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"Sorry that took so long, I had to find the keys. They weren't in their spot. You guys ready to see these cells?" Jaz asked walking back into the room a few minutes later. We were all silent, awkwardly looking around to avoid eye contact with the other group of people, Colby's arm tightly wrapped around my waist.

"Yes we are!" Niall said excitedly. I was glad he'd spoken up and sounded so upbeat so we wouldn't have to awkwardly explain to Jaz why we were all sulking.

"So, you said these were called the body rooms?" asked Sam.

"Yes, they are. This is where things get a little gruesome. There were a lot of deaths in the prison. Many died from mining accidents, and others from diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and syphilis. There were also natural causes and exhaustion factors. The death penalty was never carried out at this facility.

"However, the amount of bodies that accumulated was substantial. While waiting for morgues and funeral services and family members to come retrieve the bodies, they were stacked in these cells. There are twelve cells in this pod, and sometimes they would completely fill up," recited Jaz.

The next part of the tour took us down another set of stairs into what definitely qualified as a basement. We went through the fairly standard laundry room and made our way to a hall way with one door at the end of it.

"Welcome to the hole," said Jaz.

"This should be good," Sam said.

"This is where prisoners were brought as a form of discipline. The longest anyone was ever put in here was a month. It's a small cell with absolutely no light source whatsoever, and only one person was allowed in at a time. All the inmate could have in the cell were two buckets. One was full of water for drinking and washing, the other to be used as a restroom. Early on in their punishment, inmates would try to physically mark the buckets in some way to make sure they were able to distinguish between the two. The maximum sentence of one month was decided after they determined that was how long it would take a man to go mad in there. The only man to be put in here for more than 28 days ended up bashing his head against the wall until he killed himself," explained Jaz.

We made our way back upstairs and out to the giant exercise yard in the back.

"Welcome to the yard. This is where inmates got their outside time while not working. Intended as a place of recreation, it quickly became a place of attempted murder and gang activity. One inmate was crushed to death by a weight bench, when some other convicts intentionally stacked too much weight on either side of the bar. The man lifting the weight ended up dropping it on himself, cracking his sternum from the weight and essentially damaging his internal organs. There were also a lot of poisonous snakes out here, both then and now, so be careful," she reported.

"What the hell is that?" Jake asked, pointing over to a wooden platform with a post on it.

"This is one of the more gruesome disciplinary techniques. Inmates were tied by their wrists to the post, and whipped as punishment," said Jaz. I shot a look over at Jake, who mouthed 'kinky' as I knew he was going to. "There's a story about the post that said one man got whipped so hard, his prison uniform cloth fibers got embedded into his skin. This was used when inmates didn't meet their daily coal mining quota or for publicly disobeying a guard. If the whipping post wasn't used, the inmates would be lashed with thick leather straps, sort of like a belt."

"Over here is a basketball court, right outside of this door here that leads to the gymnasium," said Jaz. We followed her into the next section of the building, walking past some old barrels filled with basketballs and footballs.

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