- On this edition of "ARTEFFECTS," a "Haunted House at a Historic Prison in Carson City."

- There are so many different reactions.

You get the screams, right?

And the excitement, but also all of the laughter.

You really feel something, this is immersive art.

- "Ghost Stories from the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio."

- I just loved the building, it like called me.

It's outside, it's all about the architecture.

When I came into the building, it was all about the paranormal.

- And photographing malls across the Rust Belt.

- I know that the photos I take are important, and they are important to people who engaged in those spaces.

- That's all coming up on this edition of "ARTEFFECTS."

(bright music) - Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan, and welcome to "ARTEFFECTS."

In our featured segment, we take you to Carson City for a night of scares at the Dark Prison Haunted House.

Thanks to a partnership with the Nevada State Prison Preservation Society, the Dark Prison Haunted House team has breathed new life into the historic prison, all while contributing to the site's preservation and rehabilitation.

(tense music) - Dark Prison Haunted House is a walkthrough experience at the historic Nevada State Prison where you'll encounter three haunted houses, which is immersive sets designed and built to depict a storyline.

I work on our haunted attraction from a creative, décor and build perspective, making all of the props for our haunted house and planning the production.

I spend the whole year making everything spooky.

The Nevada State Prison Preservation Society is the board of directors that oversees this amazing historic location.

We are one of their vendors that is here for the Halloween season.

- My name's Lucia Maloney.

I'm here as the General Manager for the Nevada State Prison Preservation Society.

We do historic tours, paranormal programming, special events.

Virtually all of that revenue goes back into the preservation work.

We do a lot of capital projects, improving stairs and ADA ramps so we can bring people in and share the history.

Our Board President, "Mo" White, the story goes, he was up in Reno at the Bowling Stadium, which is where the Haunt was before.

He thought that it would be very cool if both Dark Corner Creative, the company behind the Haunt, and our board worked through this idea of bringing in something completely different from the historic tours and that more historic focus that our board had.

Dark Prison brings an opportunity to think about the space differently in a fun and creative way while still respecting the space where I think visitors who wouldn't necessarily come for a historic tour can become aware that the prison's even here.

- Dark Corner Creative and the Preservation Society have the same goals.

We want this location to thrive.

- They've really been partners in identifying needs and helping us fix them.

And then they do things in their infrastructure of the Haunt itself to honor the history like this year we've expanded outside in the handball court.

They have matched the art of the new building to the historic sandstone, which is really fantastic.

- The Nevada State Prison is an exceptional venue for a haunted house.

I mean, just the site itself before we build any of our haunted attraction inside has this weight, the textures, the old pipes, the sandstone bricks that were quarried right here on the site, the iron bars, the site itself is phenomenal.

We start with a storyline.

The storyline drives everything.

And from there, we create the Hollywood-style temporary walls that we move in.

We paint them, we make the environments, we bring in the set decoration.

And my favorite part about the art here are the high quality horror props.

It's really once you get the prop in its environment that the fun starts as well because all of that small detailing tells the story of the room you're walking through.

It's funny when you think about set detailing because it's like, oh, you're going to put all this work into all these little details and then you're going to turn the lights off?

Well, it matters.

People can just feel the environment.

- To be in these sets that we've been able to give time to add details to, it just allows you as an actor to be able to expand your character based off those details that are in the set, to explore the space and to use it to its full potential.

In any haunted house, when you are assigned a character, you want to find like your version of that character, and you want to explore that.

And even the characters that don't even have a story, like Scary Shrub Number 1, give yourself a name and give yourself a little bit of a backstory.

Why am I scary?

How am I scary?

What is it about this character that is actually scary or entertaining?

- What I like to tell the actors is you have so many different chances to try new things because a haunted house is not like a theatrical play where you perform once and then the lights go out.

- You get hundreds of opportunities to try your character out and be like, okay, that really worked well.

I'm going to continue to do that because I got a big scare, I got a reaction, versus that did not work, I did not get a scare.

Maybe I need to change it to this way.

So, you're always growing that character.

You're always exploring it.

(Actor laughing) (bright music) It starts in a real cell block that you get to walk through.

You meet some of the inmates and then there's a jail break that you're all of a sudden roped into.

You have escaped prison.

It continues on into our second haunted house, Unit 15.

We named it Unit 15 because it says Unit 15 on the door.

You are going through different areas of the prison that the inmates have kind of taken back for themselves.

And our third haunted house is a more hospital medical kind of scare.

(gentle music) It's so cool to be able to see just how many artists put their heart and soul into this place to build these sets, to build these props, and I'm in awe of it all the time.

- There are so many different reactions from our guests at the haunted house.

You get the screams, right?

And the excitement, but also all of the laughter.

You really feel something, this is immersive art.

You leave all the scream and the terror behind, but you also leave with a newfound respect for this historical property.

- When you come to the prison yard and you look around and you're like, "This is incredible," and then you experience these actors that are terrifying, terrifying, but really genuinely great humans, the experience that we have built here and continue to grow is just something I'm really proud of.

(bright music) - To learn more about this haunted attraction, visit darkprison.com.

Now it's time for this week's "Art Quiz."

What was the name of the contemporary art exhibition hosted at the Nevada State Prison in 2024?

Is the answer, A, "Hidden Behind Bars," B, "Far Beyond the Walls," C, "Reframing Freedom," or D, "Confined Canvases?"

And the answer is B, "Far Beyond the Walls."

If you have ever seen the 1994 film, "The Shawshank Redemption," you likely remember the film's primary setting was the fictional Shawshank State Penitentiary.

In real life, the movie was filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio.

While the prison closed decades ago, today it's a museum you can tour if you dare.

Some come for the architecture, some come for the history, and others come for the ghosts.

(gentle music) - The building has its own kind of essence.

It has this aura and this feeling about it.

It kind of breathes.

You drive up and you just get this feeling, and it's what Levi Scofield was intending.

You just get this awe-inspired feeling where you were just swept away by the building itself.

Levi Scofield was a Cleveland architect, born in Cleveland, did a lot of work around the state of Ohio, including the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Cleveland.

So, the building relied pretty heavily on three different architectural styles, Richardsonian Romanesque, Gothic, and Queen Anne.

Richardsonian Romanesque uses rough-hewn stonework.

Queen Anne has the deeply pitched roofs and the wraparound porches, and then Gothic has the curved arches and the stained-glass windows.

We have gorgeous stained-glass windows here at the reformatory and they actually are the originals.

Levi Scofield designed this prison to be something that was awe-inspiring.

He wanted to give the gentlemen who were sent here a feeling of hope and inspiration.

The west cell block was our first cell block completed.

It is made primarily of stone and mortar, so it's easier to heat, easier to cool.

And then the east cell block is all steel construction.

The inmates actually worked on that after the first 150 inmates were moved in.

It is the tallest standing steel cell block in the world at six tiers high.

- I just love the building, it like called me.

It's outside, it's all about the architecture.

When I came into the building, it was all about the paranormal.

When you're working with the paranormal, you're coming in to see the history behind it.

- Arthur Glattke was our longest serving warden.

He actually had no background in corrections.

He was an educator, which considering we were trying to reform these inmates was actually a great background to come from.

He actually met his wife while he was working here.

They got married, lived here, raised their children here.

They had two young sons that grew up in the prison as well.

- Now, there's tragedy that did follow this family, and the tragedy first started with Helen.

- In the 1950s, Helen was getting ready for We Think Church, and she reached up into the closet to find her hat box.

- And as she reached up for it, Art's pistol was on top of it and it fell, discharged and struck her in the lung.

- She was taken to Mansfield Hospital where she died three days later.

- Helen died in 1950, Art continued as the warden here.

There was a lot of stress involved with the families living here on property, and as a result of the stress, had a massive heart attack in his office that did end his life.

We have experienced their energy here in this building.

Helen used to make a rose water perfume.

The very first time that I was here, I was taking a tour and I smelled roses coming down the second floor to where her bedroom was.

Now, Art, he used to smoke a cherry pipe tobacco, and there are occasions when you're walking around, you make a dead stop because you smell cherry pipe tobacco.

(tense music) - We have some paranormal hotspots within the building that are actually well known for being active.

- Hey, guys.

Hope you're doing good today.

Coming for a little visit.

We are in the West Attic, one of the most haunted spots in the prison.

The West Attic was actually used to house inmates back in 1930.

There was a huge fire that took place at the Ohio Penitentiary, and they needed to house 250 plus inmates in a different location, and the Mansfield Reformatory was the location that they chose.

Now, the story goes that they were placed up here.

Now, keeping in mind, the inmates that were coming from the Ohio Penitentiary were the worst of the worst.

This area was used to house those inmates, and as you see, it's completely open.

There's no windows.

I'm sure they locked the door.

And what happened?

I guess it's inside these walls and behind those doors, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty.

One of the things that I can say as far as hauntings that take place here in the Attic is the smell of smoke.

I attribute that to when the inmates came from the Ohio Penitentiary and their clothing had smoke smells on them and any bedding or anything that they brought with them.

I don't smell the smoke as strong as it was earlier today either.

So, this is a chair room, and this chair does move up by itself on occasion.

It will also, when you're sitting in it in the dark, it may vibrate, you might hear voices, you might see lights.

There's all kinds of things that can happen.

So, the challenge is you come in here with no lights, you sit in the chair with the lights off for 15 minutes, and you just wait and see what happens.

- By 1930, things had really changed here at the reformatory, starting with some overcrowding that was a result of the Great Depression and Prohibition, as well as the Ohio Penn Fire down in Columbus.

We were never supposed to house more than 1,900 inmates.

At our worst, we were closer to 3,500.

By the 1960s, things had gotten so bad here that it was starting to turn into a maximum security prison.

By 1978, a lawsuit was brought against us by 1,200 inmates who were kept here, that we were keeping them in cruel, inhumane, and brutalizing conditions, and we certainly were.

So, by 1990, the reformatory was closed to operations.

Eve Lapolla was a member of the Ohio Film Commission.

She played a vital role in getting "Shawshank Redemption" to the Reformatory, and she really championed getting Frank Darabont and his production crew here to check out the location.

He climbed all over this place like it was playground equipment.

A direct quote from him was that, "The building is going to be the biggest character in the movie, so it has to be perfect."

And when Castle Rock showed up to film the first morning, the wrecking ball was actually standing outside of the prison.

There is a very good chance that if they had not selected the Ohio State Reformatory as their filming location, that the building would not be here today.

(gentle music) The building itself is a very unique architectural marvel.

You're not going to see a lot of castles in the State of Ohio or even the United States for that matter.

The architecture is something that deserves to remain standing.

- When I became the Paranormal Program Manager three years ago, it was one of the best moves that I made.

I'm going to be here until they kick me out.

Oh, who knows?

I might be here after I go.

(laughing) (gentle music) - For more information, visit mrps.org.

For our final segment, photographer Jessica Anschutz has been documenting shopping malls across the Rust Belt since 2016.

Infused with nostalgia, these pictures spark memory and discussion.

We head to Akron, Ohio for the story.

- This photo is of me, and I was 18 months old, and my mom had me at a Chapel Hill Mall, and she was approached by a photographer from the "Akron Beacon Journal" who asked if her child would pose with some tiger cubs, and my mom said yes.

So, this picture ran in the "Akron Beacon Journal" in 1978.

My name is Jessica Anschutz.

I am a documentary photographer and a storyteller.

My dad is a bricklayer, and one of his first jobs was working at Rolling Acres Mall during the building of the mall.

So, quite literally from the first bricks of that place, my family has been involved.

I basically grew up there.

I've always joked that it's my, it was my childhood home because I lived three miles from it.

I went on my first date at that mall, at the movie theater.

I had my very first job at the mall, so it was always a presence in my life.

I started photographing malls in 2016.

I've wanted to pick my camera back up, so I did, with the intention of starting a daily creative practice.

I've always been interested in architecture and buildings, and I drove by Rolling Acres on my way to my mom's house, and I was like, "Oh, okay.

I think I'm going to go take pictures of the old Kaufmann's," because it was falling apart and it was also on the cover of the Black Keys' "Gold on the Ceiling" album.

So, you know, it was a very familiar, iconic piece of local architecture.

Every season, I would go and take different pictures because, you know, there were trees growing up in the parking lot and the leaves would change, and it was an interesting juxtaposition of, you know, this decay, but also life from plants.

I really didn't get, like, nostalgic for them until I started doing this, until I started photographing them.

From there, I started doing more research, and I ended up at Canton Center Mall.

And so you're in this space that is familiar.

You can look at the storefronts and know from the colors and patterns, like what store used to be there.

There might be a label scar, but all of the plants were dead.

The fountain was empty.

It just, it smelled old and moldy and musty, but it still, you know, it was a mall.

And that was the one that I was like, "Yes, this is what I need to be doing.

There's clearly something happening, and I want to capture this."

With malls now, they've taken all the seating out, you know, you don't see fountains.

Even plants are hard to come by, and it's just this big white box that you go in, you shop, and you leave.

Finding places where I can still go sit in a conversation pit by a fountain and, like, enjoy the sights and sounds for, like, 10, 15 minutes, that's my jam, that's what I want to do.

(laughing) (gentle music) A lot of times when malls close, they just leave the plants in.

This plant started from a little clipping of the plant that was on the fountain at Chapel Hill Mall.

When I visit malls, I am very immersed in the actual experience of it.

I shop while I'm there if I can.

We'll get a snack.

We'll go sit by the fountain if they have one.

You know, we engage in the space, and I think that lends itself to photos that are a little more atmospheric, and I feel like my photos are a little more intimate.

I've always had a camera.

My parents put one in my hands very young.

I didn't go to school for photography.

I went to school for journalism, so I think that's where the nonstop curiosity has come from.

Like, I will see something or experience something, and if it's impactful enough, I want to know everything about it.

I wasn't anticipating this, but I love it, and I've just dug into it, and it's endlessly fascinating because people dig into it from so many different aspects, you know?

Like, I'm looking at it from more of, like, wanting to document these places while they're still around, and engaging with people, and just enjoying the nostalgia.

But I'm also not a person who is like, "And I think malls should still exist."

In a lot of ways, the time of the mall has passed.

I do think it's important for photos and the folklore of a mall to still exist.

This is my favorite piece of mall ephemera that I have is this Chapel Hill Mall is not closing sign, because there was, like, this big campaign probably the year before they closed where it was just like, "No, we're not closing.

We're not going anywhere."

And, you know, the writing was on the wall.

Everybody knew they were closing, and it was just like these optimistic posters just hanging everywhere.

There's definitely an interest, and I've noticed, you know, locally, like, if I post pictures, local people are just like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about that place in so long," and it just, it sparks all of these memories and discussions that reinforce what I'm doing.

I know that the photos I take are important, and they are important to people who engaged in those spaces.

And if I can be the person who helps them spark these memories and spark these conversations, then that's fantastic.

I love it.

(gentle music) - To see more of Jessica's work, follow her on Instagram @rustbeltmallwalker, and that wraps it up for this edition of "ARTEFFECTS."

If you want to watch new "ARTEFFECTS" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel, and don't forget to keep visiting pbsreno.org to watch complete episodes of "ARTEFFECTS."

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan.

Thanks for watching.

- Funding for "ARTEFFECTS" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidemarie Rochlin, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(bright music)