Ohio State Reformatory

Ohio built its “Intermediate Penitentiary” at Mansfield as a place to reform young first offenders rather than simply punish them. Architect Levi T. Scofield gave it a soaring Romanesque and château-style front meant to inspire inmates, and it was built in stages from 1886 to 1910. Renamed the Ohio State Reformatory in 1891, it received its first 150 prisoners by train from Columbus on September 15, 1896, and set them to work building the sewers and the stone wall. Its six-tier East Cell Block is recognized as the largest free-standing steel cell block in the world.

Over the next century the ideals faded. After a 1930 fire at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, 266 surviving inmates were sent to Mansfield and crowded into a windowless attic. The prison, built for about 1,900 men, at times held nearly 3,500. More than 200 prisoners who died while incarcerated, and two guards killed during escape attempts, are buried in its cemetery. Warden Arthur Glattke, who ran the prison from 1935 to 1959, lived on site with his wife Helen and their sons; in 1950 Helen was fatally wounded when a handgun fell from a closet shelf and discharged, and Arthur died of a heart attack in his office in 1959. After inmates sued over brutal and inhumane conditions, a federal consent decree forced the prison to close in December 1990.

Three years later Hollywood arrived: the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption was shot largely at the empty reformatory, followed by Air Force One and others. The Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society, formed in 1995, saved the building and now runs history tours, film tours and a huge range of paranormal programs, from ghost walks and public hunts to private overnight investigations. It also stages the Blood Prison haunted house each autumn.

The ghost stories gather around the Glattkes and the cell blocks. Staff say a scent of rose water drifts through the second floor near Helen’s former bedroom and that the smell of cherry pipe tobacco recalls Arthur. Guides tell of smoke in the West Attic where the fire survivors were housed, a wooden chair in a dark room that moves and vibrates, and voices, footsteps and shadow figures in solitary confinement and the cell blocks. The Glattkes’ youngest son has said that much of what is written about his parents’ haunting is sensationalized and inaccurate.

Rose-water perfume and pipe tobacco smells, phantom smoke, voices, footsteps, shadow figures, touches and a moving chair – reported by staff, ghost-walk guests and paranormal investigators.

The warden’s quarters and second floor of the administration building, the East and West Cell Blocks, solitary confinement (“the Hole”), the West Attic, the chapel and the “chair room”; mostly during evening walks and overnight hunts.

The Shawshank Redemption made the reformatory a pilgrimage site for film fans, and it has been featured on Travel Channel paranormal shows. The preservation society hosts ParaPsyCon, the INKcarceration festival, the Blood Prison haunted attraction and the Ohio Corrections Museum, which holds the Ohio Penitentiary’s electric chair.