OLD
DEWBERD PENITENTIARY
Location: The Old
Dewberd Penitentiary is located in the census-designated village of Five Keys,
New Mexico, just over two miles south of Santa Fe on Route 14 on a hill south of
the Five Keys crossroads. Designated as private property, trespassing is not
allowed.
Description of Place:
Obscured beyond a rise along Route 14, Surrounded by acres of open desert and
farmlands, Dewberd Penitentiary was a maximum security federal prison south of
San Antonio. Originally built as a self-contained fort with structures connected
by a ten-foot high wall around a courtyard covering 38.5 square feet on a
property covering almost 875 square feet. The walls are three feet thick with
the main cell block three stories tall connected to three separate two-story
cell blocks, each of which holding 250 cells.
The three-story cell house held Block
C, connected in a clock-like pattern to Block A, Block B and Block D. The
warden's office, visitation room, the library and the barber shop were in a
separate structure. The out-lying buildings included the sentry points, the
warehouse, the laundry building, the water works, the power plant and warden's
dwelling along with a few one room cabins for the guards.
The prison cells typically measured 9
feet by 5 feet by 7 feet high. The cells were primitive and lacked privacy with
a bed, washbasin and a toilet on the back wall, and with few furnishings except
a blanket. African-Americans were segregated from other inmates in cell
designation due to racial abuse. Block-D housed the worst inmates, and six bare
cells in the foundation of D-Block were used for punishment where severely
bad-behaving prisoners would be sent for periods of often brutal isolation. The
dining hall and kitchen extended from the administration building. Prisoners and
staff ate three meals a day together. The medical ward was on the top floor.
Ghostly Manifestations:
Correctional
facilities see a lot of misery and anger, two emotions often attributed to
hauntings. With the torrent of emotions flooded into these locales, is it no
wonder that prisons and sanitariums top the lists of most haunted sites.
In the Old Dewberd Penitentiary near
Santa Fe, weird noises originate from unknown sources, strange figures wander
the halls and a spectral figure makes itself home in the old warden’s
dwelling.. From the outside, the old San Antonio prison doesn't look haunted.
Over a hundred years old, the structure with its gracial architectural lines
looks more like a Millionaire's Mansion or a city library.
Since closed, the old penitentiary now
serves as a repository for the records of New Mexico's Department of
Corrections. Periodically, members of the department staff have spent
considerable time doing research in the archives here. Cells which once held
prisoners are now crammed with files and records.
From the 1860s to 1965, the old prison
has likely seen more than its share of trauma, violence, redneck justice and
death. Blacks and poor whites endured suffering and hardships there that would
frighten even the toughest of modern cons. Paranormal explorer Nate Franklin
explains:
“When I visited the building in 1979,
a number of correction department employees were here sorting and disposing of
old records. I had confronted them as a group while they were working in a room
while off the cell block, and they denied ever having any strange happenings in
the old jail. However, after taking pictures of the cell areas for a newspaper
article on the history, I returned to the room and talked to several of the
workers individually. Two of them, both of them asked that I not use their
names, admitting having heard unusual sounds coming from the cell area when they
were working there late at night.”
One of the employees remarked: “At
first, I thought it might be rats or something, but then I realized it was too
loud for rats, and besides, there's no rats in this building.”
The other employee told how the noises
always seemed to come from the other side of the door next to where he was
working. “As soon as I heard that noise, like someone moving or dragging heavy
settings, I jerked the door open, but nothing was there. I searched that cell
block, but it was empty, and there's no way anyone can get in and out of there
without passing me.”
When asked if they had ever seen
anything strange or heard any noises other than the sounds of people moving
about, Franklin was told by one employee:.
“I heard a scream one night, and I
thought that it came from the basement. It didn't sound human, but it didn't
sound like an animal either. It was very late, and I was here alone. I was
fighting to stay awake, but I kept dozing off, but that stream sure woke me up.
I left work right away, but I came back the next day.”
Carter Poole has been a Supervisory
Park Technician in the New Mexico State Historical Office for six years. His job
takes him to visit and inspect all of the historical sites official and pending
for the local government. Based in San Antonio, he has visited Dewberd several
times.
“It was after my third time here,”
The slender bearded gentleman remarked. “And no one had related any stories of
spirits or ghosts walking around to the old building. One day, I was up in the
old warden’s office which is a different structure connected to the prison,
and I kept hearing noises happening around me that I couldn't identify.”
“There was another incident about six
months later during another visit to inspect damage by kids breaking in, and it
occurred about 4PM in the afternoon, and I kept hearing footsteps walking along
the ramparts in Cell Block C which once held the recurring offenders.. I could
hear this “Clump-Clump-Clump” as though someone was walking back and forth.
Later that day, outside in the exercise area, I was with two of the people who
did maintenance here, and all three of us heard the sound of windows flying up
and down. Rushing in to investigate, we heard the sound of a bench being dragged
across the lower floor. When we went downstairs the next morning, we found the
door to the rear of the prison, which had been locked and bolted the night
before, ajar. Furniture had been moved around.
“What do you call this place where
you live and where the events take place?” Nate asked.
“This was D-Block for the worst
offenders.” Poole continued. “The men who were kept here were the worst of
the lot. Murderers, rapists, serial bank robbers…. But it was used as a
Soldiers Barracks back in the 1870s. Shadowy figures have been seen prowling the
walls and ramparts of the block as far back as anyone can remember. Some of the
last prison employees who once worked here said they saw and heard some weird
things. The spirit of Lamar Clacker, a local 1930s gangster was killed here by
another prisoner in what several people said was a hit from the outside. He is
said to haunt Cell D11 where he was held. Several people have seen a dark gray
shadow lurking on the balcony where he fell to his death.”
During the Civil War, Fort Dewderd was
used to house Confederate prisoners, Native Americans, illegal Mexicans,
outlaws, vagrants and just about anyone else the local justices wanted out of
society. According to legend, a Union soldier on guard duty fell asleep at his
post near the main gate, and he was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot. He
was confined to the main cell house to the left of the sally port where one
enters the floor. According to legend, someone slipped him a rifle with a bullet
in it, and he used it to blow his brains out. Now, it is believed he serves the
price for sleeping on guard; now condemned to walk eternal guard duty in the
walls of Dewberd. A few people have heard over the years a loud explosion like a
gunshot going off in that area.
Although D-Block is the most spooky and
nerving section of the prison, an area where people feel watched or followed and
hear distant voices and footsteps, C-Block gets the most activity. The figure of
a tall thin cadaverous figure has been seen floating through the halls, and
visitors to the prison have seen wispy figures wandering the area. For the 1978
Fourth of July celebration following the prison being closed, rangers and
security guards made a security check of all the buildings on the grounds; each
building was scrutinized and was locked to deter curiosity-seekers from going
inside and getting lost or injured. During the public ceremony, one of the
security guards hired to watch the event noticed a shadowy figure looking down
from the window in D Block, and pointed it out to the others. Several of them
went in to investigate, but no one was in there, but several doors to off-limits
areas that had been locked were found standing wide open,
Through the years, numerous city and
state employees storing files here or conducting tours here have heard phantom
footsteps, moaning sounds and other strange things, like the cell doors opening
and closing. Loud noises like the cell doors clanging shut have been heard.
Someone once heard a sound as if a “five-ton concrete block” had been
dropped through the roof, leaving a thunder resonating through Cell Block A. A
quick search was made but nothing was found.
In 1980, some of the fort's older
buildings, like the metal shop, power building and the Warden’s Dwelling, were
being investigated for neglect and damage to preserve the decaying prison as a
potential overflow for the San Antonio Federal Prison. In preparation for such a
future event, the structure has long been observed and kept in preparation. In
the Warden’s Dwelling, the white drapery had been taken down and cleaned then
returned lightly across a chair until they could be rehung. When the workers
returned the next day to put them back up, they found every one of the drapes,
even those deep down in the pile, covered in a dusty black soot. the rest of the
second floor room was spotless. There was no way for it to get into the room,
and the windows and doors had been closed.
The windows in the second and third
floor administration building with the guard locker room and showers have also
seen activity. The windows have been heard rattling and shaking, even on
windless days and even when they were wedged or jammed shut. It was in that very
building that captured outlaws and bank robbers in the 1890s were delivered
chained and shackled and left sitting on a bench for hours for their
depositions. Lawyers used to spend hours every day standing and waiting at the
windows while looking across the yard where the prisoners were being held.
Several figures have been seen at those windows in recent years, standing
at the second-floor window.
One night in March 1981, a pair of
historians working late restoring the Warden’s Dwelling had their own
experience. While putting up fresh wallpaper in the hallway, one of the ladies
felt a cold chill. Looked up and saw a plump lady dressed in white standing by
the window looking across to the prison yard. Walking to the figure, she put her
hand out to touch the stranger, but the lady simply vanished, and the woman
found herself alone in the back bedroom. No one knows who she is. Many speculate
she was the wife of one of the wardens, but the record reveals that the majority
of them were unmarried, many of them getting married in their later years.
However, she hasn’t been seen nearly as often as the phantom prisoners or
ghostly cadaver haunting C-Block. Several investigators believe this thing might
be a demon, maybe of Native American origin. Witnesses have noted that the sound
of jangling keys as that on a guard’s security belt often heralds its
appearances.
Whatever it is haunting the prison, the
activity also seems to haunt the cemetery behind the prison and the outlying
houses. The grounds once had a cemetery, a Potter’s Field where deceased
prisoners or prisoners that were shot while trying to escape were dumped in
unmarked graves. The area is now dotted with oil derricks tapping underground
pockets of oil in the area, making the area somewhat noxious. People often feel
as if they are being watched from that direction. Shadowy figures lurk the area
during the day, and at night, orbs and strange voices whisper from out of
nowhere.
Beyond the prison cemetery along
Raintree Lane are a number of houses left over from the Forties, but some may
date back even earlier than the 1930s. One of them is a two-story Native
American lodge that was once a school, a hospital and a seminary among other
things. A woman named Miss A (she chooses not to reveal her identity) lived in
this structure in the Fifties and saw several ghosts roaming the halls and
basement of her home at night. Some of them were prisoners that had been
executed, some of them were their victims and some of them were far older….
Spectral gunslingers, angry Native Americans, murdered prostitutes from when
Five Keys was a Federal outpost and even lost Chinese laborers who died in the
area in the 1890s. She lived here
until she left in the 1960s, leaving behind her father and brother.
After her father died, the house passed
through a few hands, staying empty more often than occupied. In
the Eighties, former Dewberd guard Alex Gourley rented the house from the son of
the previous owner. In his time here, he recalled hearing voices, having bad
dreams and seeing what looked like a tall wizened old specter with long skinny
figures standing over him. At times, he would hear a cacophony of voices talking
over each other, chanting sounds and terrifying screams. He recalls:
“One night, I fell asleep with the
television on, and woke up about two in the morning. My television was off, and
thinking that maybe a fuse or something had blown I got up to investigate. There
was nothing wrong. The set had been turned off at the dial, but I do not recall
turning it off myself.”
Gourley continues: “During the months
I lived there, there were several things that seemed off. I always felt as if I
was being watched. I couldn’t escape the feeling that there was someone there.
The upstairs hall creaked when I was downstairs, I heard the front door opening
and closing from upstairs, but no one was ever there. I felt touched several
times, and once I saw a woman I didn’t know turn from the old kid’s room and
go down the stairs. I had frequent headaches that bothered me when I lived
there, but they went away when I went out to get dinner.”
When the CGS
visited the grounds in 1989, they contacted a Las Vegas psychic named Lilith
Troy
to walk the grounds and interiors with them. She had no idea why she had been
contacted, but as soon as she entered the structure, she was overwhelmed by a
sensation of evil. She felt as if a series of nefarious beings from the spirit
world were trying to reach her.
Lilith and the CGS team scheduled a séance
to be held inside C-Block the following night. One of the employees who had
heard noises here was going to attend, but right before, he decided he wasn’t
going into the building at night. After standing on the stairs from where
witnesses had seen shadows in the windows, Lilith casually responded with:
“There does seem to be a lot of hostile energy here. We need that girl who
lived in the house behind the prison for the seance. I think she'll be able to
help us communicate with the other side.”
The CGS Team checked every room and
cell end in the structure. One of the solitary confinement cells in the basement
gave off aggressively malevolent vibes. Most of the graffiti on the walls
depicted images of religion or sex. There was one gruesome sketch of a naked
girl with blood spurting out from where it should have been. Lilith remarked:
“It was a terrible looking room. When I walked into it, I felt horrible. It
just hung over me like the chills that were coming through. It was an evil
chamber. It gave off the worst vibrations I’ve ever received anywhere. I
thought that room would be the best place for the séance, but we needed an
archaeologist to confirm our discoveries.”
After a considerable amount of
persuasion, CGS was able to reach out to a historical archaeologist named Pat
Dixon who agreed to attend. With her was Steve Barnette, Larry Wedekind and
Lizzie Stride from CGS, writer Nate Franklin, Aaron Klous from the Department of
Archives and photographers Adam Salvatore and Kari Imahara.in attendance. Miss A
could not be reached after her previous interview.
According to Lilith, the jail teamed
with entities. She was able to determine the route most often used by them and
the haunting. At first, she wasn't sure whether the spirits were the prisoners
who had been incarcerated within the walls, but she would soon find out. To
everyone's surprise, the most evil presence of the place had never served time
there, nor had ever existed in physical form. She remarked: “This entity was
on this land before the prison ever existed!”
At night, everyone gathered on the
third floor of C-Block, considered the center of the activity. It was a long
hallway of some fifteen cells in a row with steel gates on both ends. Their only
source of light were the flashlights that they had brought with them
“I got the worst feelings and
vibrations in there.” Lilith reported, “I could see that the spirits here
are frightened of this entity. Amidst the spirits here are the ghosts of several
women…. They are not connected to the prison. They were murdered by an
employee here, possibly a guard. His soul is now trapped here as well.
“We were sitting in the corridor on
old crates from one of the cells and holding hands. I could tell the others were
starting to get bored, when suddenly Nate jumped up and landed practically in my
lap. He said he had felt something pulling on his shirt. The person holding my
left hand suddenly started squeezing it very hard. The room got cold. The
spirits that we couldn't reach were beginning to come and watch what we were
doing, and our seance was under way. Information was coming through two
different spirits…. The trapped guard and one of the convicts professing his
innocence to a crime he never committed. The guard eventually was pulled away,
but the second spirit told us that 4 to 5 feet away from the incinerator was a
false wall, and behind it under the floor that we would find a knife and two
beer bottles.”
“The other spirit who briefly came
through had once been a position of authority at the jail.. He was a not a very
evil character, but he often abused the prisoners and this streak of behavior
possibly happened outside the job as well. He was coming in strong. I could
visualize him. He seemed about to materialize. His vibes were coming in strong
and were getting worse just before he got torn away. I've been doing this kind
of work for eighteen years and never before have I felt such malevolence. I knew
we had to get out of there or the situation could get worse. It was a feeling of
evil that was so strong; it was terrible. I don't know if there was a panic or
what, but without giving any further thought, I broke off the seance.
“I wanted to get out of that building
right away, but the researchers were curious to see if there really was a secret
room. It was almost 8:30 at night, but we decided to stay a bit longer.
“About a half hour later, we were in
the basement, and the archaeologist with one of the researchers broke through
the wall about five feet to the left of the incinerator. They had chopped out a
hole large enough to crawl through, and then he entered it. We waited anxiously
for about 15 minutes and then the researcher emerged. His hair was full of white dust, and he was holding a knife
and two old brown beer bottles. It was very evidential because the entities had
told us where to find a secret room in a false door. It was a poor evidential
previous life after death.”
The next day, Lilith returned back to
the prison and returned to her psychic state from the previous night. Taking out
a sheet of paper, she began to sketch an image of the malevolent spirit who
attempted to avoid the séance.
The artwork, which was mostly in
pastels, depicted a tall thin cadaverous figure with no face, cavernous eyes and
long black hair. Both hunched and bent to one side, it had long skinny fingers
with fingernails carved and shaped into the shapes of keys. Lilith added:
“This entity might be responsible for more deaths in the area. It acted
through the guard when he was alive, and it keeps him trapped here with the
other spirits. If you look beyond the graveyard north of the prison, you’re
going to find several bodies hidden underground.”
History: Originally
a territorial prison, Dewberd Penitentiary took its name from nearby Dewberd’s
Creek to the south. Once used as a fort and armory, it was built in the 1850s or
the 1860s with a construction that stopped and started so many times that it has
multiple dates for its construction. By the 1900s, it was the main penitentiary
in the San Antonio area until the Sixties, finally closing down in 1978.
Identity of Ghosts:
The majority of the spirits here are unidentified, and what names connected to
the few spirits are somewhat tenuous. Among them, Lamar Clacker, was
incarcerated here from 1932 to his murder in 1938. No records can be found for
the guard who was court-martialed. One of the most notable prisoners was Leon
Ripkey, who opened fire in a San Antonio bar in 1957 and nearly killed everyone
in the building. He took his life shortly after arriving here. Lilith noted that
many of the ghosts were just passing through and the convicts that once stayed
here are trapped in a loop here unable to escape.