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Blood Prison at the Haunted Ohio State Reformatory is Bringing All the Hair-Raising Frights

For an added layer of intensity, you can buy a pass allowing the haunted house actors to touch you.

Sep 27, 2023 at 3:49 pm

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Photo: Provided by Destination Mansfield

The Ohio State Reformatory

Enter if you dare: This Halloween season, if you’re looking to brave a spooky attraction in a truly chilling space, Escape from Blood Prison offers the chance to explore the notoriously haunted Ohio State Reformatory after dark.

Escape from Blood Prison in Mansfield, Ohio — about three hours northeast of Cincinnati — opens Friday, Sept. 29. The haunted house, located in the former prison where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed, is a frequent top-ranking attraction on sites like scarefactor.com and was recently listed on USA Today’s 10Best list for haunted destinations.

“Every Halloween, those who dare are challenged to enter the notoriously haunted Ohio State Reformatory after dark on weekends for a harrowing walk through unrelenting horror,” Destination Mansfield said in a press release. “Only the daring descend into the suffocating blackness of The Hole accompanied by the ear-splitting wail of the Warden’s Widow. Maniacal inmates and deformed guards fill every twisting turn of the world’s largest free-standing steel cell block. The uber-scary Haunted Hospital, Blood Prison Chapel and Apocalyptic area were updated for 2023 with even more creepy characters and Hollywood-level special effects. Paranormal activity abounds in this unsettling place, where even its gothic architecture sparks shivers.”

Heritage Village Museum's Haunted Village Offers Slight Frights for the Whole Family: Kids can trick-or-treat through the village, brave a haunted house and trail and eat lots of candy.

In addition to a bone-chilling good time, food trucks will also be available on-site, and the new “Beyond the Scare” tours from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. allow visitors to see behind the scenes of Blood Prison with the lights on.

Blood Prison will be open Fridays and Saturdays from 7 p.m. to midnight and Sundays from 7-10 p.m. Gates open at 6:45 p.m. Organizers say the attraction frequently sells out, so visitors are encouraged to buy tickets in advance online. A general pass with timed ticketing is $35, or you can buy an Ultra Lightning Pass, which reduces wait time to a quarter of general admission. You can also add a Touch Pass, which adds intensity to the experience by allowing the actors to touch you.

Study: Of the States, Ohio Has the Third Highest Number of Ghost Encounters: With a ton of creepiness lurking throughout Greater Cincinnati, we could see how we, and Ohio at large, could be the perfect place for a haunt.

Ohio State Reformatory, 100 Reformatory Road, Mansfield. More info: bloodprison.com.

Slideshow

The Creepiest Places in Greater Cincinnati

Darby-Lee CemeteryCan be accessed from the Bender Mountain Trail, 6320-6468 Bender Road, Delhi TownshipWest Siders, you may have heard of Fiddlers Green Road, but have you heard the legend of Fiddler’s Green? (Which actually has nothing to do with that particular road.) It goes back to the Darby-Lee family of Delhi Township, members of which are buried in a small graveyard at the top of Bender Mountain – the only known, remaining family cemetery in Delhi. Patriarch of the family Henry Darby was rumored to have been part of the Underground Railroad. The legend of Fiddler’s Green goes that he would sit up on the ridge of his property overlooking the Ohio River into Kentucky. When it was safe for those fleeing enslavement to cross the river and come up the ridge to his home, Darby would light a lantern with a green flame and play his fiddle. On some nights now, you can supposedly see an otherworldly green glow from the cemetery and hear the strains from a fiddle being played nearby.

Sedamsville Rectory639 Steiner Ave., SedamsvilleSedamsville Rectory, once part of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, oozes haunted house energy with its imposing façade and faded red brick exterior. Inside isn’t much better, with its past owners and residents saying they experienced icy breezes in the home along with unexplained feelings of gloom and doom, assault-like scratches and shoves, disembodied footsteps and doors closing of their own accord. Some say it's demonic forces in the building; others point to ghosts like those of Fr. Donald MacLeod, who reportedly died after being struck by a train near the rectory; past clergymen; and the spirits of a child with a noose around his neck and a man, both whom were found dead outside the rectory at different times. Are these tall tales or is there some truth lending to the former rectory’s creepiness? You can ask the Ghost Adventures’ crew, who investigated the building in 2012.

Over-the-Rhine’s Underground Beer TunnelsIf you dare to go beneath the city, you’ll find a labyrinth of beer tunnels that once belonged to F&J Linck Brewery. While nothing knowingly nefarious happened down there (except maybe a bad batch of beer here and there), the tunnels under the streets of Over-the-Rhine, which were used to keep beer cool before refrigeration, are eerie and tomb-like. You can see them for yourself on the Hidden Caverns or Ultimate Queen City Underground tours through American Legacy Tours.

Dunham Recreation Center Complex1945 Dunham Way, WestwoodThe land that we know today as the Dunham Recreation Center Complex used to be the site of the first municipal tuberculosis hospital in the United States, and an eerie feeling still hangs over the area where the arts center is today. According to records from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine, in 1879, Cincinnati Hospital (now UC Health) bought what was then the Guerley Farm in order to relocate its small-pox isolation house. A hospital was constructed on the farmland and named Branch Hospital for Contagious Diseases. Almost 20 years later, the branch hospital saw the transfer of 15 tuberculosis patients from the main hospital, transforming it into a space to care for victims of TB. As tuberculosis cases grew, so did the hospital campus. More buildings to house patients were added, as were lodging for nurses and doctors; sleeping porches, which doctors at the time thought helped improve TB symptoms; an occupational therapy building; and a preventorium and school for children of TB patients.But what is perhaps the creepiest aspect of Dunham isn’t that it used to be a hospital for victims of what, at the time, was a very deadly disease, but rather what lies underneath all the buildings to this day. Former recreation center employee Kenny Riddell told WCPO in 2015 that the disease was too advanced to be treated by the time many patients sought care, and Dunham was the place to go to die. To keep patient morale up, he said, the bodies would be removed from the hospital via underground tunnels that led to an incinerator where they would be cremated and their belongings would be burned. The tunnels still exist today, but they’re not accessible to the public and some parts are entirely sealed off. But if you spend enough time in the arts center, one of the last remaining buildings from the hospital era, recreation center employees say you may just see something…or someone.

Price Hill’s Potter’s Field4700 Guerley Road, West Price HillWe can’t talk about Dunham without mentioning the historic potter’s field just up the road from it, which may be part of the reason that land was chosen to become a hospital for the fatally ill. Historically, a potter's field was the name for any grave site meant to house the remains of poor or unclaimed people. The Price Hill potter’s field was used as a cemetery for Cincinnati’s poor, transients and criminals from 1849 to 1981. It’s believed that upward of 20,000 people were haphazardly laid to rest there, although it's impossible to guess an accurate number. The site was used until it became so crowded that graves were dug to a depth reportedly as shallow as 18 inches. The newly deceased were stacked on a previous generation, and the oldest part of the site contains three layers of bodies. Years of neglect and overgrowth hide many unmarked graves or markers with the barest of details, but a plaque along Guerley Road identifies where it stands.Those in the potter’s field may soon get the burial they deserve, however. In April 2022, the National Park Service awarded Price Hill Will and Cincinnati Parks nearly $35,000 in funding through the History of Equal Rights (HER) Grant to restore it.

Music Hall1241 Elm St., Over-the-RhineEven if you don’t believe in ghosts, you can’t deny the beautiful but unsettling nature of Music Hall, especially considering the southern part of the building was built over a potter’s field and bones have been discovered during various excavations on-site. Those who have worked in the building late at night have reported many instances of paranormal activity, including things like hearing a singing woman; seeing apparitions of guests dressed in old-fashioned clothes; angry, disembodied whispering in the elevators and feelings of being watched.

Click to View 21 slides

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About The Author

Katherine Barrier

Katherine Barrier is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s journalism program and has nearly 10 years of experience reporting local and national news as a digital journalist. At CityBeat, she oversees the digital and social media strategies, edits web and print content and writes for the dining and arts...

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Blood Prison at the Haunted Ohio State Reformatory is Bringing All the Hair-Raising Frights