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Thus Thrills. This is Thursday Thrills. I'm your host, Enrique Kuto.
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It's a quick weekly ride into creepy stories, haunted places,
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weird obsessions, and eerie corners of the world worth talking about.
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And for our first trip, we're staying close to home,
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at least my home. You're driving through Ohio at night,
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the kind of night where the headlights only show you
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enough road to make the darkness on both sides feel personal.
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Somewhere up ahead is Mansfield and sitting there, huge and gray,
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castle like against the sky, is the Ohio State Reformatory.
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It doesn't look like a normal prison. It looks like
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a Gothic cathedral that got tired of forgiving people. Long
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stone walls, towers, iron bars, cell blocks that seem to
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stretch farther than makes sense, a place built for reform, punishment, silence,
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and echoes. And if it looks familiar, there is a reason.
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This is the prison that stood in for Shawshank. This
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is the place where movie history, Ohio history, and ghost
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stories all seem to overlap in one long, cold hallway.
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So tonight, for our inaugural Thursday Thrills, We're taking a
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haunted road trip not the stiff kind with a brochure
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and a polite tour guide. I mean the fun kind
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at least are kind of fun where somebody in the
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passenger seat says, Okay, this next place is supposed to
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be haunted, and suddenly everyone in the car gets a
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little quieter. Because paranormal tourism is not just about whether
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you believe in ghosts, that's almost the least interesting question.
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What's a better question is why do we keep buying
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tickets to stand in the dark. Why do people line
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up for haunted prisons, haunted mansions, abandoned tunnels, old hospitals,
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battlefield tours, ghost walks and overnight investigations. Why do we
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want the history lesson to come with a chill raising
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the hairs on the back of the neck. If you're
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listening to this show, you probably already understand why. But
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let's dive in. The Ohio State Reformatory is the perfect
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place to start because it's practically built out of atmosphere.
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The place opened in the late eighteen hundreds, and even
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before you get into any ghost stories, it already has
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that heavy institutional energy. A building like that does not
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have to try very hard to feel haunted. You step
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inside and your voice changes. You don't even notice it
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at first, you just start speaking. Lower. Part of that
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is scale. Prisons are designed to make a person feel small.
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The corridors are long, the doors are solid, hard, the
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cells are narrow. Everything repeats, bars, walkways, staircases, tears stacked
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above tiers. From a filmmaker's point of view, it's almost unfair.
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You put a camera in a place like that and
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the building does half the work for you. Every frame
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has depth, every shadow has a purpose, Every footstep sounds
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like it belongs to someone else. And then there's the
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Shawshank layer. That's what makes Mansfield more than a local
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haunted stop. A lot of people know it because of
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the Shawshank redemption, even if they don't realize that's how
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they recognize it. They've seen the walls, they've felt that
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prison in a movie. So when visitors walk in, they're
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not entering a blank location. They're entering memory. Cinema memory,
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cultural memory, the kind of place where your brain says,
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I've been here before, even if your body hasn't. That
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is a powerful feeling, and it's exactly why haunted travel
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is so popular. A haunted location is never just one thing.
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Its history, architecture, rumor, performance, and personal imagination, all stacked
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on top of each other. You bring your own fears
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into the room. The tour guide gives you a story,
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The building gives you the echo. The darkness, well it
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does the rest At the reformatory. The official paranormal programming
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leans right into that public ghost hunts, private investigations. Eerie
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walks in a place where beginners can show up, curious
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and seasoned investigators can show up with equipment, recorders, cameras,
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and that little hopeful part of the brain that says,
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maybe tonight something answers back. And that is where paranormal
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tourism becomes fascinating. It gives regular people permission to play
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detective in the dark. You're not just visiting a museum.
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You're listening for a cell door, a whisper on a recorder,
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a knock from a room everyone swears is empty. Old
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buildings pop and settle. Sure, long corridors carry sound in
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strange ways. But when you're standing there, skepticism and imagination
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start wrestling. One part of you says that was probably
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a pipe. The other part says, then why did it
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sound like it came from inside the empty cell that
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my spookies is the sweet spot that is where a
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haunted tour truly lives. If Mansfield is the grand Gothic prison,
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then Franklin Castle in Cleveland is the haunted house. Side
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of the Ohio map. This place has a totally different flavor.
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The Reformatory is massive, public institutional. Franklin Castle feels personal.
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A stone Victorian house on Franklin Boulevard, built in the
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eighteen eighties, surrounded by decades of stories, rumors, tragedy. It
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has that irresistible phrase every city seems to have for
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one house, the most haunted house in town. You know
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the type every old city has one. The house kids
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point at from the sidewalk, the house people swear has
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lights and windows where nobody's supposed to be. The house
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with a staircase that seems too dark, a basement that
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feels too damp, and a history that has been told
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and retold until fact and folklore are braided together like
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ivy crawling up the walls. Franklin Castle is perfect for
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ghost tourism because it looks like a haunted house before
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anyone tells you a single story. We like to pretend
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ghost stories are only about evidence, But atmosphere always gets
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there first, before the EMF meter, before the cold spot,
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before whispered account. There is simply the appearance of the place.
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A castle in Cleveland already feels like a dare, and
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with a place like Franklin Castle, the fun is not
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just is it haunted. The fun is how many people
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have stood here and wondered the same thing. You're joining
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a chain of reluctant visitors, local storytellers, skeptics who still
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looked over their shoulder, and people who absolutely did not
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believe in ghosts until something moved upstairs. That is the souvenir.
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Paranormal tourism really sells, not proof, but a story. You
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can take home now, if you want to leave the
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stone walls behind behind and really get that Ohio back
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roads chill, that's when you head southeast toward Moonville Tunnel.
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Moonville is where we turn from haunted landmarks into true
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campfire legend. The setup is perfect, an old railroad tunnel
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near what used to be a small mining and railway town.
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The town faded, the rails went quiet, the tunnel remained,
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and the legend says that on certain nights, especially stormy ones.
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If you want the full spooky flavor. People have seen
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a ghostly lantern moving in the dark. That image is
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so pristine it feels like folklore designing itself. A tunnel,
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a dead town, a railroad worker, a lantern in the black.
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You don't need much more than that. In fact, adding
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too much almost hurts it. Moonville works because it's simple.
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You can picture it instantly. You can hear the gravel
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under your shoes, you can feel the damp air shift
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as you get close to the mouth of the tunnel.
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You can imagine somebody saying, there it is, and pointing
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into a darkness that looks deeper than it should. And
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here is where haunted travel gets really interesting. These places
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let us rehearse fear safely. You can go to a
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tunnel with friends, tore a prison with a guide, scare
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yourself half to death, and still know there's a parking
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lot somewhere behind you. It's like a roller coaster for
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the imagination. You get the drop in your stomach, but
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you also know the tracks are supposed to hold. But
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now let's travel beyond Ohio and look a little further
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out into the ether. The reason places like Eastern State
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Penitentiary in Philadelphia and the Winchester House in California stays
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so powerful. It's that they understand the same thing. The
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building is the attraction, but the feeling is the product.
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Eastern State has those ruined cell blocks and that lonely
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radial design with corridors stretching out like a punishment machine.
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Winchester as the mansion as May's energy, doors, stairs, rooms, additions,
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odd turns, and the idea of architecture becoming obsession. They
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are different kinds of haunted tourism, but they both work
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because you're not just looking at a place, You're moving
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through a story. That is what I keep coming back to.
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Haunted locations are stories you can walk inside, and from
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a storyteller and filmmaker's eye, that is gold. A haunted
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prison gives you vertical lines, shadows, confinement. A haunted mansion
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gives you staircases, wallpaper, windows, and rooms that feel like
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they're keeping secrets. A haunted tunnel gives you one point perspective,
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darkness at the endness behind you, and the awful little
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question that might be between you. Almost can't help but
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stage scenes in your head. A flashlight beam sliding across bars,
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a tour guide stopping because everyone heard the same knock.
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A camera pointed down a cell block where nothing moves
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until something almost does. A lantern glow at the far
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end of a tunnel that disappears as you blink. This
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is why paranormal tourism keeps working, even in the age
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of TikTok, YouTube podcasts and streaming horror. We are surrounded
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by screens, but people still crave a physical place to
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attach fear, a real doorway, a real hallway, a real
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room where someone can whisper. This is where it happened,
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and once you're there, your imagination becomes part of the attraction.
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That's why it's also worth being honest about what we know.
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These places have real histories and sometimes painful ones. Prisons
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were not theme parks. Old houses belonged to real families.
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Railroad towns were built by real labor. They experienced danger
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and loss. The best haunted tourism respects that history, while
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admitting folklore has a life of its own. Maybe every
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story is not literally true. Maybe some noises are pipes,
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some shadows are headlights, and some cold spots are just
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old stone doing what old stone does, but the feeling
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that is real, The feeling of standing in a cell
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block after dark and suddenly understanding how much a building
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can remember, the feeling of looking up at Franklin Castle
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and thinking I would absolutely not want to be the
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last person inside tonight. The feeling of staring into Moonville
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Tunnel and knowing that even if no ghostly lantern appears,
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your brain is going to put one there anyway. That
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is the haunted travel promise. Come for the history, stay
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for the goosebumps, leave with a story that gets better
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every time you tell it. So if you're ever in Ohio,
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you don't have to fly across the country to chase
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that feeling. You have a gothic prison in Mansfield with
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movie ghosts and ghost hunt energy. You have a Cleveland
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Castle in Legend. You have an old tunnel in the
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hills where the dark still knows how to hold a lantern.
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And maybe that's why these places keep calling people back,
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Because a haunted landmark is not just a destination. It's
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a question would you go inside, would you stay after dark?
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Would you walk all the way to the end of
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the cell block, the staircase, the tunnel, And if someone
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answered from the dark, would you really want to know
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who it was? And Ohio has no shortage of these,
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so I'm sure we'll return very soon. Come back tomorrow
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for more fear. Until then, lock your doors as if
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that will help you. He