Crown Point Old Sheriff's House and Jail

John Dillinger escaped Indiana's escape-proof jail on March 3, 1934, with either a wooden gun or a real one. Now the cellblock rattles its own bars.

John Dillinger walked out of what authorities called Indiana's escape-proof jail on March 3, 1934, holding either a real gun or a piece of wooden shelving painted with shoe polish. The FBI files say it was fake. Deputy Ernest Blunk, who was there, insisted it was real. Trustee Sam Cahoon believed Dillinger had carved it in his cell using a razor and a piece of shelving. Nobody has ever resolved it.

What's not disputed is the damage. Dillinger and fellow prisoner Herbert Youngblood took two hostages, locked up a handful of jailers and the warden, stole Sheriff Lillian Holley's own Ford V-8 out of the garage, grabbed two submachine guns, and drove across the Illinois state line. It was one of the most humiliating law-enforcement failures of the 20th century, and Lake County never really lived it down. Youngblood was shot dead by Michigan police thirteen days later. Dillinger made it until July 22, when FBI agents shot him in the back of the neck outside Chicago's Biograph Theater.

The jail he broke out of still stands at 226 South Main Street. The Old Lake County Sheriff's House and Jail is a Victorian mansion and a concrete cellblock fused into one weird building: the sheriff and his family actually lived in the ornate red brick house attached to the prison. The first jail went up in 1882 with ten cells, six for men and four for women. A bigger jail replaced it in 1910. A 1928 addition stretched the whole complex to East Street and pushed capacity to 150 cells. It was considered one of the finest jails in Indiana, which is why the escape cut so deep.

The jail closed in 1974 when Lake County moved to a new Government Center. Restoration started in the late 1980s under the Old Sheriff's House Foundation, and that's when the activity began. Volunteers reported cell doors opening and closing on their own, heavy iron mechanisms engaging without anyone touching them. Bars rattle in empty cells, as if something is walking down the block testing each one. Voices carry down the walkways. Sometimes whispers, sometimes full conversations with nobody there to have them. Dark figures drift through the cellblock. Full apparitions have been seen, guards or inmates, nobody can tell.

Ghost Hunters filmed here in 2016 for Syfy's Season 11. The 2009 Johnny Depp film Public Enemies shot scenes in the building, which made the place a pilgrimage site for Dillinger obsessives and ghost hunters at the same time.

The jail's worst secret isn't actually Dillinger. He was there for 33 days. Men lived and died inside these cells for nearly a century. Whoever is rattling the bars, whoever is whispering down the walkway, probably isn't the famous one. It's somebody nobody's written a book about.

Today the Foundation runs overnight paranormal investigations, an annual haunted house, and daytime tours. The cellblock where Dillinger held court for 33 days is open to the public. Upstairs, in the women's cells, the doors still close by themselves.