BY EMILY CRAWFORD

In print | Published October 30, 2008

Eastern State Penitentiary, the local abandoned prison and site of many a first-year seminar fieldtrip, takes on a more sinister role every fall when it becomes “Terror Behind the Walls,” the number-one haunted house in America. Known as America’s most historic prison, the Eastern State Penitentiary began housing annual Halloween fundraisers over a decade ago to pay for the preservation of the national historic landmark; today, these fundraisers have evolved into what is supposedly one of the scariest haunted attractions in the country.

On weekends and select weeknights from Sept. 19 until Nov. 2, crowds of people are ushered through the ominous crumbling gate of the high exterior walls, to the sounds of spooky music and maniacal shrieks. Once inside, visitors wander through the prepared sections of the 11-acre structure at their leisure, encountering various unsavory characters all along the way.

Because of its proximity to the city, the prison’s annual haunted house is a famous—or rather infamous event—for Philadelphia residents and Swarthmore students alike. “I was going to go once when I was in high school,” Ariel Martino ’11 said. “I went to buy tickets and I just totally chickened out. When you’re waiting to get tickets, you have to wait outside the walls and it looks so medieval and creepy with all the haunted house noises in the background. I saw grown men leaving looking terrified and I just couldn’t do it.”

According to brochures, the horror only increases once inside. The tour is divided into five different sections and detours, including the cellblocks and facilities, a 3D section where the prison-doctor-turned-mad-scientist conducts a human experiment and being taken to the “processing center” via prison bus. At one point, visitors in the “Night Watch” section are provided with a flashlight for an excursion into the dark perimeter of the penitentiary, surrounded by fog and darkness; this section is specifically labeled as “not for the faint of heart.”

In fact, the penitentiary is considered so adrenaline-inducing that children under the age of seven are not allowed on the property while the haunted house is open and it is suggested that the children who are old enough visit on Family Nights, when the actors know to back off from traumatized kids who say the safety phrase “monster be good.” If nothing else, these precautions alone could fill you with spine-tingling foreboding.

“It was the scariest haunted house I’ve ever been to,” said Terror Behind the Walls survivor Jon Schaefer ’11, who went last year“I think what made it so scary was that the actors, and the costuming too, are really really good. They try to freak people out as much as they possibly can.” When asked exactly how scary it was, he said, “I was actually expecting it to be more scary. When you go there, you get creeped out by the crumbling exterior and the fact that it’s a real prison, but once you’re inside, I guess they can’t take you into the parts that are still old ruins, and what you go through is a lot more like a haunted house than an actual prison.”

It appears that what scares visitors the most is the knowledge that the cellblocks and hallways they are walking through were occupied by real criminals who are long dead, and many of whom died in those actual cells. There have been many claims made to actual ghost sightings on the property, enough to attract TV’s “Ghost Hunters” and “MTV’s Fear” to film episodes at the site.
“I haven’t gone yet but I’m planning to check it out as soon as I can,” Peter Liebenson ’11 said. “I love horror movies so I think it would be fun … especially since it’s in a real former prison. I’ve heard from friends that it’s scary to visit the museum even when it’s not a haunted house, so I can only imagine how crazy it is around Halloween.”

Located five blocks away from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Eastern State Penitentiary is ideally located for college students around the Philadelphia area who are looking for a few screams on Halloween.

“Terror Behind Walls” is open every night through Nov. 2 from 7 p.m. through midnight.

Disclosure note: Ariel Martino is a news reporter but had no role in the production of this article.

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