Welcome to the paranormal deep dive from Real Ghost Stories Online and the Grave Talks.

There's something about an abandoned prison that stirs the imagination.

The echo of footsteps, the scrape of metal doors, the quiet hum of lives lived in desperation.

The old Montana prison in Deer Lodge isn't just any old prison.

It's a fortress of suffering, a place where the worst of Montana's criminals served hard time.

And even now, long after the cells were emptied and the guards went home, something remains inside those walls.

Built in 1871, the old Montana prison stood for more than a century, housing everyone

from petty thieves to cold-blooded killers. Its history is soaked in violence, despair, and even

death, including the infamous 1959 prison riot, where inmates seized control and left one man

dead. If the prison's history ended there,

it would still be a dark chapter in Montana's past, but it didn't end there. Once the prison

closed in 1979 and reopened as a museum, strange things started happening. Visitors heard phantom

voices calling from empty cells, shadowy figures moving through the corridors,

and unseen hands grabbing at ankles as they toured the old cell blocks.

Investigators have captured unexplained sounds, chilling EVPs, and photographs of ghostly shapes that defy explanation.

Is this just the result of expectation feeding imagination?

Or is there something darker at work inside the old Montana prison?

Some lingering residue of the men who never truly left?

I'm Tony Bruske.

Let's dig in.

The story of the old Montana prison begins in 1867 when Montana was still a rugged territory,

and law enforcement had little more than a few scattered jails to house outlaws,

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