Jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s younger brother Anmol Bishnoi, wanted for the murder of Nationalist Congress Party leader Baba Siddique and firing outside actor Salman Khan’s Mumbai home, was nabbed by US law enforcement authorities a few days ago. Anmol Bishnoi was wanted in several cases, including the murder of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala.
Bishnoi is currently lodged at the Pottawattamie County Jail in Iowa, known as the ‘Squirrel Cage’ jail. But this is not just an ordinary jail, it has a chilling history attached to it and is known for its eerie architectural design.
Built at a cost of USD 30,000 in 1885, the ‘Squirrel Cage’ jail was constructed on the grounds of a former church morgue in the little town of Council Bluffs in Iowa. Till date, this invention by Indianapolis’ William H. Brown and Benjamin F. Haugh remains one of the only three remaining revolving jails in the US and the only one with three storeys.
The unique jail has three floors of revolving pie-shaped cells inside a cage, with the front part of the building kept for jailer, women, kitchen, and trustee cells. The ‘rotary jails’ kept the criminals in rotating cells and this design allowed jailers to rotate the cells to reach the desired prisoner.
It minimised the interaction between the jailer and the convict as the cells, which were located on a central roundabout, would spin as per the jailer who used a hand crank to control the cells. However, only one inmate’s holding area could be accessed at a time.
“The object of our invention is to produce a jail in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of personal contact between them and the jailer. It was to provide ‘maximum security with minimum jailer attention’,” the Historical Society of Pottawattamie County (HSPS), which transformed the jail into a museum, quoted the patent issued to the jail’s inventors.
Until 1969, the jail remained in continuous use but was later acquired by the Council Bluffs Park Board in 1971 for preservation. A year later, it was named by the US government to the National Register of Historic Places.
Cursed By Serial Killer Jake Bird?
Ever since the jail was transformed into a museum, it has attracted attention not only for its bizarre prison design but also for its paranormal reputation. Numerous accounts from visitors and staff reveal inexplicable occurrences at the site such as eerie whispers, mysterious footsteps, and dark shadows lurking in the doorways.
“Many of the jail staff and volunteers have heard footsteps, voices, whispers and doors moving. Some have even seen dark shadows moving across the stairs or past doorways,” an article on the Council Bluffs website quoted the museum’s manager as saying.
It is believed that the haunting incidents in the jail are in some way connected to a series of tragic events that took place there over the years it was operational.
The jail’s mechanism was so unique that it often failed to function properly. In 1960s, the jail’s rotary mechanics malfunctioned and it took the jailers two days to reach the body of a prisoner who had died in his cell. There were instances where inmates took their arms and legs out of the jail when it rotated, leading to serious injuries and fractures.
A serial killer named Jake Bird who was accused of murdering 46 people using his axe was also lodged in the Squirrel Cage jail. He spent nearly 31 years in various jails in Iowa, Michigan, and Utah. During his trial, he once put his murder weapon “Jake Bird Hex” on those who punished him, cursing them to die before him. Shockingly, as the story goes, six people did die, including the judge who was hearing his case. Jake Bird was hanged in the Squirrel Cage jail in 1949, the website US Ghost Adventures said.
Another man, who went on a drunken murder spree, was hanged in the jail in 1962. His noose is also on display at the jail. A prisoner died from heart attack, another one died by suicide, a third fell from a great height while attempting to carve his name on the ceiling, and a jail guard was shot dead during a mishap. These tragic deaths, which happened either due to accident or by execution, have added to the site’s paranormal reputation.
Various paranormal experts who have toured the site for investigation claim to have captured unexplained phenomena such as visual evidence of shadows, Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs), recordings of disembodied voices, and shadows peeling around corners and within cells.
The walls of the Squirrel Cage jail bear the scratched signatures and dates of many of its infamous prisoners, according to the HSPS. These markings stand as proof of the jail’s grim past, which is unlikely to be replicated in a modern facility, the HSPS website read.