- I'm Mickey.

- And I'm Ryan.

- [In unison] And this is Hiseerie.

(eerie music) - [Mickey] We grew up watching paranormal investigators like Zak Bagans on Ghost Adventures, Ryan and Shane on Buzzfeed Unsolved and Ghostfiles, and Sam and Colby on YouTube.

The semi-casual investigations, people just trying to connect with those who are no longer around or something we just can't understand, and diving deep into true crime cases.

All throughout history, different cultures have believed in the paranormal.

Divine gods, spirits, aliens, shaman, and witchcraft, just to name a few.

Supernatural occurrences are reported all over the world and have become ingrained into pop culture.

Since the beginning of humanity, people have been questioning the bigger picture of existence.

What's really out there?

Aliens, ghosts, Bigfoot?

Well, we want to try it ourselves in our own backyard.

So come with us and explore the paranormal and macabre side of the great Midwest.

but they either did know or overlooked the fact that it was also a swamp land, which caused problems.

Before the prison was here, there's stories of the supernatural, while the prison was here and in all the years since then.

every month, each county would send a check in there to pay for the prisoners.

If they were late with that check, he turned the prisoners loose, no matter what they done.

Yeah.

No check, no prisoner.

- Tonight, we're starting our look at the Warden's house in Stillwater, Minnesota.

- In this two-part season premiere, we're going to be visiting the Warden's house to learn the prison's history and then to do a paranormal investigation.

- We're from two different departments at Pioneer PBS and share a fascination with all things macabre and supernatural in history.

- If you like this episode, please like, comment, and subscribe down below.

If you want to see more behind the scenes and extra full-length investigations, check out our Patreon at patreon.com/Hiseerie.

(eerie music) Before we get into the history of the property, we'd like to give a content warning.

This episode will have conversations and imagery that might be distressing for some viewers.

We'll be covering topics such as murder, assault, and suicide.

- So we're here at the Warden's House Museum, and the warden was the man in charge of the original Minnesota State Prison.

And the prison was first built in 1853, same as the Warden's house.

Before that though, there was a lot of history on this land.

We sit next to a natural ravine where the prison once was.

There are high cliff walls on three sides of this horseshoe-shaped ravine.

It sits right along the beautiful St.

Croix River and was long, long used as a stopping place, a camping spot for the local Native American tribes, the Chippewa or Anishinaabe and the Dakota.

And this spot along the St.

Croix River was sort of historically a border between the two groups who had long been enemies.

And in 1839, there was a lot of trouble between the two groups and the Chippewa came and camped in that ravine, which they had done many times.

And early the next morning before the sun came up, they had no idea they were about to be ambushed by a group of Dakota who had come down the river and found the high ground and saw them below and attacked.

It was very one-sided battle.

No Dakota were hurt, but over 50 Chippewa were killed.

And not just killed, they were scalped, literally decapitated some of them, mutilated and left.

A lot of bloodshed and grief and sadness in that spot years before the prison.

The date of the battle was July 3rd, 1839.

And it was just 10 years later that, that Minnesota decided, "Hey, we need a prison and we're going to build it right there."

So it was very recent history at the time.

And the legend says from those years that that spot is haunted.

Specifically, they say in the summer when the watercress blooms, which is about end of June, early July, where the land is haunted.

And the legend says that you can hear the cries of people and you can see the fog and the mist.

- Part of the reason that site was picked, one of our leading citizens, McKusick, who was the first mayor, happened to own that land that he wanted to get rid of it.

And so he sold it to the territory for about $400.

The prison was built on a swamp land, which it shouldn't have been.

And so I think they thought it was a perfect place for the prison, but they either did know or overlooked the fact that it was also a swamp land, which caused problems.

Yeah.

And men got sick in there.

You know, tuberculosis was very common.

They also had escapes, especially in the early years, and that's partly due to the very poor way the prison and this house were built.

Several people, including our very first warden, submitted designs for the building of that prison.

And so what happened was the lowest bidder got the job.

That's what they were looking for, the cheapest way to get it built.

So I don't think any thought was given to really the proper way to build this.

It was strictly cheap, get it built, that's it.

Don't worry about it.

All they did was make repairs because all the wardens were complaining about the poor construction, roof leaking, dampness, walls caving in, unfit water to drink, cold.

They were always asking for money for repairs.

And if they had built this thing properly, like the prison, in the beginning, you wouldn't have had all this stuff.

But anyway, that's the ancient history.

- So the home and the prison both were completed in 1853, although they began in 1851.

Both the house and the prison and the wall were constructed out of limestone, locally quarried limestone.

In fact, just on the other side of where the prison sat is a huge limestone quarry that built this whole area.

The walls of the main part of the warden's house are two feet thick.

That's why the window wells are so deep.

- The wardens, some of the good, some of the bad.

You know, we had some that, you know, that never should have been here as wardens.

Not their fault.

They were appointed.

They did not have the qualifications.

And we had two out of the 13 who were professional, only two.

But the rest of them, I think, tried to be, you know, decent wardens, but they just didn't have the experience, the knowledge to be able to really do what was required.

And the prisoners suffered because of that.

- Some of these guys only lasted a matter of weeks or months.

It was a very difficult job.

A lot of the men didn't want the job.

The warden of the state prison was appointed by the governor.

Most of these men didn't know how to run a prison.

They had no experience whatsoever in law enforcement.

It was purely a political appointment.

- A lot of them were either politicians or businessmen, so they saw the prison as a way to make money.

So as an example, Delano, the first warden, okay, every month, each county would send a check in there to pay for the prisoners.

If they were late with that check, he turned the prisoners loose, no matter what they done.

Yeah.

No check, no prisoner.

That's a fact.

- Francis Delano was the very first warden and he kind of set some precedents with business.

Delano, he brought in, purchased his own woodworking machines and put the inmates to work, which is a good thing.

They should be working.

However, he kind of treated it as his private business, which he invested in it.

People didn't think too much of it at the time, and these precedents carried on throughout the prison where they really blurred the lines between a public institution and private business.

Warden number five is a guy named Joshua Taylor, and he came from Taylors Falls, Minnesota.

He started on the job and he's what we would call today a whistleblower.

He started the position and noticed some of these sort of corrupt things happening and pointed it out and nobody wanted to change anything.

Everybody was pretty hunky-dory with the way things were going.

And so he didn't want to play ball, so he moved on.

I think we look at him a little differently now than he was viewed at the time.

Our most notorious warden was a guy named Alfred Weber.

He was known and he lasted about six months altogether.

And no offense to the descendants of Alfred Weber but he maybe belonged in the prison himself as an inmate as opposed to being the warden in charge.

He was known to help himself to money that wasn't his just by taking it.

He was known to order items for the inmates to use, but then never give them to them.

He would sell the stuff.

He would do things like order grade A beef and be reimbursed for it, but then buy the grade F terrible beef and keep the change.

But the big scandal that really did him in was with the women.

Now, here at Stillwater Prison, there were women in the prison from the very beginning in the 1850s.

Some of the women were prostitutes and the scandal that rocked the prison while he was here was that some of these women were allowed to continue working.

Now, of course, they're not spelling out the answers to the questions I have, which are, did he know about it?

How much did he know about it?

Was he participating in the activities?

I'm not sure.

But word did get out, at least to the governor, what was happening and so he is let go kind of quietly.

He's not punished or prosecuted for anything.

But like I said, they learned a lot as they went.

So it's at this point that the state decides we need a board of managers to be responsible for the corrections.

And the institution kind of keeps growing and growing and they realize they need more hands on deck, I think, to keep things running.

Warden number 10 right here is a guy named John Randall.

He was from Winona, Minnesota.

And he's the only warden who kind of got in trouble for being just too nice.

He was a real sweet guy, kind of a pushover.

The inmates loved him.

The guards that worked here did not love him.

And so he is let go, understandably, why you can't run a prison like that.

The next warden in line, they were really looking for a tough guy and they found one maybe a little too tough in Albert Garvin.

He's the only warden known to have been really a violent disciplinarian too much.

So you kind of got to be a tough guy to run a prison, but he was a little too much.

Henry Wolfer, though, I would like to focus on as being the warden that stayed the longest and really made a lot of great changes here at the Stillwater Prison.

- And Warden Wolfer, the last one, was the one that really made things happen here.

He put in all kinds of reforms, parole system, better treatment, better food, library, night school, and he constantly told the state it's unlivable.

They didn't want to spend the money.

That was the problem.

And so finally he convinced them that you have to do this.

And so they went from 10 acres to 160, night and day.

- They really started off as being just a place to lock these guys up and forget about them until their term is expired.

But Wolfer and a few of these other wardens discovered that the men will do a lot better and women if there's a school, if there's jobs and training for them, if there's a band, a choir, chapel, a hospital, a poetry reading circle for heaven's sakes.

They wrote their own newspaper.

They're kind of always adding things and changing things around and trying to make things better, right?

Music was very important to both the families that lived here and the inmates themselves.

The warden bought a phonograph and played music for the inmate.

They started a prison band.

They had a prison choir.

One of the only times at all that prisoners were allowed to use their voice was during Sunday Chapel.

And religious or not, guess what?

Everybody went to chapel because it was the only time they could use their voice to sing.

The prison really became part of the Stillwater community.

Sounds a little odd, but it's true.

They gave tours of the prison all the time to people traveling and visiting.

School children from Hudson would come over and tour the prison.

This is a parade float, right?

They participated in community events.

You could buy prison souvenirs.

- The amazing thing is that that prison lasted for 61 years in those terribly crowded, awful conditions, and almost every warden had said it wasn't fit for pigs to live in, but the state didn't want to spend the money.

That's what it boiled down to.

So it took Warden Wolfer, who had the credentials to convince them, "You have to do this."

And so he made it happen in 1914.

This prison was a very nasty place, overcrowded from day one, stayed overcrowded.

When a prisoner came in there, they would be in a was chain like you see right here so the guard could hang onto them.

They would be in double lock handcuffs, which they could not get out of.

First thing they would do is give him a shower, try to clean him up, get as much information as they could, his name, his age, his height, birthmarks, color of hair, skin, et cetera.

Then they would have a doctor check him out to see what shape he's in.

Was he strong enough to go into that place?

And then the next thing, they'd put him in the barber chair.

They would give him a shave with a friendly old straight razor, and then they would shave half his skull because if he escaped, the people in town would know it's an escape prisoner and he would hopefully be arrested.

The next thing they would do was take mugshots using this actual camera with glass negatives.

This is one of my favorite guys, Nicholas Kill, that was a good name for him.

He grew up in Germany, and apparently when he was a boy, he was kicked in the head by a horse and things were not right from that point on.

He somehow gets over here, commits some crimes.

They put him in there.

They gave him a roommate and he caved in the skull of the roommate.

So he was not too too nice of a guy.

Over 200 people died in that prison from tuberculosis over the years.

You had suicides, you had a few killings, but overall, very nasty place.

Let's say that you have committed a crime, you have broken the law, you find yourself on that terrible place next door.

You wake up the first morning, you're in a five by seven foot cell with an eight foot ceiling.

This cot actually came from the old prison.

Maybe you've got a chair, you've got your little chamber pot right here, you got a water jug, maybe you got a few pictures on the wall.

That's it.

That's your world for who knows how long.

- [Speaker] The prison population started with six cells is all.

It grew and grew and grew.

Eventually there were over a thousand men next door with only about 600 and some cells, so they were doubling up in those cells eventually, right?

- [Speaker] So 5:45 in the morning, the bell rings.

You have minutes to make that bed up, make sure the cell looks okay.

In the summertime, they were allowed to shower once a week.

In the wintertime, every other week.

So you can imagine what it was like in that place.

Not good.

- [Speaker] All day, every day, the inmates are being watched by guards and their behavior scrutinized.

Every inmate gets a rule book and there are lots and lots of rules besides no talking.

- [Speaker] When a prisoner came in here, they were given second grade status, which means they wore that dark gray short gold suit you see right there that allowed them to eat in the dining hall, to have tobacco and to have visitors.

And if they behave themselves and follow the rules, they could move up first class, light gray suit.

Now we're talking more privileges, better food, more tobacco, more visitors.

But if they did not behave themselves and many didn't, they went the other way, third class, striping suit.

Now we're talking punishment.

- [Speaker] We've got punishment logs where every day the guards are writing up infractions.

Inmates who, their collar is down, their hat is crooked, they missed a button, they didn't eat all their bread, their pillow is on the floor.

They didn't make their bed.

They waved at somebody.

There are pages and pages and volumes of punishment logs where these inmates are getting busted all day every day for kind of every move that they make.

- [Speaker] There might be a ball and chain around the ankle.

They might be thrown into the hole in darkness on a bare floor with a piece of bread and a bucket of water for days at a time.

They might be handcuffed, like in this picture, on their tiptoes to the jail cell for hours at a time, or they might be in a stray jacket like the one you see right here.

- [Speaker] And not to mention the beatings that happen pretty regularly as well.

- [Speaker] All the guards carried in those days steel-tipped canes like these.

And on occasion, if a prisoner really got out of line, they got under the skin of a guard, those guards were not above cracking that prisoner over the head.

And if something bad happened, it went down as an accident.

- [Speaker] The biggest rule in the Stillwater Prison was absolute silence.

The men and women were not allowed to speak to one another, to anybody visiting.

No eye contact was to be made.

Even these men were to be silent and looking at the floor.

Every employee was issued a cane like this.

We've got lots of these.

All the guards have a personalized cane that would have their name or initials carved on it.

The canes have a metal tip on them.

(cane tapping) This is what they used to get your attention in prison.

These were also definitely used in, you know, for self-defense.

Guards were attacked by inmates all the time.

Occasionally they were guards.

Some of the guards were known to be abusive as well is the truth.

And so there are definitely accounts of these being misused as well.

- [Speaker] And I mentioned earlier about guards.

There were all kinds, different kinds you had, like this gentleman who ended up being a priest of all things, was very kind toward the prisoners.

And then you had this fellow right here who was just the opposite.

He liked to beat prisoners and he lasted here way too many years.

- A newspaper article that was written about one of the guards who beat a couple of inmates to death, this was a major expose written by the Saint Paul Globe and accused this deputy warden of all kinds of horrible, violent things that were witnessed by inmates and other prison guards.

And it's a really detailed report about these horrible things that the guy did and nothing happened to Deputy Warden Lemon, except for he sued the newspaper for libel and won.

And so while everything in there's true, as far as I can ascertain, nothing ever happened to him.

(light music) In 1887, the prisoners had wanted to start their own newspaper.

Of course, newspapers then were much more important than today.

Everybody gets their news on their phone, but at that time, newspapers were a big deal, especially in the Stillwater Prison where the men were absolutely forbidden from speaking to one another.

So any kind of communication was really important.

So the Prison Mirror was a huge deal.

It was written by the inmates.

It came out every Thursday.

It covered world news, national news, and what's happening in the cell block news.

So it really kind of covered everything.

The paper was for the inmates to read in the prison, and they could also have it sent out to their friends and family all over America, really, and the state of Minnesota.

So many, many copies of the Prison Mirror were sent out to other people, including other newspapers around the country who would reprint the articles in the Prison Mirror.

And it has the distinction of being the longest running prison newspaper in America.

It's still going to this day, put out by the Stillwater Prison.

I believe it comes out quarterly now but you can still get it.

I think that's a fine tradition to have carried on and by the way, a wonderful, amazing resource all these years later.

All of the copies of the Prison Mirror newspapers have been digitized.

The Minnesota Historical Society has them available online with their digital newspaper hub.

So if you're just dying to know what was happening in the Stillwater Prison years ago, you can find it in the Prison Mirror.

That's how I found the story titled, "Was It Supernatural" that documented the ghost sighting at the prison from 1887.

And that wasn't the only time they wrote in the Prison Mirror about hauntings.

Very often, there were stories in there of certain cells being haunted, that the heat would go up all of a sudden or go down all of a sudden, wild temperature fluctuations and sounds, unexplainable sounds and voices coming from places that shouldn't be.

So even in those days the prison was here, those guys though it was haunted.

Before the prison was here, there's stories of the supernatural, while the prison was here and in all the years since then.

And it's kind of common knowledge around Stillwater.

A lot of people have heard that it's haunted or heard stories.

(light music) - Thank you for watching part one of the Warden's House in Stillwater.

Tune into our next episode to hear a little bit more about the paranormal and watch our investigation.

- If you like this episode, please like, comment and subscribe down below.

If you'd like to support us or our station, you can find full length investigations and behind the scene content on our Patreon at patreon.com/Hiseerie.

(eerie music) (birds chirping) (eerie music)