Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen)

In Rawlins, a Union Pacific railroad town on the high desert of south-central Wyoming, construction of the state penitentiary – a Romanesque stone building designed by Salt Lake City architect Walter E. Ware – stretched through the 1890s, and the first prisoners arrived in 1901. When it opened it had 104 cells and no running water or electricity. Over the next 80 years about 13,500 inmates passed through – including eleven women in its first years, among them 14-year-old Annie Bruce, convicted of poisoning her father, and the “Gentleman Bandit” train robber William Carlisle, who escaped in 1919 and was recaptured a month later.

Life in the “Old Pen” was harsh. The prison’s Death House held both gallows and, from 1936, a gas chamber; nine men were hanged and five died in the gas chamber, and in 1945 Henry Ruhl became the only person executed by the federal government in Wyoming. An inmate was lynched in A Block in 1912. In all, about 200 people died inside the walls from execution, violence, suicide and natural causes. The state moved its prisoners to a new penitentiary on the edge of Rawlins in 1981, and the old building became a museum, joined by the Wyoming Peace Officers’ Museum.

Today some 15,000 people a year tour the cellblocks, the Death House and the prison cemetery on the hill. Ghost stories are part of the draw. Director Tina Hill has said that every paranormal investigation held there turns up some evidence, “so I just tell everyone that we are officially haunted,” and lists staff and visitor accounts of being touched or having their hair tugged, footsteps, whistling, voices calling their names and cell doors opening and closing. The Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures investigated for its eighth season.

The prison also runs Halloween night tours, and its staff tell the stories alongside a frank account of how hard prison life could be on the Wyoming frontier – a reminder that the people who lived and died here were real.

Reports from staff, guests and investigators include touches on the shoulder or back, hair being tugged, footsteps, whistling and voices, hearing one’s name called, cell doors opening and closing, rattling windows, benches moved, small objects disappearing and reappearing, and – during ghost tours – candles in a condemned man’s cell going out and relighting.

A Block, the oldest cellblock; the Death House with its gallows and gas chamber; individual cells linked to condemned men; and the prison cemetery on the hill behind the building.

The prison has appeared on the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and other paranormal programmes. It hosts guided tours, Halloween night tours and the Wyoming Peace Officers’ Museum, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.