"We've been shocked by the interest and continue to work on expanding our operation," said Steve Picker, director of the Jefferson City, Mo., Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has seen visitors through the shuttered Missouri State Penitentiary increase from 3,290 visitors in its first tour year in 2009 to 17,200 last year.
"We've been growing by double-digit percentages every year for the past 10 years," added Sean Kelley, director of public programming at the Eastern State Penitentiaryin Philadelphia, which now draws more than 250,000 visitors a year.
Operators say their visitors are made up of curious people, history buffs and increasingly, ghost hunters. Picker said his prison saw a big increase in visitors last year after it was featured on the cable television show Ghost Hunters.
"We offer a ghost hunting class and overnight paranormal investigations," said Picker, adding that he's never felt anything other-worldly but that visitors insist they have.
Day tours of historic prisons take a couple hours and typically cost about $12. Nighttime tours, which typically attract the ghost hunters, cost more. A nighttime tour of Alcatraz runs $35. At the Missouri State Penitientiary, a three-hour ghost hunt costs $35 and an overnight paranormal investigation, which runs from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m., and costs $95. Ticket sales help offset costs, Picker said, but don't cover the cost of maintaining the facility.
"As with any decommissioned building, it's expensive to maintain," Picker said.
"People have had some very unusual experiences," he said. "We hear some of those stories from different people so it does make you wonder."
The prisons trade on formerly famous guests. Picker notes Sonny Liston learned to box while incarcerated at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Both Eastern State Penitentiary and Alcatraz in San Francisco can claim Al Capone as a former tenant.
"He didn't get that here," said Craig Glassner, a park ranger at Alcatraz, . Alcatraz was built to insure that even well-heeled inmates didn't get an advantage behind bars, he said.During the summer tourism season, the tours often sell out several days in advance, Glassner said. Alcatraz, which draws more than 1.5 million visitors annually, is now part of the National Park Service, and visitors learn that it was built as a military prison before being used for other inmates"It's all those bad TV shows and bad Hollywood movies, most people only know of Alcatraz because of that," Glassner said.
Eastern State Penitentiary does get ghost hunters, but most visitors are there for the history, Kelley said. The idea for the penitentiary dates to the 1700s when prison reformers like Benjamin Franklin sought an alternative to the cramped conditions of the local jail. It opened in 1829 and became so famous that Charles Dickens would cross the Atlantic to visit it, according to the history on its website.
"We believe it's the most historically significant prison in the nation and one of the most significant in the world," Kelley said.
The 7-Block of the former state Prison of Southern Michigan in Jackson, Mich., opened for tours in 2009. Last year, tours drew 3,200. visitors and has more than 50 tours booked for this year. Visitors can see cell 82, where physician Jack Kevorkian spent his first night in prison.
The eerie 7-Block, still part of a razor-wire enclosed campus with four other active prisons, echoes with drama. Rails are garish yellow. Bars are white. The floor is grim gray. There are windows, but the light is filtered, like at a cheap motel. When visitors pass through a door into the yard, looped razor wire menaces from atop every fence.
"I loved it. I loved the way it looked like the prisons you see on TV, but you can see it in person," said Jan Herrick, of Kalamazoo, Mich., after touring 7-Block. "For some reason, prisons really fascinate me."
But visitors also learn of the more civilized parts of prison life, too.
"Mothers brought their daughters to get their wedding dresses made at the prison tailor shop," said Judy Krasnow, the tour founder. "Prisoners made exquisite furniture."
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