Transient Spirits
Eerie Feelings and Fleeting Glimpses from Santa Clara County's Jails
Story by Justin Collins // Photos by Richard Babcock

One of the unspoken anguishes of incarceration is knowing the pain that existed in the place where you are held. What happens in places that have for years held misery and pain?   What happens to the souls that separate from the bodies there? Sometimes they appear. When you are locked up, sometimes you are locked up with spirits of the past.

Juvenile Hall
My story begins at 14 years old; my first crime that landed me behind closed doors was malicious mischief. I spent the night in the old B-5 in Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall that may or may not have been torn down. That was the old part of Juvenile Hall, and it was a series of long dark hall ways full of cells that opened to a staff desk, a common area and bathroom area. The floors were a dark brown cement and looked old and filthy. The outside exercise yards were between large buildings that loomed ominously over head. The whole place echoed sadness and despair, you could picture the distraught youth who commited suicide in the dank cells in past years. Stories were always being swapped of past deaths and legends from the hall. Even a few counselors would share their ghost stories they had heard. One common story was of a youngster who had been made aware he faced California Youth Authority time and wrapped a bed sheet around his neck and hung himself from the cross bar of his bunk bed in the old max unit B-1. Another story was of a boy who broke his window screen and jumped out the third story window to his death. They never tell you which cell a death occurred in, but if you came to juvy enough, chances are you could have slept in a haunted cell. Late at night, when I would lay awake with insomnia thinking about my life, I would get an unnerving feeling of being watched. The cells have a dim yellow light in the wall that stayed on all night. It added an eerie quality to the late night hours. One could almost hear conversations of years past and cries of youth who gave up and took the last step into the other side.

Main Jail North and South
Santa Clara County Jail is a dark and foreboding structure just North of downtown San Jose. It's a drab desert brown color with a squat almost invisible annex attached to the eastern face. These buildings hold a lot of mystery, echoes of decades past and lives lost.

From the shadowy hallways of the new court tunnel that moans in the night to the numerous cells where residents are aware of a inmate deaths. Areas away from the main drag have a horrible haunting quality and long drawn out cries that seem to come from the sealed off areas; like the abandoned court tunnel off to the side. This area is also rumored to be where Correctional Officers commit viscous assaults upon unruly prisoners routinely. In Santa Clara County there is a long history of unexplained asphyxiation deaths and others that were ruled as suicides that were witnessed by other prisoners through the decades. Although most are intimidated into not disclosing officer related deaths to the media, there is a rich oral tradition among older inmates, in a sense keeping alive the memories of wronged and murdered friends of decades past. I have tried to piece together the ghost legends and truths of Santa Clara County's correctional facilities. I unfortunately have been in the county jail more than a dozen times; to take away from the madness and desperation of incarceration, I would ask OG's about the old days. Everything has history there, even the hallways and corridors have old murals of birds and trains from the 60's. This place too has been home to multiple suicides and mysterious deaths. I heard about a woman who was strangely asphyxiated in her room after making trouble for the guards and also of people beaten to death in the night. Every area in there has bad energy, from “Siberia” and “Hollywood” on the 3rd floor of the old jail to 2nd East to the left of the visiting stairs and “The Snake Pits” directly in front of the second floor landing. And I have walked the line on the 4th floors Double Red “ B” section and Red over flow of 6-A. There are areas I've never seen like the Old Jail's Red Max and PC areas hidden somewhere beyond where we could see. The second floor showers also have an ominous old prison look, with a tank just inside and a long hallway that leads to the old showers. One can imagine the horrors of violence and the aftermath of murders committed here in the turbulent times before local gang unity. Even in the new jail deaths have occurred in the bright futuristic styled new sections of Main Jail North. Late at night after the yells and arguments die down, the spirits can be almost made out in the shadowy recesses of the cells.

Elmwood Correctional Facility
Even Elmwood had stories of suicides and stabbings that were recounted to me by staff over the years. The Elmwood Facility six miles to the North in Milpitas, California has stories of unsettled energies that walk the former military barracks of the minimum camp. Once in M3D late at night on the way to the rest room I saw a flash of an angry man out of the corner of my eye from another era, screaming and violently trying to come inside from the exercise yard where he lost his life. Once in M-5 D Disciplinary Housing I was left in a cell for 48 days.   I would be up late reading a book and I would suddenly be paranoid about ghosts. I would sleep with my head to the door so I could catch any malevolent spirits in my area bothering me. When my disciplinary time was up I came back to M3-A and although I was out of the habit of speaking with others, I was intrigued by a conversation I over heard of the history and stories of the buildings I was living in known as the “Mods.” I was told of a restless indigenous warrior who runs up and down the hallways screaming a native war cry. This is most disturbing because human bones were found and removed from a Pre-Columbian burial ground under a portion of the M-8 facility. I was told by older inmates of an old fatherly wino who was incarcerated so often that he stayed after his death, some say he still rises from his usual corner bunk to walk a sleepy walk to the rest room.

Older Institutions in San Jose's Past
Starting in the 1700's, Santa Clara County Jail was located in the current San Jose Museum of Art. Executions were carried out in the modern day Cesar E Chavez Park, that was then the location of the original City Hall and even earlier a Chinese migrant shanty town that was burnt to the ground by a vicious Anglo mob. The original Superior Court is still standing adjacent to Saint James Park. This location too has a shadowy history of lynch mob violence. In the early years of this century a well loved family owned a prominent south bay department store called “Hart's Family Department Stores.” If you walk through the back of Ryland Park, past the mural of the train and down the tracks west a ways, an old Hart's advertisement can be seen faded on an old shipping warehouse wall. The family had a son who was kidnapped and subsequently killed and dropped of the Bay Bridge into the cold waters below. The suspected kidnappers were apprehended and held in the basement of the old court. A large mob gathered and barged into the cells and dragged the men to a large tree that still stands by the President McKinley monument. The hanging is a legend in San Jose to this day.  

Some of these stories come from family, like my uncles Dave and Jeff Dollar and my father. Some come from old winos in Gore Park, some were told to me by an eccentric Native American named "Wolf", who is very wise and aware of much of the esoteric history of this valley. Others I uncovered through my own macabre investigations of the local supernatural and the netherworld.

The greater mystery is why do the spirits stay, are they forever imprisoned in their earthly chains? Are they screaming out for justice, retribution or just to have their story told? This is not just a detriment to the spirits who were wronged in life, it also has a profound effect on the moral of current prisoners. When the lights go out and the guards voices fade as they turn on the TV, the sounds of buzzing florescent lights fill your head. Then the voices of past conversations and choices come in. All this is what keeps most up late, tortured by there own minds and suffocated by the cold brick and oppressive energy of the facilities. This is when the ghosts come to visit, when just you are up and no one can say what you really saw. Was it a shadow, a spirit, a demon or just a blip in a tortured mind slowly losing touch with society?

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