Above the waters of Lake Barkley in Eddyville, Kentucky, a fortress of limestone blocks rises over the bend of the Cumberland River. Locals call it the Castle on the Cumberland. It is the Kentucky State Penitentiary, a working maximum-security prison that holds the state’s death row, and men have been held, condemned, and executed inside it for well over a century.
Its electric chair, “Old Sparky,” took the lives of 163 men before 1962. On Friday, July 13, 1928, seven men were executed one after another, a Kentucky record, as relatives crowded the corridor and the condemned waited in the heat of the death house within sight of the chair. Former staff member Steve Asher later collected the stories of guards who worked there. One, inspecting an unused block of old death row in the late 1980s, greeted a prisoner reading a Bible in his cell. The cell, his sergeant told him, had been empty for nearly a month. When they checked, they found frost, cold air, and a Bible lying open on the floor to the 102nd Psalm, one verse highlighted: “To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death.”
The prison remains in full operation and cannot be visited. There are no tours and no access to its grounds; its walls can only be seen from beyond them. Whatever walks its old death row walks among guards and prisoners who are still there.
Story Source: www.southernspiritguide.org
Address: 266 Water Street, Eddyville, KY 42038
Accessibility Rating: No Public Access — Private property, active restricted site, or location no longer physically accessible to visitors.
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What Others Have Experienced
Working midnight shifts as a correctional officer, a former guard saw a figure in old-style striped prison clothing and caught reflections of inmates who vanished when he went to check. He also heard screams and voices with no visible source.
— from WPSD Local 6
