Ghostly Energy in Abandoned Mid-Orange County Correctional Facility

Hailed as “one of the most haunted locations in the foothills of New York’s Ramapo Mountains,” the Mid-Orange County Correctional Facility is not for the faint of heart.¹ Located in Warwick, NY, this correctional facility has a rich and vaguely disturbing history. I’ve heard worse, I’ve heard better. Originally a reformatory for boys, the sprawling 740-acre complex was converted into a corrections facility in the 1970s.²

Shockingly, the tales of woe I’ve heard have primarily come from the Reformatory Days, as opposed to the Correctional Facility days. Legend says that the ghost of Charles McBride, a 15-year-old who resided at the reformatory, still walks the floors of his old home. McBride hung himself from the rafter in his dormitory, on October 23rd, sixty years ago ³. Occasionally, people claim to see a mist figure of him. Visitors of the facility attest to hearing unexplainable knocks, slamming doors, and rustling noises, among other strange phenomena.⁴

It’s great that I found all this out after going to the correctional facility for the first time, otherwise, there may not have been a first.

The day of our adventure was gloomy. Cold, rainy, and damp. We weren’t going to let that spoil our fun though, so off we went. Currently, the facility is also home to a sports complex. It is literally the most bizarre thing. There’s just a soccer field in the middle of the courtyard, with spooky buildings surrounding it. Imagine it: being a kid playing soccer in an old haunted prison. Knowing myself, I’d probably have nightmares. Anyway, Lily and I planned on seeing what we could get into.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, there’s a proper ghost tour you can sign up for. That’s not an ad, I’m not receiving any commission or anything from GhostHuntersUSA, it just seems fascinating. The cottages were a breeze to get into. My best guess is that the tour set it up for people to go in/out of some of the buildings easily. However, it was impossible to get into any of the bigger buildings, including the mess hall and school. In the reformatory days, people called them “cottages,” so I refer to them as such. They’re really like tiny dorms.

“What we could get into” apparently entailed a very close call with a snake, to really, ya know, get that adrenaline pumping. We’d hardly gotten out of my car and onto the property when we discovered a door to a basement/crawl space area that was chained, but still partially open. Lily reached her hand behind the door and started pulling, to no avail. I peeked in with my flashlight, and just as she was about to put her hand in again I stopped her. There, vibing on an orange traffic cone not 6 inches from her hand was a little snake. We decided to name him Albert. While neither of us is the best at identifying snakes, I’m at least pretty sure it was just a garter (non-venomous). I’m absolutely shocked it didn’t attack her the first time she stuck her hand back there, especially given how close she was. Great start to the day.

The first cottage was a bit intimidating to get into. We walked all the way around it before finally seeing a staircase that led up to an open window on the second floor. A bizarre mixture of eagerness and apprehension filled my body as we climbed up and into the window. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the lack of graffiti. Normally, places like this are COVERED in artwork, innuendos, and curse words. I felt a strong sense of unease as Lily dropped down from the window behind me. We started exploring, intrigued by how nice the place looked, even after years of abandonment. Somehow it looked like the average 2nd story of a house, not the traumatizing prison we were expecting.

After seeing the second floor, we decided it was time to make our way down to the first floor. My heart was pounding out of my chest at this point because I need to have an easy escape route when exploring these types of sites, and I already knew the only exit was the window we had climbed in. On the second floor.

There, we found the dormitory. Later, I learned that the upstairs was where the guard of the cabin would stay while all the prisoners remained on the first floor.

Overall, the dormitory was pretty standard, except for the fact we discovered a bunch of kayaks in one of the larger rooms. Like, nice kayaks. And the room was very reminiscent of Orange is the New Black– a bunch of beds in cubicle formation in a large room. Fascinating. I suppose the sports facility is using some of the dorms as storage space.

While the cottages were identical for the most part, there were a few that stuck out. First, there was one where the entire upstairs had a LONG mirror with multiple sinks, and sports team insignias painted on the walls. The wall was covered in turquoise blue bathroom wall tiles. To me, it seemed to be only recently that they were added. It was a bathroom of sorts, but with very few toilets/showers. Just that long mirror and sinks.

The next that stood out was a basement. Some of the cottages had basements, others, not so much. This one was interesting because it seemed to be a workshop of sorts. There was a cabinet with places to store tools, a bunch of electrical stuff, and insulation tubes. I got extremely weird vibes from that one; and protested when Lily wanted to go up to the first floor.

While we were still questioning the fan, Lily and I came across some really fascinating paperwork on one of the desks in the next cottage. Paperwork! From when the correctional facility was still up and running! There were lists of prisoners, signed papers from the warden, and a whole bunch of information I felt shouldn’t be there. In hindsight, the paperwork was probably put there as a prop from the ghosthunting tour, but I’m going to keep believing it was from the desk of the warden himself anyway.

After all the cottages, we tried getting into some of the larger buildings. Unfortunately, they were locked. Sensing our adventure had come to an end, we returned to the car and left, hoping a friendly spirit hadn’t decided to follow us home.