The Haunted Yuma Territorial Prison

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During February and March 2021, I spent several weeks in Yuma, Arizona. While I was there enjoying the seventy-three-degree weather, I took some time and visited the Yuma Territorial Prison State Park.
The prison opened its doors on July 1, 1876, while Arizona was still a U.S. territory. It closed up on September 15, 1909. During its time, the 3,069 prisoners, 29 of whom were women, served their sentences for crimes such as polygamy, murder, and robbery in this hellhole. Some of the more notable inmates included: train robbers Burt Alvord and Bill Downing; polygamist William Flake; stagecoach robber Pearl Hart; Mexican revolutionary Ricardo Flores Magón; the gunfighter “Buckskin Frank” Leslie, who killed of Billy Claiborne; and Pete Spence, an outlaw involved in the famed Earp-Clanton feud.
In its day, the Yuma Territorial Prison was said to be “impossible to endure, more impossible to escape.” Yuma is the hottest city in the United States, and during its time, conditions at the prison were comparable to the eternal lake of fire of conservative Christian teachings. It was a place of “insufferable heat that made the place an inferno.”
Prisoners were punished with the “old ball and chain,” and a “snake den” was even used to discipline unruly inmates. The dreaded “dark cell” was pitch black cell where inmates were stripped down to their underwear and chained. Guards would throw in scorpions to further torment the prisoners.
The prison was a living hell and there was no escape. It was surrounded by the inhospitable Yuma Desert where the temperature exceeds 90 degrees 175 days a year, and only receives about three inches of rain annually.
As I wandered through the prison yard peeking my head into the old jail cells, I could not help but wonder what it must have been like to have been locked up in those days. It must have been a miserable existence and those stuck there had to have been completely hopeless.
The hopelessness, violence, agony and suffering left behind an energy at the prison that today manifests in the form of paranormal activity. State historian Marshall Trimble said, “The offices and museum have also seen their share of strange happenings. Things are often moved about, lights turn on and off, and on one occasion, coins from the cash register in the gift shop literally flew into the air and landed back in the drawer!”
Trimble told the story of a reporter in the aforementioned dark cell: “One reporter planned to stay in the cell overnight shackled to a ring bolt for 48 hours with a jug of water and a loaf of bread, but after 37 hours called for help to be released insisting that she felt she wasn’t alone in the cell.”
Other strange phenomena in the prison include cold spots, anomalous photographs, murmuring voices, the feeling of being touched, and more. There is even a story of a little girl that haunts the prison who drowned in the Colorado River. She pokes and pinches visitors she doesn’t like.
I did not experience anything strange during my visit to the prison, but it certainly fits the bill for the type of place where you would expect creepy things to happen. And I can say that I certainly would not want to spend any time in the dark cell with the door closed!

[@patrioticyank4940]

Well that's one hell hole i surely wouldn't of wanted to be in brutal it made me think of that Western the movie 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe anyway great video 😃