Ghosts & Hauntings

Climate researchers recall paranormal experience on Alcatraz Island

By T.K. Randall
June 26, 2024

Image: Alcatraz Island
Credit: Meburian / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) Situated in San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island is home to one of the world's most notorious prisons - a place that was said to be inescapable due to its impressive fortifications and isolated location.

Now a tourist attraction, the prison had been home to many thousands of inmates over the decades, leading to stories of paranormal phenomena and sightings of apparitions within its walls.

Recently, a group of researchers who had been staying on the island as part of a study into erosion and the effects of climate change had their own brush with the unexplained.

The team had been sleeping in D Block - a dire area of the prison which once housed its most dangerous inmates - and near to where the mentally ill were also once kept.

"I did not like being in the hospital," said lead researcher Pete Kelsey. "That place gave me the willies."When one of the team members managed to keep everyone else awake one night with his snoring, he agreed to go and sleep in the old mugshoot room instead where nobody could hear him.

The next morning, however, he was found sleeping outside the room in the hallway with all his gear.

When asked what had happened, he explained that he had been awoken in the middle of the night to the unexplained sounds of a crowd of people and someone playing the piano in the room above.

He could hear footsteps and furniture being moved around, even though nobody was actually there.

He was so terrified that he vowed never to sleep in the room again.

No explanation for the sounds he heard that night was ever found.

Source: CBS News

Tags: Alcatraz