NEPRONOMICON

 

Old New-Gate Prison

Part I:  BACKGROUND HISTORY

             Though it may not be Connecticut’s most haunted location, old New-Gate Prison of East Granby is certainly one of the state’s creepiest.  Its reputation as the oldest and most notorious state prison in New England is well deserved.  Now a state owned and operated museum, the site has undergone extensive restorative construction in areas and many of the ruined outbuildings and exterior walls remain.  Friendly and knowledgeable guides assist tourists as well as informative educational video and placards that can be found throughout.  Most impressive and daunting for any visitor, however, is the network of old copper mines in which the inmates had been imprisoned.  One cannot walk these clammy and damp stone passageways without feeling an almost overwhelming sense of the morbid history of the place.

            The extensive underground tunnel network was originally carved into Copper Hill as a result of copper mining operations that began as early as 1705.  By the mid 1700s, the mine ceased to be profitable and was abandoned.  By the 1770s, the most interesting period of its history began as the colonies hurtled toward war with the British and it became necessary for a secure location to store Tories (British sympathizers) and other criminals.  The old copper mine saw its first use as a prison in 1773 when its first inmate, John Hinson, was imprisoned within.  Hinson’s imprisonment lasted only 18 days, however, before he made his escape.  Despite this setback, a guardhouse was built, defenses strengthened, and the place gained a reputation as a nigh escape-proof prison, despite numerous other escapes in later years.  It also gained a reputation for incredibly brutal and inhumane living conditions.

            The new prison was named after another infamous prison of the same name, in England, and soon came to rival its ominous reputation.  Throughout the American Revolution, the most notorious criminals and Tories were sent to New-Gate.  George Washington himself had a group he regarded as “atrocious villains” sent to the facility in 1775 as he believed only New-Gate could contain them.  The prison would remain in use from 1773 until 1827, when all inmates were transferred to the newly constructed state prison in Wethersfield.  During this time, the prison was greatly expanded to include outbuildings, workstations for inmates, a chapel for Sunday services, and a wooden palisade (replaced in 1802 with a sturdier sandstone wall).  The tunnels would see digging again, for a brief time afterward, when the Phoenix Mining Company engaged in a doomed attempt to make it into a profitable copper mine.

            But the 54 years that New-Gate served as Connecticut’s state prison are its most interesting years.  Riots were common, as well as prison breaks, though few documented deaths occurred.  Aside from political prisoners during the war years of the Revolution and War of 1812, New-Gate also housed inmates convicted of the most serious non-capitol felonies.  Murderers and the like were more likely to find themselves on the short end of a rope rather than at New-Gate.  Horse thievery, counterfeiting, burglary, forgery and attempted rape were the most common criminal convictions among inmates.  In the later years of the prison, a few female inmates were taken to New-Gate, but were imprisoned above ground in a building on the west side of the yard that also housed the guards and a treadmill.  There was also on the grounds a stock, a rack and a whipping post for punishing prisoners.  Between forty and sixty prisoners were generally housed at New-Gate at any given time, though by 1827, when they were being transferred to Wethersfield, the inmates numbered 127.

            The first documented death occurred during a prison break on 18 May 1781, in which a guard named Gad Sheldon was killed in the fighting.  He had been bayoneted by a prisoner wielding one of the guard’s muskets.  An old black inmate named Prince died at some point in the tunnels underground.  According to one source, he had died while cruelly shackled to the stone wall and left to rot where he died.  This account is contested by another source, however, that claims ol’ Prince “was a harmless old negro, and during all the last years of his life enjoyed the freedom of the prison.”  Accounts also differ as to whether inmates had died in an escape attempt while digging their way out a long vent shaft.  One source states that the bones of these unfortunate prisoners still lie buried beneath the collapsed stone rubble, the other states that this story is actually a distorted version of a successful escape by several prisoners during the Revolution, under the leadership of one Henry Wooster.

            During another rebellion, on 1 November 1806, inmate Aaron Goomer was shot and killed in the nail shop by a guard named Roe during the fighting.  Goomer and an accomplice had grabbed Smith, a guard, when Roe, hearing the alarm, ran into the shop with his musket and shot Goomer dead, “two balls passed through his head, his hair was singed, and his brains scattered round the shop.”  The attempted jail break died with Goomer.

            Convict Charles Mears died (of apparently natural causes) and is remembered only because another convict secretly removed the corpse from its coffin, hiding it in a bye corner, and snuck inside.  An armed guard named Moses Talcott accompanied two inmates in escorting the coffin for burial a half mile north of the prison.  When the coffin was being laid to rest, Talcott and the convict gravediggers all heard a “strange sepulchral noise” from the box—and fled in terror all the way back to the prison.  The sneaky convict made good his escape and “the rightful occupant of the box was at length discovered.”

            The last known death at New-Gate is the most famous.  It is also the source of the only known ghost legend associated with the prison.  On the last night before the removal of the New-Gate prisoners to the new prison in Wethersfield, on 28 September 1827, a convicted counterfeiter named Abel N. Starkey attempted to climb up the seventy foot well shaft to freedom.  He had apparently bribed the guard, who left the iron-barred hatch off the top of the well.  Unfortunately, Starkey fell to his death.  His body was found the following morning at the bottom of the well.

            Since that time, visitors to the mines have reported seeing various apparitions.  A shadowy form believed to be the shade of Abel Starkey reportedly haunts the old well shaft, and has been seen disappearing up the shaft or lingering about the above-ground well on the outside.  Grayish mist-like apparitions have been spotted within the mine tunnels at various times, many have even been photographed (though these are indistinguishable from the steam-like mist that results from moisture evaporating off the stone).  Lastly, a shadowy Dark Lady has been seen lingering near the old mine entrance in the guardhouse (perhaps Hinson’s paramour who aided his escape?).

            There is, at least, one “haunting” that the museum staff will laughingly admit to.  They have affectionately nicknamed “Abel,” a squirrel that has taken up residence in the old well.  So it can be said that Abel does, indeed, still haunt the old well… in a manner of speaking.

  

SOURCES:

 French, J.M..  History of the Simsbury Copper Mines.  Ebay store: “The History House,” 1887. (reprint)

 Phelps, Richard H.  Newgate of Connecticut: its origin and Early History.  Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1996 (a reprint of the original 1876 work).

 Philips, David E..  Legendary Connecticut.  Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1984. p. 182-185.

 

For Directions and Information:

 http://www.eastgranby.com/HistoricalSociety/newgateprison2.htm

 

 Part II:  THE INVESTIGATION, week 1

             Our first trip out to Old Newgate Prison (or “New-Gate” if you prefer the archaic spelling) in East Granby had not been a planned stop at all.  Our group, the NEPVRG, had just completed its monthly meeting of 31 August 2006 and Matt, Haydon and I remained behind chatting.  Matt then got the idea to head out to Newgate, since none of us three had plans for the day.  I had anticipated a Newgate investigation for some future time, but we had not planned to launch one so soon.  Still, an impromptu jaunt out to one of Connecticut’s spookiest places appealed to all three of us.  We took only a couple EVRs, a digital camera and an EMF meter.

            We arrived in the afternoon.  After paying a nominal fee at the tourist center, we were allowed into the grounds.  We found that many of the ruined walls of the old outbuildings remain, as well as the intact guardhouse.  The building now serves as a museum for the site, with many interesting photos and even an informational video.  Placards with maps and historical facts or anecdotes can be found throughout.

            Of especial interest to investigators is the old well, down which poor Abel Starkey fell to his death.  We gathered many photos of the surroundings before venturing into the underground mine.

            One cannot walk these dank, clammy mine shafts without an overwhelming sense of history and misery.  You do not need to be a Sensitive to feel the lingering oppressive nature of the place.  Just imagine it during its prison days, without electric lights and hardened felons lurking about in the blackness of the caverns and tunnels.

            In the tunnel leading toward Area C (Solitary Confinement), I obtained two pictures with my camera of what I at first thought to be an ectoplasmic mist.  Matt, being a more experienced investigator than I, was quick to school me that the mist is a naturally occurring phenomenon of the evaporating moisture in the tunnels.  Unfortunately, many inexperienced photographers make this mistake, assuming their photographs in these underground tunnels are paranormal.  Even the museum staff have on hand a binder filled with similar “mist” photos.  Still, they certainly look spooky!

            Unfortunately, though we explored the entire area allowed to the public, we obtained no unexplained EMF readings or EVPs in our time there.  Any EVPs we may have acquired would have been hopelessly contaminated anyway due to voices and footfalls of tourists.  In Solitary Confinement, especially, the creepiness of the place is overwhelming.  Shackles imbedded in the cold, damp stone testify to the misery of the place’s former occupants.  Also known as the “sounding room,” a maddening sepulchral echo reverberates from the room—an echo that cannot be recreated anywhere else in the mines.  Voices and noises force themselves back upon the maker’s senses in an eerie sort of cacophony.

            Did the old black inmate Prince Mortimer really die in this room?  Depends on which history you read.  What is agreed upon, is the fate of another inhabitant of Solitary.  Described as “an old negro named Jake,” this unfortunate somehow pulled the iron shackles from around his ankles, up over his calves.  He assumed he could pull them back down, but instead they became stuck.  His legs became hopelessly swollen as he howled in pain until a surgeon was summoned that amputated both his legs.

            After our explorations and fruitless search for evidence, we took our leave of Newgate, at least until some future time when we could bring Gail and a video camera.  We left only with a morbid fascination of the place and disturbing images of its horrific past.

  

Part II:  THE INVESTIGATION, week 2

             I did not have occasion to return to Newgate until the afternoon of 21 September 2006.  Gail and I arrived at 1:10pm, after have stopped at Matt’s home to pick up one of his Sony handycams.  As we had hoped, it was a slow day with no tourists in sight.  Though construction of the guardhouse was ongoing, the noises could not be heard underground.

            Almost immediately upon exploring the outbuildings, Gail complained of a feeling of nausea and an almost overwhelming sense of hopelessness clinging to the place.  Even in the very scenic outdoor chapel ruins, with its barred windows and roofless vault open to the sky, she felt a morbid energy of its oppressive past.  She said that, for inmates allowed above ground for church services, the experience only amplified their despair, knowing that they would be returned to the terrifying darkness of the mines afterward.  The windows served only as a reminder of the freedom denied these inmates.

            Looking out at the ruins of the old workshop, west of the chapel, Gail felt residual memories of wet, soggy ground and that the place was often flooded.  The soggy conditions were a constant annoyance to the inmates forced to work off the expenses of their internment.  People, she felt, primarily male, were herded close together.  Feelings of bitterness and fear remained.  The mental prison of the inmates’ own minds was somehow worse than their actual physical confinement.

            In the guardhouse, she felt that the wooden stocks in the basement area (known as the “stone jar” in its day) were particularly uncomfortable, since a restrained person got splinters in his head if he tried to rest it upon the thick wooden top beam.  She felt an absurd sense of power from the hanging keys, as if the controller of the keys determined the course of other men’s destinies.  From the bunks in the guardhouse, she felt an impression that the job of prison guard was a miserable one, preferable only to being an actual inmate.

            At the stairs leading down into the mines, Gail felt a brief moment of dizziness.  It passed, and we soldiered on.  Within, she felt constant echoes of a multitude of persons’ despair and horror.  She had great difficulty trying to separate any distinct sentience.  She also felt the presence of very young men or boy children (possibly from the site’s copper mining days?).

            Gail had no sensations of any particular presence at the well (where Abel Starkey fell to his death, and is said to still haunt), but had a distinct impression that people had died in the area of Solitary Confinement, or at least been taken there when they died.  I had told her nothing of the history of the place, or its conflicting anecdotes pertaining to this area.

            From the Drainage Tunnel area, Gail had a feeling that inmates had tried unsuccessfully to tunnel their way to freedom, but had either died or been recaptured in the attempt.  I wondered if she might be feeling spirit memories of the historical attempt by Henry Wooster, an imprisoned Tory, and his compatriots (most of whom were recaptured).

            Gail’s impression of the prison followed closely with critics of Newgate’s heyday, that imprisonment here did not rehabilitate at all, only making the inmates worse.  Most historians seem to agree with her—as historian Richard Phelps, writing in 1876, said, “the system was very well suited to turn men into devils, but it never could transform devils into men.”

            On our way out of Newgate, we stopped at the Reception Center.  We spoke at length with the Newgate employees, all of whom seem to have experienced or witnessed unexplainable sounds or wispy apparitions.  Attempts by me to obtain permission for a formal in-depth investigation with our group, however, proved fruitless.  This was to be expected, since the site is a state-owned and run facility.  Later review of the two hours of video footage yielded no paranormal anomalies.

            Overall, I had a feeling that Newgate has enormous potential for paranormal evidence, but since becoming a major state tourist attraction, the professional investigation required to obtain this evidence is next to impossible.