The world's most infamous maximum security prison is certainly the stuff of legend.

Too much legend, in fact, for Alcatraz Island is shrouded in at least as much glorified fiction

as it is in fog.

Can you call to mind something you've heard about Alcatraz, or one of its many notorious

residents?

If you can, keep it in mind, and listen carefully to see if it's true.

The myth of Alcatraz is today unskeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Kevin Hoover from Skeptoid.com.

Myths of Alcatraz.

At just 22 acres, infamous Alcatraz Island is a place crowded with harrowing history and

some fearsome fables.

The rocky perch in San Francisco Bay was for millennia an isolated habitat for sea birds,

but has become best known for its jailbirds.

Native Americans called it an evil island, and Alcatraz has come to be associated with

violence and evil, having served as a military fortress, hosted various prisons with notorious

inmates of the vicious and irredeemable type, stood for years as a ghost-infested ruin,

and been the backdrop for multiple major motion pictures, none of them lighthearted

fair.

To find out whether the rock lives down to its hype as the beautiful Bay's bad boy, let's

hop on the ferry at San Francisco's Pier 33 and take a little cruise to Alcatraz Island.

Fort Alcatraz.

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