I am going to continue with Blackford County but this time we are heading to the jail. The Old Blackford County jail is owned by Dann Allen and his brother. The jail is an interesting place, on one side you have the jail cells and the sheriffs office, there was an upstairs that was for women prisoners and the lower for the men. According to Dann there were never any female prisoners in the jail. On the other side of the jail is where the sheriffs family lived. The sheriffs wife is the one who cooked the meals for the prisoners.
We learned of this location from a friend of ours, but he didn’t have a number for us to contact Dann. My husband Steve contacted the historical society, and they gave him the phone number. I contacted Dann and told him who we were and what we were wanting to do. We made an agreement with him that we would make a website for him if we could investigate the jail. He agreed and so we were excited to go.
This is another location that our group has investigated several times. The agreement we made with Dann is we would not charge him for hosting or maintenance for the website in exchange of investigating the jail once a year.
This is what the outside of the jail looks like, as you can see there is a basement level and while it looks like two levels there is actually three. There is an attic, not a lot in the attic but it is an interesting place to go, but you need to watch out for the bats.
The night before this first investigation my husband and I had things happen at our house. This is common for most investigators to have activity the night before or even a week before leading up to an investigation. What my husband saw was a man in a jumpsuit standing in our kitchen. It was only for a few seconds, and he was gone. What I experienced was different, during the night I felt as if I was being held down, there was pressure on the inside part of my arms, biceps area but on the inner part of my biceps. When I got up the next morning I was looking at my arms and I saw a bruise on each arm. Where the bruises were located I tried to see if I could have done this, meaning put enough pressure to do this and I couldn’t. I knew that was created by something else. I put that thought aside and got ready for the day and the investigation.
That night when we got there it was so hot and this place only had an air conditioner in one room. Dann was showing us around and sharing with us some of the history. At this time, I had a heavy chest feeling and I have learned that when this happens it means someone has passed with a heart attack. I was about to ask Dann about this when he said the jailer died from a heart attack. The moment he said that the pressure let up. I got the validation about what I was picking up and after Dann finished we began setting up.
On this particular night it was extremely hot and extremely hard to concentrate since it was so hot. We spent more time in the main office than we did in other rooms. We did have some interesting experiences, some of which I will share with you now.
This is part of the catwalk and as I was putting recorders down I heard a child’s voice. I made sure that there wasn’t anyone walking around outside, and I knew we didn’t have any children investigating with us. This child sounded like a five-year-old little girl. I only heard it once that night but when we listened back to the audio I was in for a surprise because this little girl was heard on every recorder on every floor. Each time we went back we did hear this same little girl talking, the disturbing part is we also heard her voice inside the cells.
This is what the cells look like, inside these cells has been interesting to say the least, we have felt someone else sit on the beds with us, we have heard talking, we have had someone touching our arms or legs in this location. We had a reporter who was scared about the noises he heard when he investigated with us.
This is the kitchen area where the food was cooked and there is a little passthrough window that connects to the jail cells. In this location there is also a door that leads to the basement and is connected to the living room. But in this room when we were watching the videos back we kept seeing what looked like people walking through a portal. At first we thought maybe it was our equipment, but we did have an outside source review the footage and he validated that we were seeing people. It’s one of the coolest things to see on camera. You don’t always get things on camera so when you do it’s a big deal.
As we listened back to the audio from the first investigation one of the evps we captured was “Are you ready to come with us Steve” and “Higher Steve Hodgson.” My husband’s name is Steve, he was going upstairs to the ladies part of the jail, and he likes to joke, he said, “ladies contain yourself there are men coming up.” After he said this is when he got the responses, although we wouldn’t know this at the time.
One final thing I will share before I end this blog is the staircase. On one of the investigations that we did at this location there was a ball cap on the banister of the staircase. We had brought all of the equipment in and placed in a room and had all gone into the room with the equipment and we had all seen the hat where it was hanging when we first got there but as we began to set up equipment and walked out into the hallway we saw the hat on the floor, away from the stairs. No clue which spirit tossed the hat or why, unless it was to let us know they knew we were there but it’s not something that happens all the time.
The staircase where the hat was thrown
If you like to investigate check this place out if you are in Indiana. Dann has other locations that I will be talking about since we have investigated those as well.
Until next time have a great week!
