A 147-year-old stone prison with a gallows, handcuffs, the eternal imprint of a hanged miner and a bunch of ghosts can be yours for just $ 749,000.
“Oh, we have ghosts,” Betty Lou McBride said last week. "Tons of ghosts."
In 1995, 84-year-old Betty Lou McBride and her husband, 87, Tom bought a former prison in Jim Thorpe, a town in Carbon County in northeastern Pennsylvania, and have turned it into a real museum over the past two decades.
Located in an ancient mining town formerly known as Moch-Chunk on the Lehigh River, the two-story prison with 27 cells is on the National Register of Historic Places for its sinister place in America's mining union history.
In the late 1800s, Pennsylvania was flooded with immigrants heading for anthracite mines. Faced with low wages, appalling living conditions and discrimination, Irish miners worked with fraternal trade unions to try to get the mine owners to treat them with respect.
Blood was spilled on both sides, and the killing of miners by order of the coal barons led to uprisings, after which on June 21, 1877, the day known as Black Thursday, four Irish miners were hanged in the Carbon County jail for murder, and six more - in Pottsville. Three more Irish miners were executed in this prison after Black Thursday.
Molly Maguires, starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris, released in 1970, was one of 10 films about these events.
On the right wall of cell 17 is a handprint of a member of the secret Irish miners' community, Molly Maguires, which is said to be impossible to wash, paint over or plaster.
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“This imprint will remain proof of my innocence,” so according to legend, the prisoner shouted before he was brought to the gallows.
“Nobody wants to go in or stay overnight in this cell,” said the owner of the museum. "One ex-inmate, Walter Rodriguez, who was put in cell 17 in connection with the murder of a teenage girl, begged to be transferred to another cell out of fear."
Due to its dark history and paranormal activity, the prison has become a very popular destination for ghost hunters and their followers. Thus, by putting up such a unique property for sale, the owners hope that the buyer will try to preserve the haunted museum.
“It's not a brain drain, it's good business,” Betty said. - I saw things here that are not. Many people feel a touch on their hair or a hand on their shoulder."
Voronina Svetlana