(Obligatory not mine)
So I'm using a throw away here for obvious reasons, but I'm a CO in the deep south and I just entered my 7th year working in my facility. I've always been semi-religious but nothing serious, just your typical small town church kinda thing. However I work in a big city jail, and I've had some minor things happen over the years that didn't really make me think ghosts. But it's creepy none the less, especially working overnights (20:00-06:00) it's dark, silent, your alone most of the time, plus your usually a little drowsy so I always chalked it up to that.
Some of these small experiences include random footsteps from around my control room when all inmates are locked down, voices in places that are no longer in use. However this isn't about any of those minor experiences I just mentioned, it's about this "encounter/experience" from around a week ago. I've talked to a couple of close friends, and some guys at work and we can't seem to figure it out, and I've tried to wrap my mind around this best I can but I'm honestly at my wits end. So might as well post it on the internet and see what sticks or if someone can perhaps help me reason with whatever happened.
So for context, the floor I work is typically a floor reserved for mid-security violent inmates. This would include robbery suspects, domestic violence, assualt, etc. Typical night for me is to come in and lock down all inmates for the night and then conduct what we call a standing head count. Basically I come in and put eyes on every inmate on the floor, if my roster says I have 170 inmates, I have to physically count 170 inmates. Well the facility is currently under going "modernization upgrades" this includes new doors, locks, day space tables/furniture, and most importantly cameras.
On my floor all pods are full to capacity except for C-block, this pod is currently locked out meaning no inmates are to be house in the pod until all upgrades are done and in place. They've been working on it for about 3 weeks now, they've put in all the new doors, locks, and cameras, the camera feeds are shown on a small screen inside the control room of the floor with their cell number placed in the bottom right corner of each cell. So I "shouldn't" have to worry about counting in C-block as there are no inmates in c-block.
Well one week ago after finishing my head count, I come back to the control room, and do my usual routine. Pull up chrome and just browse the internet until I have to do my hourly check to make sure no one is committing self-die. Around midnight of 5/2/23 I finish doing another check and sit down in the control room, as I go to sit down I take a quick glance at the screen with all the cameras. In c-block 4 cell I swear I saw a person standing in the center of the cell facing outward towards the door of the cell. I do a double take and of course nothing is there, ok maybe I saw someone in B-block standing in their cell or the cam froze for a second NBD.
About 30 mins later, I sit up in my chair as I'm putting my phone down. This time again I see someone standing in c-block 4 cell, and this time I know that it's that cell because I'm looking at the number, the cell door is wide open as are all the doors in c-block so it's for sure that cell. I full tilt SPRINT into that block and look up into 4 cell. Nothing and no one, I begin to think that I'm seeing things or the camera is some how fucking up. I put in a report to our electronic maintenance department they say they'll look into it. I come back the next night and the report states all wiring is fine, and that the camera feed is in fact linked to c-block 4 cell.
After going home and thinking about it, I convinced myself that I was wrong some how, that it was just me being tired. Again same process comes and goes, lock down, head count, back to control room to wait. I'm now glancing every once and a while at c-block 4 cell, nothing appears. Midnight comes and goes, I think ok yea it was me NBD. Well then 0200 rolls around, and again I do my check sit down back in the control room, again all the doors in c-block are ALL the way open, and these doors are not light, they are big metal doors easily 60-70 pounds. That's when c-block 4 cell SLAMS shut, then after it is shut and now locked, it sound like it's starting to be kicked by a horse. Like someone slammed it shut right on the back end of a full grown horse. I look on the camera screen and all the cameras in that pod are just blinking on and off.
I go into the block and as I'm going up the stairs towards the door, more doors start to shut. From 6 to 5, 3, 2, 1. At this point I'm done, I ran out of that block, shut the door, and called for a supervisor and maintenance. We check the footage of the event on the supervisors computer in his office, and of course none of them show anything. At around the 0200 mark they all just go to no connection with our local server at the HQ building across the street. Maintenance did say that it was definatly not the lock, but it did look like someone had tried to kick that door off it's hinges because the door frame itself had chipped paint after having just freshly been painted.
I've scoured incident reports back 5 years and I can't find anything about any violent deaths or just anyone dying in general on this floor. That being said my department has sealed reports in the past where if you are under an LT you won't be able to read the report. So I'm not sure, I'm still working on this floor, they are on the last few days of fixing up c-block and then they'll move to d-block. They still have 3 more blocks after d-block to do. So I'm a little concerned of what'll happen once those are empty and not in use. Things in c-block seemed to have calmed down as nothing major has happened since last week. Doors still move and I've had 2 shut, but not like that night a week ago.
I've put in for a vacation towards the end of May, so I'm hoping time away is going to help, and hopefully it'll be a fix. But this has turned me from a non-believer to skeptic on the low end to a possible believer on the high end. I just don't think the A/C could blow a 60 pound door shut, nor could it cause the door to be hit that violently. If anyone has a simlar experience or has any ideas please let me know.