Community Corner

The Haunted Prison: Not for the Faint of Heart

The Historic Burlington County Prison Museum holds its annual Halloween event—complete with ghoulish grave-diggers and bloody butchers.

 

The Haunted Prison—a Halloween attraction at the Historic Burlington County Prison Museum—has four more dates for not-so-scaredy cats to experience this month.

The scary event boasts four attractions: Hellsgate Prison, Sanctorium, Wastelands and Porkchop’s Pen of Pain, a newly reopened slaughter house that specializes in tortuous tendencies.

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Janet Sozio, the president of the Prison Museum Association, said the haunted attraction started in the 80s, but wasn’t nearly as extravagant as it is now.

“Everybody who worked there dressed up in costumes, you turned the lights off and it was scary,” she said. “There was a hiatus for about eight years in the 90s when the museum was closed for repairs but it started up again in the 2000s and it got bigger and bigger. Today, it’s quite an event.”

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There are four tractor-trailers filled with props and 30 actors play psychotic killers, grave-diggers and zombies. Setup takes about a month, Sozio said.

“It’s really known all over New Jersey,” she said. “People come from all over.”

Sozio said the prison museum itself has gained a lot of recognition after it was featured on several ghost hunter television shows.

“It’s also been featured on other travel shows and paranormal groups have come,” she added.

The attraction will run on Oct. 20, and Oct. 26-28 from 6:30 to 10 p.m. Individual tickets are $17.

There’s a DJ every show night and performances by the Rancocas Valley Regional High School dance team.

Tonight, Pinups for Pitbulls will be there.

The museum is at the corner of High and Grant streets in Mount Holly.


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