Hawk Hill Productions (HHP) and Hawk City Productions (HCP) co-hosted a trip to the “Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary” event Oct. 26. About 45 students attended the annual event at Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP), a prison that opened in 1829 but now serves as a tourist attraction.
For eight months, from 1929 to 1930, mobster Al Capone was imprisoned at ESP for carrying a concealed weapon. The prison closed in 1970 after prisoner riots in 1933, 1934 and 1961 but reopened to the public for daily tours in 1994.
Now, ESP offers historic tours and fictional horror attractions to attract visitors to the penitentiary.
Erin Lovell ’25, programmer at HHP, said the penitentiary tour was more chilling than the haunted attractions and highlighted how the history of the prison contributed to its eerie nature.
“Going through the haunted houses, you know it’s all fake,” Lovell said. “None of it’s real, but then the actual tour of the penitentiary, it’s all real. All real accounts, real people, real prison cells and it’s honestly spookier than the haunted house part.”
Nicole Frankhouser, senior director of marketing and communications at ESP, shared a press release with The Hawk thatwhich explains the importance of understanding the history of the penitentiary.
The Halloween Nights event combines education with a “festival-style Halloween experience, opening the door for dialogue about how our nation can move toward a more equitable and effective criminal justice system,” according to the press release.
One of the penitentiary’s non-Halloween exhibits is The Big Graph, a sculpture that shows data on incarceration rates and capital punishment policies across the world, the U.S. incarceration rate since 1900 and the racial breakdown of American prisons in 1970 and today.
“For more than a century, the U.S. imprisoned between 100 and 200 people for every 100,000 citizens,” but today imprisons “between 500 and 600 people for every 100,000 citizens,” one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, according to ESP’s website.
Lovell said learning about this history was really interesting for her.
“The one sculpture was like talking about incarceration, especially in the United States, and how much has risen in the past 100 or so years, it really deep dives into when the penitentiary was being used,” Lovell said. “I know the penitentiary hasn’t been used as a prison in years, but it still tries to tell a story.”
Jacqueline Seijas ’26 attended the event and said the unique style integrated horror and history to provide an educational experience.
“The way that they have it set up with the different [attractions] like the pumpkin patch and dance party, makes it a good combination between [a] scary and then fun learning experience,” Seijas said.
Aside from the 20-minute self-guided tour through one of the cell blocks, students had three hours at ESP’s “Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary” event, which had various attractions, including five haunted houses, beginning with “Delirium” and ending with “The Crypt.”
“Delirium” is an immersive experience allowing participants to wear 3D glasses to explore a haunted neon jungle, where narrow hallways and camouflaged creatures attempt to scare them.
“The Crypt” includes hungry vampires, jump scares, strobing lights and fog machines to create the illusion of being inside the lair of ancient vampires.
Angelina Brown ’26 said the idea of going with friends was to have an experience together, but she chose more intense elements of the experience to heighten the thrill by wearing a glow necklace, which indicates to the actors they have permission to grab and redirect that person.
“When you get the necklace where they can touch you and pull you aside, it adds to the excitement, because if you get separated from [your friends], you don’t know what to do, because all of a sudden you’re on your own,” Brown said.
Reilly Rosato ’28, another attendee, said the sense of companionship added to the experience, as it allowed friends to bond over the frightful moments this event has to offer.
“I am with friends, and being with them makes it 10 times more fun because we can all get scared together,” Rosato said.
The “Halloween Nights at Eastern State Penitentiary” event ends Nov. 9.
