Eastern State Penitentiary gives away free spooky tattoos on Friday the 13th
People waited in line outside Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia to receive a free Halloween tattoo on Friday the 13th.
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True Hand tattooing company took over the Terror Behind the Walls makeup and effects room to give free classic flash style tattoos to people who waited in line on Friday the 13th. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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About 150 people lined up outside Eastern State Penitentiary. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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Kayleigh Geiger receives an origami-style bat tattoo from True Hand tattoo artist Arielle Coupe. She calls he assortment of little tattoos refrigerator magnets. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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True Hand tattoo artist Chris Fernandez gives a tattoo of the grim reaper holding a bad news sign to Jamie Santoro. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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Tattoo options for the Friday the 13th free tattoo give away at Eastern State Penitentiary. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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True Hand tattoo artist Chris Fernandez gives a tattoo of the grim reaper holding a bad news sign to Jamie Santoro. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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Tattoo options for the Friday the 13th free tattoo give away at Eastern State Penitentiary. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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Artist Jacob Des tattoos a cat in a bowtie onto Mike Jenette’s thigh. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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Eastern State Penitentiary. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
About 150 people lined up outside Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary early Friday morning to receive a free tattoo to celebrate a gloomy Friday the 13th. The tattoos, from the artist TRUE HAND, ranged from cats to bats to dancing skeletons, all with thick black lines in the classic flash style. The event marks the beginning of the Halloween season and kicks off the penitentiary’s Terror Behind the Walls, which is the historic prison’s biggest attraction and fundraiser.
Nina Guzzi, from Northfield, N.J., and a few friends were the first to arrive at 5:45 a.m. Tattoo artist Matt Lambdin etched a haunted cat onto Guzzi’s shoulder. Mike Jenette, already covered in ink, also got a cat. Why does he have so many tattoos?
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
Shame Sweeney picked the first tattoo that jumped out at him, a skeleton on top on another skeleton’s shoulders. He’d been to Terror Behind the Walls before, and as he waited in line for four hours, he recalled “what I went through in there.”
Casey Paul, Terror Behind the Walls’ new senior production manager, got a character tattooed on her arm she’s been playing for the past 6 years of her decade in the exhibit: a creepy nurse waving a syringe. The tattoo will remind her of her first season in her role as manager at a place she loves working.
Terror Behind the Walls opens next Friday, September 20, and runs select nights through the 9th of November.
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