Whether I’m out on tours, a ghost hunt, or if I’m talking with a volunteer at the Ohio State Reformatory, sometimes the topic of “how did you get started volunteering here” comes up.  My story is a lot different than most.  Its different and I had no idea that morning when I got up that the patient I met at work would start me on a new hobby. 

So here it goes.

At my real jobs, I have two altogether, I work in Orthopedic Physical Therapy and in Sports Medicine.  I am the real life punch line of “going to school for eight years and not being called doctor”, from the movie Tommy Boy starring Chris Farley.  If I’m scheduled to work in the post-operative unit in the mornings I’m used to seeing total joint replacements of knees, shoulders, and hips, and sometimes back fusions.  There’s whole medical potpourri of diagnoses in the hospital all waiting to be transitioned to their respective home, assisted living facility, rehabilitation unit at a nearby hospital or a skilled nursing facility.   When I work with these people I have no idea who there are when I get there, where they’re from and what they do for a living.  This particular morning was just like every other one but one patient I ended up working with seemed to help me with breaking the ice when I arrived.

When you go into a patient’s room its like going to someone’s home.  You knock on the door and ask if you can come in and you introduce yourself  to the patient and to the family and what department you work in.  You’re a stranger to them.  When I arrived in this gentleman’s room he had a back brace on under his t-shirt and he was sitting up in his chair.  The shirt he had on read “Ohio State Reformatory, Mansfield, OH”.  Immediately my ice breaking opportunity was there to start off the conversation, “Please tell me you were a prison guard because if you’re a paroled prisoner or wanted by the FBI this is going to turn out very badly for me”.  He smiled and told me that he often takes his daughters to Mansfield to go on ghost hunts since his kids are in college and are away from home.  He told me that its a way they can spend some family time together and since his kids are used to staying up late in school, going on a ghost hunt and being up until 5am was nothing for them.  He told me the pictures he’s taken, the people he’s met and the historical information of the OSR building.  I knew that OSR was used in Shawshank but I never been there, never been on a ghost hunt and didn’t know you could volunteer there.

When I left work that night I Googled “Ohio State Reformatory” on the internet and looked at the information on the website and looked at videos on youtube.com and Facebook.  About a month later I went to my first meeting and didn’t know what to expect. 

On April 15, 2012 OSR had a meeting for first time volunteers.  The first person who went to volunteer that I met there was Barb from Columbus.  She had done ghost hunts at the Bizman Building in Mansfield and helped with the clean-up at OSR back in February that year.  My primary intensions of volunteering was just learning the history of the building, the inmate accounts and anything I could learn about the hollywood movies that were shot there.  The best part I knew about volunteering in Mansfield was that I knew there was no way that I could bump into any of my patients’ or coworkers’ from work and it could be my “leisure time” away from work and help de-stress. 

Mary and Paul, the administrators at OSR, introduced themselves and talked about the different opportunities you could have volunteering there and where you could start.  Initially I signed up to work in the Archives Department with Shannon, the Sunday Tours with Ron and Ghost Walks with Becky.  I knew nothing about ghost hunts or anything about ghosts.  I had never seen Ghost Adventurers, Ghost Stories, Paranormal State, etc. on television so I was satisfied with what I had signed up for.

A few weeks later I came into OSR to my first Archives meeting with Shannon.  Myself, Barb and Joe, a former police officer now volunteer at OSR, all showed up to learn about Archives.  Shannon showed us some of the artifacts in the area such as old medical records from the 30’s and 40’s, old shanks, an OSR fire helmet and an old set of belly chains and leg shackles.  As we were viewing the artifacts I told Shannon that I wish we could visit the cemetery at OSR but it was on state property and couldn’t view any of the tombstones up close.  After I told her this she told me to put on some white gloves and go into a box and pull out the top sheet of paper.  It was an old diagram of the prison cemetery with the names of all the inmates who were buried at OSR and their families did not claim the bodies.  I was blown away.  Up until then I was told that we didn’t know who was buried out there in the cemetery but with the map now available we could identify everyone buried.  Ohh the stories I would learn and information I would attain later that year from the old gal.

Afterwards Shannon took us up to the attic on the West Cell Block.  This had been the first time I had gone up to that room.  When we were there she showed us drawings on the walls, inmate names, prisoner numbers, just a lot of graffiti from inmates in the 1920’s up to the 1970’s and it looked like they just wrote their names on the walls with pencil a few hours before but it had actually been up there for the past 90 years!  I was immediately hooked on what else I could find out about OSR historically.  Since I’ve been helping with Archives, Ghost Walks, Tours and now Ghost Hunts with Scott, my goal every time I go to OSR is to find out one new thing about OSR that I didn’t know before to help cure my urge for knowledge of the building. 

The volunteers that I work with have helped me with all of the information I’ve received but most of all are the former prisoners and guards that I have spoken to when they come back to OSR.  To hear about their experiences from them firsthand is something that you cannot read in a book or watch on television.  Sometimes I feel bad about asking about their experiences here if they were an inmate because I don’t want to focus on the negative of their past but hearing their story is very sobering.  The rest as they say is history.  No pun intended. 

When you volunteer at the Ohio State Reformatory, bumping into former inmates or former guards is icing on the cake.  It happens but its almost like a Cleveland Browns win, its when you least expect it (and I’m saying this as a Brows fan).  You might be leading a tour or pushing for someone’s and another volunteer will come up to you and tell you about someone they met after the tour outside who was a former prisoner and the stories they told you.  It’s unfortunate that you missed it, but it but it happens.

 If you get a chance to visit OSR and you look around each part of the prison, there’s chi-asks at different levels where you can have some video interaction of the history, Hollywood movies, the paranormal, or inmate/guard stories.  When I started volunteering I really enjoyed the former inmate/guard stories.  I watched Ike Webb tell stories of inmates and escape attempts, how inmates would cook in their cells or funny stories of inmates receiving visitors from home.  There was one particular story that I really enjoyed regarding a former prisoner at from 1968-1970 and was pardoned by Bob Taft in 2004.  I must have watched that video every time I walked into OSR and walked into the Central Guard Room last summer.

 During the summer of 2012 I was at the Reformatory on a Saturday just walking around and there was a ghost hunt that night so I decided to stay the whole day.  When I was there I was with Diane, her son Ryan, Eric and Kristen.  They were in the hallway down the steps from the Central Guard Room when I saw them surrounding someone almost like he was a celebrity just taking questions from the audience.  He was wearing sunglasses, jeans and his OSR Volunteer Shirt.  I never met him before and I didn’t know if he was a veteran volunteer and I was just the new guy who wasn’t introduced to him yet. 

 When I walked up to him he was telling stories and I was mesmerized at how he held the group speechless.  Verbally he had them in the palm of his hand.  Afterwards I introduced myself to him and said “Hi Mike, my name is Tom.  I’m a new volunteer.  Nice to meet you.”  When he shook my hand he said “Hi, I’m Mike.  You know I’m a former inmate here.  I was locked up here from 1968 to 1970 and was pardoned in 2004.  So give me your cell phone, your car keys, your wallet, and any change you have too. And put it on the table.”  I was totally caught off guard and just stood silent and surprised.  Talk about awkward silence.  Everyone just laughed.  Then I realized it was the same guy that I had been watching on that chi-asks in the Central Guard Room, only now he was wearing Ray-Bans.  Afterwards Mike was hanging out downstairs in the Bullpen and he just took question after question from all of us.  We were like children and it was story time. 

As we were hanging out in the Bullpen talking, he would talk to some of the guests and answer their questions about The Shawshank Redemption or about prison history.  Then afterwards he would tell the guests what his favorite video was on the chi-asks and he would put his arm over it as he was leaning on it and try to make eye contact with the guests as they watched his videos.  The funny thing was the look on their faces when they realized the video was of Mike getting interviewed and they realized that he was a former inmate.  They looked shocked, kind of like me a few hours before in the hallway upstairs when he jokingly asked me for my possessions.

 Afterwards he talked about his time at OSR back in the late 60’s.  I had heard about his stories from other volunteers but I wasn’t going to leave the area if you paid me to hear his story himself.  Afterwards he spoke on how he was pardoned by State of Ohio Governor Bob Taft back in 2004.  The second part of Mike’s story was just as sobering as the first half when Mike was an inmate at the Reformatory.

 As I heard Mike tell his story over again to other guests who caught half of Mike’s story at OSR and they wanted him to repeat the parts they missed, it looked like Mike was in part story-mode and part therapy-mode like talking about his time helped him heal with his past.  I can’t say for sure if that was the case or not but I got to meet a man who had so much adversity in his life that I cannot imagine and he turned that adversity around to make the system work for him.  That was a great lesson in life and it had nothing to do with prison breaks, The Shawshank Redemption or the paranormal.

 Some people at OSR that volunteer talk about what happened to inmates, guards and wardens there from other volunteers who never did time at OSR.  Mike is an OSR volunteer to saw it, lived it, and breathed it.   If you were lucky to see The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman is quoted saying “Andy Dufresne, a man who crawled through a river of feces and came clean on the other side”.  If you’re luckier, you’ll bump into Mike at OSR and he can share with you his story.  In reality he may drive to paradise on his Harley-Davidson rather than a Pontiac GTO as Andy did, but Mike’s story is just as awakening as you can get a life lesson in courage, strength, adversity, and overcoming life’s obstacles.

When I see Mike at the Reformatory I try not to dwell on the negative with Mike’s experience there but I try to learn from him about what it was like there and try not to be disrespectful during the process.  We can only imagine the time that he spent there from our own perspective.  Of course my cynical side wants Mike to be there when I’m giving a tour and tell one of Mike’s stories there at OSR with a non-suspecting group and see the looks on their faces when I tell them that the inmate that this occurred to was there in the room.  Then I introduce Mike and see their surprised faces, just like mine was when I met him for the first time.  And that’s a bonus on the tour, no charge necessary.   

Tom is a volunteer in the Ghost Hunt, Tour Guide, and Archives programs at OSR.

Today marks my first post as an OSR intern and I have quickly learned that there is never a dull moment here. In my brief time working as an intern, I have seen hundreds of people daily from all over the world.  This week alone, we have had around 150 motorcyclists stop in for a tour as part of their Bike Week event and received visitors from Germany and Japan, which isn’t too shabby for our little establishment. Being a local, it is easy to forget how this place can draw you in. There is something magnetic about the building, once you come here; there is always a part of you that wants to come back. Luckily for me, I get to be here almost every day, which means I get an inside look at all the fun and adventure that comes with being a member of the OSR team.  From the daily visitors to the dedicated volunteers, OSR brings people in and takes hold and in my opinion, is one of the best places to be, so I will be reporting in on all the news from behind the bars…