They Never Left Alcatraz

This is a story that I was told recently whilst on holiday in San Francisco! The guy I was staying with had organised a tour for us of Alcatraz and when I met his mother and told her about this, she told me the following.

She went for a tour round Alcatraz herself. She was listening intently to the tour guide through the headset you get given and was just engrossed in it. She told me that she was outside and that she looked up and on a roof there was this guy standing there. She thought nothing of it, that it must have been someone who worked there, until she looked back and saw him still there, just staring down... and noticed he was wearing very old-style prison gear. A split second later he was gone - nobody else seemed to have noticed him. Further into the tour, she came across a picture of an old inmate... wearing exactly the same clothes as the man on the roof!

She tells me she was sure she had seen a spirit of a former inmate, and I was inclined to believe her. I was totally awestruck by her story and really excited about going there myself.

When myself and three friends did go, I didn't see a spirit - I was probably looking too hard - but I did get a sense of real eeriness about the place. That's not surprising considering it's history and the very fact it's located on a foggy island across choppy waters where you can only get to by ferry, but it was more than that. I was totally fascinated by the tour, and when invited to step inside a cell, I did so - well, I can only describe how it felt by saying it was like chills going right through me. It was the weirdest feeling and really frightening and I got out pretty damn quickly.

That was my only slightly odd experience from my visit to Alcatraz, but that and the general creepy atmosphere of the place was enough proof for me, my friend's mother is right - Alcatraz is DEFINITELY haunted!