Execution Gone Wrong

Old Idaho Penitentiary

A gruesome murder in 1956 resulted in the first person being hanged indoors at the Old Idaho Penitentiary.

Raymond Allen Snowden was nicknamed an American version of Jack the Ripper when he brutally murdered a woman in Garden City. He stabbed Cora Dean, a local woman, and mother of two, 35 times.

During his trial, Snowden claimed the two got into an argument after a night of drinking. He said he backhanded Dean and then she kicked him. At this point, he lost it.

He took his one and a quarter inch pocketknife and slashed her throat first then thrust his blade into the back of her skull, severing her spinal cord.

He stashed his knife in front of a cigar store in Boise and then entered the building to use the restroom. Suspicious employees called the police. His knife was found, and Snowden was arrested.

Raymond Allen Snowden

Snowden later bragged he had killed two other women. But the murder of Cora Dean was enough. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang.

In October of 1957, witnesses, including family members of the victim, gathered on the second floor of the penitentiary to watch Snowden's execution.

There was a glass window between them and where Snowden stood on the trapdoors that would end his life. When an officer released these heavy doors with a lever, their weight smashed into the window shattering it.

Snowden dropped, but the rope did not snap his neck. Instead, he hung twisting and turning for over 15 minutes gasping for air. Witnesses later stated his gasps and grunts before he suffocated were nightmarish in tone.

The old Idaho penitentiary has been closed for years. Today it is on the National Register of Historic Places and is run as a museum.

Penitentiary's trapdoors.

Workers and visitors have heard sounds they feel must be Snowden. All state as they stood at the bottom of the gallows, they heard someone struggling for breath. These sounds can be heard both day and night.

Witnesses have also come forward to report feeling and seeing a dark entity in the area near the solitary confinement cell—nicknamed by the inmates “Siberia.” This entity has also been seen near the gallows.

Pocatello High School

Just this week AOL and Great Britain’s Daily Mail reported the following story.

Pocatello High School

Pocatello High School located in Idaho reported their school security cameras picked up some mysterious activity over the recent Winter Break.

It being the holidays no one was in the building when this activity was recorded. After the break, the principal was alerted when a staff member saw lights flickering and a ghostly figure in a hallway on one camera's recording.

For over a two-minute period the lights flicker on and off in this hall, loud bangs are heard and then a human like figure is seen standing to the left in one classroom doorway.

This figure appears to float into the hall and then returns to the classroom. Skeptics immediately jumped on this and stated it was just “dirt” that was filmed closer to the camera.

But this explanation does not explain the flickering lights or sounds recorded in this hallway when no one was in this building.

School personnel point out that teachers and students at this high school have heard and seen strange activity in the past.

People have heard disembodied whispers and strange unexplained noises.

Many refuse to go into the school’s auditorium alone. A large shadow has been seen looming on the ceiling.

This strange activity has happened so often that a former principal decided to call in a paranormal team.

They discovered there have been six deaths on the property and that the original high school burnt down in 1914. The present school was built in 1918.

Here is what their security camera caught over the recent break.