Eastern State Penitentiary has launched a family-friendly offering for spring break
A former Philly penitentiary, now a museum, is presenting a spring break exhibit highlighting sports and recreation behind bars.
10 months ago
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.