There are some places that are so terrifying they’re hard to even talk about. There exists a place like this on the border between Nebraska and Iowa.
Built in 1865 as a prison to hold 63 inmates, this structure is like few that have ever been conceived. From the outside, this prison is so unassuming you’d have no idea that it was a prison at all. This was done overtly to make sure that the structure fit with the city’s architecture so as not to alarm townspeople.
On the inside, this prison was exquisite in its ability to isolate and then inflict severe suffering. Something that only could be conceived in the mind of man, this prison is round with three stories and ten cells to each story. Similar to a lazy Susan, each story had only a single entrance and the floor had to be hand-cranked to rotate the cells. Imagine entering a cell, having the door slammed shut and then being rotated away from the only entrance–just like you were turning on a lazy Susan. This technology allowed the jailer to keep dangerous prisoners out of sight.
There are records of inmates who starved to death when the hand-crank failed and the floor could not be rotated to feed or water those held captive.
The most notorious and dangerous were kept in isolation on the third floor. Behind this door was hell. As the door closed, prisoners followed a narrow hallway to a tiny cell with no windows. They were then rotated away from the entrance into the belly of the building. The pain and suffering experienced here was unspeakable.
Almost unbelievably, the jailer (pictured in the final entry) and his family lived on the fourth floor directly above this madness. His children would have had to travel down metal staircases located in the jail to move about.
Shut down in the 1960’s, the prison is now a macabre museum of sorts. Today, there are rumors that the jail is haunted. Interestingly, notice the orb on the noose that was used to hang one of the jail’s most notorious killers.
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