Old Joliet Prison

In the summer of 1932, up to 5,000 people gathered nightly outside Old Joliet Prison to hear a ghost sing hymns from the convict cemetery. The prison blamed an inmate, but researcher Dylan Clearfield has debunked that story. Built in 1858 and closed in 2002, the prison also harbors the ghosts of Odette Allen (the warden's wife, murdered and set on fire in 1915) and two inmates whose heads were removed after death.

In the summer of 1932, up to 5,000 people showed up at Old Joliet Prison every night to hear a ghost sing hymns.

The singing started on July 14, when the Dudek family on Juniper Street, whose backyard backed up to the prison's convict cemetery, reported a voice drifting through the darkness between 11:30 p.m. and midnight. It sounded like church hymns in a foreign language. Word spread fast. Within days, crowds were streaming to the cemetery field, and for a solid month the nightly vigils continued. Local swindlers set up an illegal parking scheme, charging 15 cents a car and, according to reports, smashing the windshields of anyone who wouldn't pay extra. The crowds trampled graves and broke headstones.

Prison officials eventually offered an explanation: William Lalon Chrysler, an inmate trusty who worked the sump pumps at the prison quarry, said he sang to calm himself during his lonely night shifts. Case closed, supposedly. But researcher Dylan Clearfield has pointed out the problems with this story. Chrysler was under constant guard supervision. He was scheduled for release within three weeks and had no reason to risk trouble. And despite extensive nightly searches of the cemetery by ghost hunters and police, nobody ever actually found him singing out there.

The prison opened in 1858 as the Illinois State Penitentiary, designed by W.W. Boyington, the architect behind the Chicago Water Tower. It was supposed to be a model prison. By 1878, it held over 2,000 inmates in a facility not designed for half that number. The overcrowding, the violence, and the executions (first by hanging, later by electric chair and lethal injection) produced a body count that nobody has a complete number for.

The convict cemetery, called "Monkey Hill" (a racial slur reflecting which inmates were forced to dig the graves), holds somewhere between 500 and 1,500 bodies. Some of the deaths produced their own ghost stories. George Chase was executed in 1866, and afterward his head was removed for a phrenological study. Visitors have reported a headless figure or a floating head drifting through the cemetery at night. John Anderson was hacked to death by his cellmate, Mike Mooney. Anderson's head was also removed, this time as trial evidence, and it subsequently vanished. Two beheaded men buried in the same cemetery makes for a specific and grim kind of lore.

Odette Allen, the warden's wife, was murdered in 1915. Her body was set on fire inside the prison administration building. She'd been close to the inmates, known for singing to them. When the 1932 cemetery singing started, some locals thought the voice was hers. Her ghost has been seen on the second floor of the administration building where she died.

The prison finally closed in 2002, though Baby Face Nelson, who escaped during a prisoner transfer in the early 1930s, is probably its most famous former resident. The Blues Brothers filmed at the prison in 1980. Prison Break used it as a location. After decades of decay, the site reopened for public tours in 2018.

Visitors today describe electronics dying in the main yard, an oppressive weight in certain cell blocks, and whistling from empty cells. Paranormal teams from Ghost Adventures and Destination Fear have investigated. But the 1932 singing is still the story that sticks. Five thousand people heard something from that cemetery. The prison's explanation doesn't hold up. And nobody else has offered a better one.