, most likely. They've even smelled rose perfume in the bedroom.
Another spirit that’s said to haunt the reformatory is a woman who sits in the prison chapel and cries. “When you approach this woman sitting in the pew, she disappears. Other people have seen her walking," she said.
Argie doesn’t think she’s part of the prison, though. Instead, she believes the spirit might be associated with one of the objects donated to the prison while it was being restored as a historical monument.
Then there's the malevolent presence that she detected in one of the prison solitary confinement cells along with her paranormal associate Cathi Weber and a psychic medium.
As Argie began to ask questions, the medium told her that she needed to leave because the spirit in the cell was angry and didn’t want her there. “He would literally be cussing at me,” she recalled.
Still, they came back again and again to gather new recordings and photos that helped them determine his true identity: a former prisoner. While their sessions with the angry ghost were unnerving, it wasn’t until he followed Argie’s partner home that they were truly terrified.
“One day, she saw him, through a reflection of her window, she saw this thing in the back, this shadow figure, and she knew it was him," she told TODAY.
According to Argie, the spirit continued to follow her partner until she enlisted the help of an expert to rid her of the ghost. “Luckily, we haven’t seen him since," she said.
