In 2007 at the facility I work in we had a suicide. A young inmate hung himself in his cell and was unable to be resuscitated. The coroner's report would list time of death on the way to the hospital by suffocation or more general, lack of oxygen. In the short amount of time the inmate had, he managed to crush his larynx with a bed sheet made into a rope, so no matter what help he was being given nothing could revive him from his goal of death. I know this is very common amongst prison settings and is seldom remembered years later. Some say ghost have unfinished business and that is why they hang around. I only write this because I knew the inmate and the fellow Officers, who knowing me brought the story to my attention. Bear with me while I try and lay the scene and the occurrence as best as I can remember.
Several Officers run the housing units were the inmates are housed this particular inmate was in the mental health dorm of the Maximum confinement unit where I used to work. The housing unit is a two-story unit with individual cells housing at most two inmates per cell, generally in mental health the inmates are housed alone. Only trained Officers are assigned to these units, meaning they have some degree of knowledge in mental health, human behavior and have a calm demeanor. The dorm has two Officers assigned to mental health dorm and they are relieved by a Sergeant or Officers with similar training usually the same Officers will work the dorm for years at a time.
During a count Officer Jones was checking all cells and noticed that in cell #10 that an inmate was standing in the cell looking out the window towards the stars. Officer Jones checked his clipboard to see which inmates were being housed in the cell being as there were two inmates asleep in their bunks and one standing. He recognized the names and knew both but did not recognize the inmate standing observing the sky so intently. He called down to Officer Smith and asked who the third inmate was in cell #10. Officer Smith checked his computer and logs and told Officer Jones that there were only two inmates assigned to the cell.
Officer Jones went down to the officer's desk and began looking through the "head" sheet, which shows all inmates names and a mug shot photo. The inmate in question could not be found on the sheet; both Officers decided they needed to check the cell. Upon arrival at the cell door they both only noticed two inmates, still asleep in their bunks and the third was no where to found. They opened the cell door checked the walls, vents and anywhere else a tunnel could have been dug to no avail. Officer Smith then asked for a description of the inmate that Officer Jones had seen. Officer Jones described a slender build, medium height, black male possibly in his late teens or early 20s. They had several inmates fitting that description so they went cell by cell and checked every bunk. All the inmates were accounted for, all asleep in their bunks.
A few nights went by and Officer Jones was telling his story to a fellow Officer who had stopped by the zone to get some coffee and "chew the fat". The Officer thought it was funny that full grown men could still believe in such fairy tales and proceeded to poke fun at the Officers and the ghost in question. When all the Officers present noticed a black transparent cloud move from the lower staircase, linger for a few seconds then enter the supply closet. They each said as the objected moved the lights would dim but the wall and brick could still be seen through the dark smoke. The next night they noticed the black transparent cloud in the visitation area on the upper tier in the housing unit moving through the rooms one by one, then it would descend the stairs and enter the supply closet.
As I began writing this I had the opportunity to work on this pod for a night and figured it would be a good chance to see if anything out of the ordinary would happen. Nothing did but I was told by several inmates that there has been a little girl roaming the housing unit and they called her Dixie. I asked the inmate why they called her that and he said due to her having deep blue eyes and a pale white completion. The inmate even went as far as to show me a picture of her that he had drawn. In the picture it shows a girl possibly about 7 years old in clothing that could only be described as Sunday dress clothes, medium height and slender build with long hair that the inmate said was black. He told me she never speaks but she walks the floor every night and she has been turning on showers and lights on and off.
I will stick with this one because it has caught my interest not so much the black cloud being as I could understand why it would be at this place. All the "dark" energy surrounds a place like this so it is not so far fetched to see a negative entity. But the little girl makes no sense at all, why would it be here and what connection does it have to this place: perhaps a victim coming back to haunt its tormentor in life or just a wondering lost spirit or possibly maybe just a figment of the inmates imagination?
The names of the Officers in this story are generic names that I just plucked from the sky; I will not post the real names even if they wanted me to.
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