as said by one of my colleague
What made a skeptical cop become much less skeptical about the paranormal.
About a year ago, I was 25 at the time this happened working as a correctional deputy in a county jail. I had just been out of the academy for maybe 6 or 7 months. The jail I worked in was pretty small, with only a couple of housing units for the different types of inmates. We had one housing unit for the “mental health inmates”, for example.
Parts of the jail were built in the early 1950s, but were retrofitted with some modern tech such as cameras and intercoms. The intercoms were in the jail cells so that the inmates, in an emergency, could reach the floor deputy. They were equipped with a two way mic, so the deputy could talk to the inmate.
Working here, I got to hear many stories about ghosts and unusual occurrences, both from my coworkers and even the inmates. Being the skeptical guy I am, I didn’t really put much thought into the stories.
On this night, I was working the 200 housing unit. It was a housing unit made up of individual cells housing one or two inmates per cell. This unit was designated for the more “high risk” inmates who were more likely to assault staff. Most of them were mentally ill and/or insane.
At 9:15PM, per our usual schedule, we turned off all the lights in the housing unit, and did a final count to make sure all inmates were accounted for. It was towards the end of my shift so I was quite tired and ready to go home.
Everything was quiet and all was well. But then I got a notification on our control computer, indicating that an intercom in one of the inmates cells was activated. I “picked up” the call, and asked the inmate what was wrong.
All I heard was static and a weird metallic sound. I brushed it off as a glitch or error and went back to reading my favorite gun and gear magazine.
A few minutes later, I got another notification from the same cell. I picked up, and again asked what was wrong. And sure enough, I heard the same weird and unsettling noises. This time they were quite loud and eerie. I hung up and decided I’d make a note of the issue for maintenance, annotating it in my shift notes.
About 30 minutes before my shift was over, I got another notification from that same cell. Cell 215. Annoyed and ready to lose my shit, I answered the call. This time, I could faintly hear a strange sound, much different than the other two calls. It almost sounded like someone choking and struggling around the room. I jumped up and told the other housing deputy about what I was hearing.
We hurried out of the control room and ran over to the cell. I shined my flashlight into the cell while the other deputy stood by me. But, a shocking realization came over me. The cell was empty. The bunk beds were bare. And no one was inside.
My partner suggested going back to the control room to confirm the source of the intercom call. So we did. But right as we walked in, we got another call from that same exact cell. Cell 215. The cell we just got back from. The housing sheet also confirmed that the cell was empty and no inmate was currently housed in 215.
We answered the call, for the fourth time now, and heard what sounded like someone struggling around knocking things over. It was quite obvious this wasn’t a glitch, and I honestly thought an inmate was in need. But it was coming from an empty cell that we had just checked.
We decided to walk the whole housing unit, individually verifying every cell with our flashlights. But, every inmate was asleep. None of them were choking or struggling.
Confused, I once again walked back to the control room and discussed it with the relieving shift who was just coming in. One of the relieving deputies was a sergeant who had been working in the jail for about 20 years up until that point. He smiled and told me that he isn’t surprised. He explained that about 15 years ago, an inmate in that cell, Cell 215, died from choking himself on food.
He said the inmates name was “Amador” and he was allegedly arrested for killing his college roommate and storing the body in the dorm. He said that every year around the time he died, strange things happen in that cell.
At the time, I didn’t believe what he was telling me. But throughout the night, and on my drive home, I replayed the events and it started to convert me into believing the stories. There was no logical explanation for what was happening. I looked up information from what the sergeant told me, on my shift the next day