Last night, 100 people with personal, professional, or academic interests in Eastern State’s use of the penitentiary for Terror Behind the Walls gathered in the building’s central rotunda to get Anne Parsons’ take on the matter. Anne, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Illinois at Chicago, has focused her research on the history of prisons and other government-run institutions in America, particularly those which have been exploited for material gain post-abandonment.
Each year at Halloween, thousands of people tour abandoned prisons and asylums as haunted houses, paying money that often funds preservation efforts. These haunted houses pose ethical dilemmas to preservationists and activists each October. But they also offer an opportunity to talk about the complicated tradition of carceral spaces in American history, and what involuntary confinement means in the Land of the Free.
After her presentation, Anne posed a few questions and opened the discussion to those in attendance. Some noteworthy remarks from the audience (paraphrased):
There seems to be an ultimate paradox between quintessential American values (self-determinism; individual freedom; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) and the purposes of institutionalization. America, which was founded on principles of freedom and individuality, has the largest prison population in the world. Perhaps it is because this facet of our culture—corrections—poses a threat to what has become ingrained as our prerogative as Americans—freedom—that we are so fascinated by the structures that represent them.
Terror Behind the Walls creates prison scenes to scare visitors. Is the visceral reaction to those scenes a result of existing cultural attitudes toward those who are, or who have been, incarcerated? Or do things like TBTW (movies, tv shows, video games, etc.) actually work to create those attitudes?
To some degree, Eastern State should be held responsible for educating its visitors about issues and policies in contemporary corrections. The organization fails its Halloween visitors both by neglecting to educate them about these matters and by perpetuating the prison stereotypes that plague our culture today.
Terror Behind the Walls generates 63% of the historic site’s annual operating budget. It funds capital improvements, allows for staff expansion, and sustains the organization’s daytime programming. Without Terror Behind the Walls, Eastern State Penitentiary could not survive. Is ESP’s obligation to protect the legacy of the building such that it would be better to leave the prison abandoned than to compromise its integrity by hosting a haunted house? I think most would agree that it’s not; that if cheapening the public perception of the site for 29 nights allows for it to educate the public all year, then it’s a gamble worth taking.
Though the topic may be controversial, I’m proud to work for an organization that acknowledges and understands the controversy, that continually reevaluates the way it addresses such issues, and that tries its best to respect the complicated history of the building and the people who inhabited it while ensuring it can maintain financial stability in an uncertain economic climate.
Long Live Terror Behind the Walls.
Nicole Fox
Interim Director of Marketing
