It's not your ordinary haunted house.

This one really did have 220 people die in it. Many of them violently.

They've had these special night-time Hallowe'en tours for over a decade, after the old penitentiary became an historic site.The wife served as ghoul/inmate for several years in a row. Even got abandoned, locked into her cell and forgotten one year. Me, this is only the second time I've been on a tour.

Nowadays, high school kids serve almost all the functions. Tour guides, ghouls and ghosts, clangers and bangers, forgotten corpses.

It's your standard haunted house fare, except for the setting.

Here, when you follow your guides, them holding the only sources of light, and see the grim reaper watching over you...

you're in Cell Block A, with two cell blocks to go, not to mention the laundry, cafeteria, and showers. Not to mention Death Row, and yes, the actual gas chamber, and the gallows that was used before it.

Real people died here. That changes the effects, somewhat. When the guide, in his vampire face and long cowl, explains how one particular inmate, found guilty of horrible murders of two young girls in the Wort, took 11 minutes to succumb to the cyanide gas, you know it's true. It was apparently a record time for this form of execution. He shows you the small hole drilled in the wall where the stethoscope, attached to the felon's chest, came out for the two attending physicians to listen through.

Current theory is that the second, a new young doctor who would not confirm death for so long, was so scared he was actually hearing his own heartbeat.

The showers are dank and dingy, on a cold northwestern corner. Most inmate murders occurred here. This was the place to settle grudges, catch your victim at his greatest vulnerability. There is a crime scene silhouette of a body taped at the bottom of the stairs here. Two inmates, trying to get high on hair spray, were surprised by a guard. They jumped him, beat him, and threw him down the stairs.

He died at the bottom. The silhouette may not be realistic, but it is at the exact spot.

They added quite a few effects over the other time I was through. The kids on our tour, all in their own Hallowe'en garb, got plenty scared at one place or another. 'Course I knew about the leaves piled into one empty room, since they were setting that up when I came by to collect a dead owl a week or so ago, and wasn't surprised when moving corpses rose up out of them. They did actually have someone down in the tunnels this year, banging on the metal grates as we passed over.

That's a special effect you don't get in most haunted houses, right under your feet.

I've been in those tunnels, extracting a dead "deer" which turned out to be a mummified dead dog, complete with collar. Not a pleasant place, cramped, low, wet and smelly, even in the middle of the day. Pretty brave ghoul to be down there banging around on Hallowe'en night.

One of the tall guardians in B Block was youngest son, back from college for the weekend just so he could volunteer for this activity for all three nights. We knew his costume, but there were at least three tall dark shapes with skull heads in there, so we're not sure which was him.

Did recognize the senior class president serving up trays of glowing grub in the cafeteria. With an inanimate zombie vomiting the material onto the plates for those hungry enough to partake.

The madam and her hooker in A Block were new. 'Course, I know female inmates were housed separately, on the third floor above the warden's apartment, not down here in the blocks, but it was still a nice touch. The madam claimed her girl was "young and clean", but I suspect one hundred years ago, those attributes were probably not as high a concern as they might be now. Suspect fishnet stockings probably weren't the normal prostitute attire back in those days, either.

There were the usual bodies falling from the upper tiers in C Block, white clothing stuffed with leaves. Youngest son had complained that the biggest problem getting reset in the 45 minutes between tours was getting all those leaf men back up four flights of stairs.

Was disappointed they didn't have the simulated hanging of a leaf man at the end of the tour. Our guide told us the story though, a true enough tale. About the inmate who was released and promptly went across the street and murdered a kindly old woman. A crime so heinous, authorities did not feel he would be safe in the county jail (the town had a deserved reputation for lynch mobs). So, until trial, he was to be held back in the Pen, on the fourth floor of A Block.

That arrangement lasted all of six hours. Turns out the kindly old woman he murdered had a grandson in the prison, and had repeatedly sent him baked goods and treats, enough to share with most the inmates. She was the grandmother so many of these men had never had.

Meal time came, and the cell block was taken over by the inmates. Not for an escape, but a jailhouse lynching. It is said he asked for time to pray before he was thrown off the fourth tier, a noose of sheets around his neck.

"If you make it short, you can pray on the way down," was the response.

And with that, all too short, our haunted pen tour was over.