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Old Montana State Prison Investigation Report
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By West Coast Ghost Hunters– (Click for Website)

Brief History

The Old Montana Prison “The Big House” was originally constructed in the spring of 1870 with inmate labor. The first wing was completed by October 6th, 1870, and the first convict was received on July 2, 1871.

The prison was used through the 1800's for many brutal outlaws of the times. This turn-of-the-century fortress was home to at least one member of Butch Cassidy's "Wild Bunch".
Maximum security was built in 1907 and was originally used as the Women’s Prison, in 1959 it was turned into Maximum security.

A few riots took place in the prison one of them was on March 8, 1908. The facility was overcrowded with 400 inmates at the time when prisoners George Rock and William A. Hayes attempted to escape. They fatally slit Deputy James Robinson's throat with a pocketknife, and severely slashed Warden Frank Conley before officials subdued them. George Rock was hanged outside by east side near the south Siberia entrance. William Hayes was hanged in the south east corner of the yard, near Tower 1 in 1909. They were hanged in the prison yard as an example to the other men.

There was a small riot in 1957, and on April 16th, 1959 there was a major riot where inmates Jerry Myles and Lee Smart Jr, led about 12 other inmates in an escape attempt during which Deputy Warden Theodore Rothe was shot and killed, and Warden Powell was temporarily held hostage. This riot lasted for three days and ended on April 18th, 1959 with the murder/suicide of the two ringleaders. Jerry Myles shot Lee Smart Jr, and then turned the gun onto himself after seven teams of the National Guards successfully assaulted the prison and were about to enter the Tower they had been held up in. Myles and Smart were both found dead in the top of the Tower. There bodies were drug down the several flights of stairs by their feet and placed in the yard next to the tower before the coroner took them away.

The Old Montana Prison has held thousands of inmates over it‘s more than 100 years as a working penitentiary, many of which were not good people. Prisoners came and went, but some left a lasting impression and some of that negative energy remains there today.



An example of just one man that spent a short time there; Charles Panzram, a killer with many aliases. Panzram was inmate “Jeff Davis” # 3194 at Montana State Prison in 1913. At that time there was very little assigned labor for the inmates who spent most of the day in their cells, lying in their bunks or wandering outside in the prison yard. Charles Panzram when speaking of his time in Deer Lodge has said “At that place I got to be an experienced wolf. I would start the morning with sodomy, work as hard at it as I could all day and sometimes half the night. I was so busy committing sodomy that I didn’t have time left to serve Jesus as I had been taught to do in those reform schools.” He served out his full sentence at Deer Lodge and on March 30, 1915, he was released. He later wrote "In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry."

Even with all the bad the prison walls have seen, there were still inmates that weren’t all bad, some were innocent people living in a tuff era, for example; The Montana Sedition Project Imagine going down to your local brewpub or coffee shop. You meet some friends. The talk turns to the war. You criticize the President and his wealthy supporters. Next thing you know your being grabbed and hustle down to the local police station. You are arrested on a charge of sedition. Within months you are indicted, tried and convicted. The judge sentences you to 5-10 years in prison, and off you go! This happened during World War I, to 76 men and three women, they were convicted of the crime of sedition in Montana in 1918 and 1919.They discovered very painfully that their free speech rights had been stripped away by the state legislature. This was possibly the harshest anti-speech law passed by any state in the history of the United States. Forty of those men, and one woman served prison terms at the state penitentiary in Deer Lodge under sentences of up to 20 years. They were sent there for simply expressing their opinions, about President Wilson, about America's entry into World War I, about the armed forces, or about some other government agency. One man was sentenced to 7 - 20 years for saying the wartime food regulations were a "big joke."

A well known, well liked inmate named Paul Eitner, nicknamed "Turkey Pete" by the guards and prisoners because he tended the turkeys the prison sold. He was convicted for two murders in 1918 (not sure what the circumstances were). He occupied Cell #1 spent 49 years behind bars. Turkey Pete was so well liked by everyone they let him believe he bought the prison and ran it. He would write fake checks worth millions to pay the guards, prisoners salaries, and all the prison expenses. At one time he seen one of the guards (by this time they were called corrections officers) slip on a stairs of the prison, Turkey Pete asked him if he was going to sue them. He thought he owned and ran the prison until his death inside his cell in 1967. They have his cell all lit up, with a photo of him in it, and all of his belongings for viewing. His was the only funeral ever held inside the prison.



There have been several deaths that occurred during the years the prison was operating, just a few of them are; 1960s, Larry Cheadle was serving a term for car theft. He was unruly and disruptive, but the guards had special punishment for such inmates. Beneath the 1912 cell block were six dungeon-like cells hollowed out of the bedrock known as “The Hole.” A mattress, a pitcher of water, a bucket for waste, and total darkness were the only amenities. On Halloween morning, 1966, guards placed Cheadle below in the cell where a previous inmate hanged himself from an overhead pipe. A guard found Cheadle dead six hours later. The incident raised questions because he had a heart murmur, but did pipes outside the cell emit enough steam to cause overheating? The coroner found body heat present hours after death his internal organs were warmer than his hands. In other words, Cheadle appeared to have cooked to death. Inmates claimed that he had been beaten and that guards removed his bloody mattress and burned it. The official report however included no inmate interviews. 1974, Calvin Larouqe was attacked in the old laundry (current gift shop) and died 4 hours later in the infirmary.

1974, Diamond Dan Kartoski died of an alleged heart attack, but is believed to of been murdered by Chuck Corliss 1978, Ronald Hawk an escaped prisoner was hiding above the maintenance shop, where they stored jean material for pants the prison workers made. He had made himself a little cave out of all the material and had been hiding there for a few days. A fire started and he was found dead burned by the fire trying to escape it.

The prison was closed as a functioning penitentiary in 1979 when the new Montana prison was built and ready five miles west of Deer Lodge.

Inadequate funding and overcrowded conditions plagued this old prison for over 100 years.

Since closing it’s doors for good to inmates, there have been movies made at the old prison:

Fast Walking (1980, James Wood, Kay Lenz, Tim McIntire)
Runaway Train (1984, John Voight),
Crossers (1990, Low budget never released)
Diggstown (1990, James Wood, Louis Gosset Jr.)
The Last Ride (1994, Mickey Rourke, Lori Singer)

The Investigation

West Coast Ghost Hunters (WCGH) conducted two nights of investigating for paranormal activity at the Old Prison Museum located at 1106 Main St. Deer Lodge, Montana 59722

The first night investigation was March 31st 2006. This was a Co-investigation with Tortured Souls Investigations (TSI) and guest from the prison.

The second night investigation was April 1st 2006. This was with WCGH and guest from the prison.

WCGH Investigators
Stacey Green
Kristie Murphy
Nicole Bruce
Jessie Kruse

Equipment used
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828 digital camera
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P92 digital camera
Nikon 3200 digital camera
Kodak CX 6230 digital camera
Canon 35mm motion camera
Sony handy cam DCR-DVD403 infrared video camera
Sony DCR-DVD101 infrared video
Multidetector II Profi
Tecpel digital EMF field testers
Lorex night surveillance camera
Emerson VHS recorder
Raytek thermal scanner thermometers
Sony digital voice recorder ICD-B16
Olympus digital voice recorder DS-330
RCA digital voice recorder
Editing software
Adobe Audition 1.5 for EVP
Microsoft Digital Imaging suite 2006 for pictures
Emerson dual recorder for converting VHS tapes to DVDs
Unexplained Activity

There are many unexplained occurrences that have been witnessed over the years from staff and guest at the Old Prison Museum. Reports have been made at many of the locations inside the prison walls. Witnesses have experienced; feelings of not being alone when they are, hearing many strange things like talking, yelling, screaming, singing, whistling, footsteps either walking or running, tapping, clanging, cell doors creaking like they are opening or closing, what sometimes sounds like key chains rattling. There have been several guest and staff that have been touched, and some that have even been grabbed by the throat. There are cold spots or cold breezes when there is no breeze. There are also hot spots, places were it can get so hot it feels like your in an oven. All these things happen in different locations inside the Museum. Staff members that work at the Museum have on several occasions reported while up into the tower where Jerry Miles and Lee Smart died, a feeling of someone tugging on the back of their shirt. Orbs and flashes of light have also been seen in the "Death Tower." One of the staff member reports to have developed shingles after she and another staff member had an encounter with a shadowy figure that touched her.

There are reports of staff smelling an odor of burning or charred flesh coming from the upstairs area of the maintenance room where an escaped prisoner perished in a fire.

It was learned that the where the car museum is built now was once the prison cemetery. There is no proof on whether all the bodies were relocated or if there are some that still remain under the building that stands today. There been reports of staff and guest seeing an "off-white" figure in the back of the maximum security ward. A staff member that was mowing the lawn around maximum security reported feeling like she had been grabbed by the neck. Where the galloping gallows is stored there strange sound heard and a cold presence. The hole is a small sub-chambered room with intense cold and some small cells, one in particular, first one to the left, is very cold and has a foul odor, with a evil threatening presence, and people have been known to be pushed back up the stairs trying to leave the room as if to get them going much faster than they are moving.
One witness claims “I saw this man standing in the window of a prison tower. He looked like a jail guard, he looked at me and kind of twisted his eyebrow as if he were examining me from the tower, and then he was gone. The tower I had seen him in had been damaged by a fire in the 1960s and some guards were killed in the fire“.

There have been so many reports over the years of paranormal activity that WCGH decided to spend a weekend investigating this historical location to see what they may be able to capture.

Investigation Report

Our investigation of the Old Montana State Prison began on Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 1:45 PM. The first thing the WCGH team did was to talk with the museum staff to get any personal experiences with the prison haunting. After recording the witness accounts the team met up with the founders of another paranormal group TSI, and a day time tour of the prison began at 3:10 PM. TSI showed the WCGH team all the places where evidence was found in previous investigations. Several photographs were taken around the prison, some of them exhibiting evidence of paranormal activity with orbs and ectoplasm. In Maximum security by one of the cells, the first one upon turning the far back corner WCGH members Jessie and Kristie both felt different sensations.

Jessie reported a feeling of pressure in her head, and Kristie had a feeling of a women with a J name and felt sadness. This was the same area TSI members had got an EVP on one of their investigations there of a women maybe saying the name Nancy. Photo’s of the cell were taken but there was no photographic evidence captured. After the day tour, the teams dispersed to gather their equipment. Everyone returned to the prison and the first night's investigation began at 9:30 PM with members of WCGH, TSI and a few guest from the prison.

Temperature and EMF readings were taken in the museum gift shop. Temp readings stayed at a steady 56-58 degrees and the EMF readings were between 2 and 5. The EMF reader jumped up to an 8 in the back right corner of the gift shop by the restrooms where an inmate had once been killed, but it was determined that it was picking up the energy from the main power source to that section of the building.

At 10:30 PM the groups moved out into the yard where a protection prayer was said before continuing the investigation. At 10:40 the groups moved into the shower room of the cell house building. The temperatures ranged from 41 to 43 degrees and the EMF read from 2-3. Photos were taken that captured orb activity. At 10:45 PM, temperatures were taken in the chapel which ranged from 37-38 degrees. More photos were taken that showed orbs. Down in the "Hole" EMF readings were between 3 and 5. Temperature stayed around 36 degrees, until the group reached the back area of the hole by the cell the two inmates had died in. At that time the temp was jumping from 36 to 40 degrees. The numbers on the EMF reader were jumping around at random from 3-5, and a photo was captured of a small amount of Ecto on the other side of the hole. The feelings in this area for a lot of the researchers were negative and there were feelings of not being alone.

At 10:50 the group moved back into the chapel where photos were taken of orbs. This area there were feelings of being watched. At 10:54, in the cell block by the first couple cells in the left row of cells, the EMF detector was jumping to 10 and was in the red. Photo’s were taken in the area that revealed large amounts of ectoplasm. All researchers held their breath when taking pictures throughout the night since it was cold, so breath was ruled out. The temperature stayed pretty steady from 37-39 degrees. The temperature in the back of the cell block ranged from 35 to 37 degrees. The feelings some of the researchers got in the Cellhouse areas were almost as if the prison was still full of inmates and guards. You could almost see some of them still in their cells, or hanging over the ledges watching us.

At 11:10 the group entered what is now been nicknamed the "Death Tower." This is the tower that Jerry Myles and Lee Smart died in. As we reached the top of the tower one researcher felt as if she was stopped and almost pushed back down the stairs. The temperature at the top of the tower ranged from 42-46 degrees. Photos were taken and an EVP session was conducted. No strange occurrences happened during this time, but you could almost feel an angry, nervous, very negative energy all around.

At 12:15 the Administration building was investigated. The temperature ranged from 41 and 44 degrees in the front office and the warden's office ranged from 40-41 degrees. There was an EMF spike from a 2 to 12 in the warden's office. This area was where two wardens were killed, both bodies were found laying in almost in the same exact spots 50 years to the day apart. Photos were taken and an EVP session was conducted. Orbs were captured in some of the photo’s. In the back of the Admin. building the temps ranged from 40-42 degrees.

The group took some time to change batteries and tapes in the camera equipment then moved on to the Maximum Security building which used to be the women's building of the prison. The time was 1:10 AM and the temperature inside the building ranged from 39-41 degrees. Photos were taken and EVP session was conducted. An EVP of a what sounds like a women was captured on one of the recorders.

At 1:50 the group moved into the old Infirmary building, which is now the Prison Life exhibit. The temperature ranged from 40-42 degrees. At 2:07, still in the infirmary, the Multi detector jumped to 10 and was into the red. An EVP session was conducted, and some photo‘s were taken that showed a couple orbs.

The team moved back into the maintenance area where the prisoner was burned and conducted an EVP session. In this session two EVP’s were captured on different recorders of what sounds like it may be a man. The temperature stayed between 64 and 65 degrees.

The groups moved back to the Cell house to take some more photos and at 3:40 AM in the right hand column of cells, Nikki felt a stabbing pain in her right shoulder. She was standing in an area where she had previously taken a few photo’s of ectoplasm.

At 3:48, Jessie reported seeing lights moving in the chapel area that seemed to have no source. The teams walked around and took more photos, then gathered their equipment and ended for the night at about 4:30 AM.

The WCGH team and a couple guest from the prison returned the next night April 1st around 10:30 PM and started the 2nd nights investigation in the Cell house. At 11:07, in the same spot by cells 2 and 4, that the EMF detector was showing a reading the previous night, the Multi detector was once again in the red and the EMF reader was showing numbers between 34 and 49. The large area where the Multi detector was in the red gradually shrank within a few minutes to a small area on the floor directly between the two cells. As photos were being taken of the area and a few did have large amounts of Ecto in them, once again researchers held their breath when taking any photo’s so breath was ruled out. WCGH member Jessie began to feel very warm and had to leave the area. She was sweating and had to remove her jacket, despite the fact that it was cold enough to be snowing a little outside. A short EVP session was conducted in the Cell house and some more photo’s were taken before the team headed back to the Admin. Building to do another EVP session and take some more photo’s around that area.
After leaving the Administration Building we visited a tower called East Siberia still running the EVP and taking photographs. We made our way to the part of the building that held the old cafeteria, the guards tunnel, the old theater, and the TV room. The Multi detector was in the red in the TV room and the EMF meter was fluctuating. A short EVP session was held and photo‘s were taken that showed orbs.

In the new theater a museum staff member that had given the tour for our group felt a cat-like entity run past her leg. There was no sign of any animals present. Photos were taken that showed orb activity . An EVP session was conducted and we captured a couple of EVPs.

The team then went back to the Maximum Security ward where another EVP session was conducted. No EVP was captured at this time but some of the photo‘s did show orb activity.
At 2:00AM back in the hole one of the researchers reported seeing a shadow in the back area were she and another researcher had had feelings the day before. At 2:12AM one of the researchers had been feeling a presence around her and while standing in the cell where the two inmates had died she felt as though someone had poked her back and had the feeling of not being welcome in there.

The last EVP session was held in the Chapel. No EVP was captured at this time but there were a few photo’s taken of Orbs.

The team ending the investigation at 3:30 AM.

Conclusion

Although there were plenty of deaths within the walls of this historical prison there were more men that came into the prison, served their time and were released. It is said that while they were there the prison took their souls. There was more despair inside the walls than deaths and for all its empty cells and buildings this old prison is still an active place.

After our investigations it’s our opinion that the old Prison Museum still has its spirits, ghosts and residual energy that remain there. Some of the energy that remains there seem at peace but there are still some that are not.

Thanks to all the staff at the prison for giving our group the opportunity to investigate this historical location. You have a wonderful place that you have worked very hard on keeping preserved, you should be very proud. It is a place we will never forget! We highly recommend if you are ever in Montana take time to stop into Deer Lodge and tour this wonderful historic Prison and this great little town.

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