The MVD Ghostchaser’s paranormal team conducts Spirit Photography Workshops four times a year. This gives members of other paranormal teams, novice ghost hunters, and folks wanting to learn about ghost hunting a chance to investigate a haunted location in Arizona.

We were given permission to spend the night in the Old Gila County Jail located in Globe, Arizona. Globe is about a 90 minute drive east of the Phoenix area. The jail was built and completed in 1910. Heavy steel doors separated the public from the prisoners. A Pauly single-lever mechanism operated the cell block, said to be brought by mule train from the Yuma Territorial Prison at the time of its closure in 1910. Heating the cells was by a wood stove in the buffer zone. Several years later steam heat was added. There was no cooling. The second floor housed the women’s cells. From this level, another stairway led you to the catwalk bridge over the alley. Prisoners were led directly from their cells to the courtroom using this catwalk. The third floor was one large, concrete dormitory and later used for trustees and those on work release.

A line of ghost hunters formed at the entrance of the Old Gila County Jail ready for “booking” and “finger printing” in order to start their evening’s “sentence” of investigating the facility. Everyone signed in—leaving his or her thumb print on a poster—a memento of our paranormal investigation of the jail.

The investigators were invited to select a cell to store their camera and equipment for the evening. It was very cold so the “inmates” brought chairs, sleeping bags, blankets and heavy jackets to keep warm. Our head warden—Globe Historian, Kip Culver—informed the group they would be allowed to investigate until 3am. He broke the investigators up into two groups. He gave everyone a very informative tour of the Gila County Jail, the old Gila County Courthouse next door, and showed them some haunted spots on the streets of Globe as well.

A Phoenix news reporter came to the location to film a story about the ghosts in the Gila County Jail for a paranormal segment of their newscasts. The reporter interviewed several of the ghost hunters while they demonstrated their ghost hunting tools and equipment. He also spoke with several of the “inmates” in their cells as they expressed psychic impressions they were receiving from deep inside the concrete walls and steel bars.

Before they were confined back to the cells for the evening, a group “mug shot” of the paranormal “inmates” was taken on the steps of the old courthouse. Back inside the jail, everyone found their own area to investigate. All three floors were well covered with night vision cameras and equipment. The MVD Ghostchasers team kept base in the front offices and provided the group with hot coffee, cocoa, soup and a brown paper bag snack.

Our special guest was paranormal investigator Kriss Stephens. Together with tech adviser Mark Christoph, they set up night vision cameras on the second floor and monitored the screens for activity. Kriss was on hand to answer paranormal technique questions and chat about ghostly phenomena. She later demonstrated her automatic writing abilities as we tried to contact the spirits of Kingsley Olds and the young girls he had been accused of murdering in 1911. As Olds awaited trial in isolation, he was mysteriously shot and killed. A bullet was fired from a courthouse window into his cell. Shortly before his death, Kingsley Olds claimed he had a visit from ghosts. He told nurses he saw visions of the girls motioning him to follow them into death.

There were several spirits captured on film during this investigation along with several EVP’s (electronic voice phenomena). The cold, damp evening took a toll on all the investigators. One by one, the ghost hunting “inmates” used their “get out of jail free” cards, packed up their equipment and “bailed out” for home. The last of the “parolees” left at 2:30am. Kip Culver and myself secured the building for the evening leaving the ghostly resident inmates secure in their cells

 

I did find some Workshop Evp’s on the MVD website, but from 2006. Hopefully this will be updated with the new findings. You can head them at MVD Ghostchasers