Her parents had wanted to take them out to dinner for their fifth anniversary, but Kim and her husband, Chris, had these plans made for over three months and nothing was going to stop them. Each year, they always tried to do something different and exciting for their anniversary and this year was no exception.
While driving to their destination, Chris looked over at his wife and smiled, remembering how excited she had been when she heard the news that the old Reformatory was having a ghost hunt on Halloween, the same day as their anniversary. They loved Halloween and insisted upon being married on that day and even asked the guests to dress up in costumes for the evening reception. It had been a wonderful day for them and it was a party that everyone remembered.
The Mansfield Reformatory was built in 1895 and was originally used as a prison for young male offenders. Its gothic, cathedral style architecture was used to inspire these young criminals to rededicate their lives to God. When Kim first saw the prison when they visited a few years earlier, it sent chills up and down her spine. An imposing structure, it had a main, central building for offices and new inmate reception and off the this main area called the bullpen, an east and west wing jutted off each side. In the west wing, it boasted a six tier block of cells that was a world record until it shut down in 1979. Each tier in the west wing had fifty cells.
The Mansfield Reformatory moved away from holding younger men and it eventually held Ohio's most hardened and heinous criminals, thus becoming the state's most notorious prison for assaults and deaths. Violence was a natural way of life inside the dark stone walls and inhuman screams were almost commonplace during the lonely nights.
The structure rotted away for years until the city saved it from demolition and began to renovate and turn it into a museum. Kim and Chris had taken several tours of this magnificent structure and from the modest fee collected from visitors, the Mansfield Reformatory was starting to look like its old self.
Kim and Chris had always liked a good fright and the chance to explore the old jail for an evening, especially on Halloween, was just too good an opportunity to pass up. They knew it was reputed to be haunted and this only added to the excitement.
"Just think," she giggled after they made the reservations, "maybe we could fool around in one of the cells."
"I don't think the spirits would take too kindly to that," Chris replied.
"Oh, only because they'd be jealous that they're dead and not able to take advantage of me like you could." She stood up and walked to where Chris was sitting. She turned her back to him and pushed her shapely butt towards his face, wiggling it suggestively. "Who could resist this?" she cooed.
Thinking back, Chris hadn't been able to resist and knew resistance was futile if his darling Kim really wanted to screw inside one of the cells. She always had that affect on him.
They had been brought together on a blind date by her brother, who was friends with Chris. It was the Halloween season, so after a traditional date of dinner and a movie, they had decided to go to one of the area haunted houses sponsored by the local Lion's Club. It wasn't very good and both Kim and Chris had been disappointed with the experience.
"Do you really want to be scared?" he asked her in the car afterward.
"Sure," she said. "I'm game."
"Okay," he replied. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
He drove for about a half hour until they stopped at a dark, remote area of town. To their right stood a tall, wrought iron gate, rusted over the years from exposure, but still imposing. Vines and trees covered the black, five foot wrought iron fence to the end of each block that the old cemetery encompassed.
"Come on," he said, holding her hand and leading her to the gate.
Kim didn't know what to think, but instinctively trusted Chris and followed him. They came to the gate and Chris pushed his way through the unlocked entrance. The hinges squealed from lack of oil, but they entered the grounds of the sacred resting places. With only the moon light to guide them, they soon found themselves amongst the tombstones of the forgotten dead.
"Scared yet?" he inquired, turning to her and still holding her soft hand.
Kim listened to the clicking of the bare branches swaying lazily from the soft breeze and sighed. "I love cemeteries," she whispered before she kissed him that first time. He loved her immediately.
"Maybe we could do it in 'The Hole'," Kim suggested, breaking Chris from his thoughts, her light green eyes gleaming.
"I don't think so," Chris replied uneasily.
The Hole was the Reformatory's most haunted area. Many sounds and images had been recorded over the years in that spot and nearly everyone who went past that area came away feeling chilled, scared, and negatively affected by the experience.
The Hole was where inmates were sent for punishment. A day in there seemed like a week, a week like a month. No prisoner came out of there unaffected, if they came out alive at all. A goodly number of inmates came out mumbling gibberish, incoherent and ultimately insane. There were loud ravings of hearing voices telling them to kill themselves and seeing shadowy, ghostly images. Others spared themselves that ordeal and simply ended their sad, pathetic lives before their minds rotted to jelly.
Many a brutal beating took place in there, as inmates already knowing the fates of their brethren before them wanted no part of the horror that awaited them. Sometimes, they died before stepping foot into the smelly, dark cement box. It was said their troubled spirits still roamed the cell, begging for the mercy that eluded them all those years before.
"No, I don't think so," Chris said again, a bit firmer this time. They had made love in a lot of strange, weird places, but this was just a bit too kinky for his taste.
He was thankful that Kim didn't press him about it. She, too, knew his limits and never pushed him into things with which he was uneasy.
With backpacks filled with water, flashlights, batteries, cameras, and a mini-recorder in the trunk, Chris pulled into the entrance of the grounds; a long gravel path with bare trees lining the way, spooky and swaying in the soft fall breeze. Although this would be the fourth time they visited, their first glimpse of the grand old prison once again sent chills of awe, excitement, and apprehension through them both.
"God, it's beautiful," Kim murmured when the prison came into full view.
Kim saw the twin steeples that doubled as guard towers. The gargoyles were hanging on the edge of the roof, smiling demonically at the visitors who dared invade their peaceful house. Although she couldn't see them, she remembered them from previous visits. They made the entrance look even more eerie. She licked her lips in anticipation and could feel a bit of moistness begin to invade the sweet folds between her soft inner thighs.
Chris looked at his wife and smiled. At thirty years of age, she had the face and figure of a woman ten years her junior. Her short, spiked blonde hair was in disarray and her green eyes were riveted to the building in front of them. He figured she was already starting to get horny as she normally did when they went into dark, scary places. Facing the unknown was always a turn on for her, as he had found out that first night alone with her in the cemetery. Chris never forgot her scream of pleasure the first time he sank himself into her near the large granite mausoleum and was surprised to find the ghosts were still asleep in their deep, dank graves once her moaning ceased.
For their honeymoon a year later, they scoured every part of Ohio looking for haunted houses, hotels, and cemeteries. They made love everywhere they stayed, daring the spirits that invaded each habitat to have their say. None did, although they had the distinct feeling of being watched from time to time. That only added to Kim's enjoyment.
After they parked, Chris unloaded the two backpacks from the trunk. He had spent the previous evening making sure all of their equipment was in perfect working order. He hoped to capture on film or tape some type of apparition or unearthly sound. He handed the lighter of the two backpacks to Kim and she shrugged it on over her hooded sweat jacket. They had been warned ahead of time that the Reformatory had very little electricity and the place was quite cool during the night. The outdoor temperature was in the high sixties, but the prison would probably dip into the mid-fifties or less after midnight.
Once they got to the entrance of the prison, they were told that they would have free reign inside the prison from eight o'clock until two in the morning. Chris checked his watch and it was just a few minutes before eight o'clock. Unfortunately, there would be some areas that would be too dangerous to enter and those areas were cordoned off. There would be pizza and soft drinks for the ghost hunters at midnight. After that was said, the doors were opened and Kim, Chris, and all the others filed into the solemn parlor. The musky, moldy smell of the prison hit them as they entered. Scanning the crowd, Chris guessed there to be about two hundred person participating. At $100 each for the experience of walking through a haunted prison, Chris knew the historical society would receive quite a sum to forward their progress in renovating the old place.
