Behind the burden 1

My father spent 14 years locked behind the thick steel doors of the
Barry Telford State Penitentiary located right outside Texarkana,
Texas. Recently I took an interest in the darker events that have
happened to various family members and sat down to ask him if he
had any chilling stories or experiences he could share about his time
he spent incarcerated, anything that he hadn’t shared with me
before.

I was both pleased and horrified as for the next two hours he
divulged some truly chilling and grotesque tales. I will just let you
know now that some of these stories are graphic and if you have a
weak stomach I’d advise you not to read further. For the rest of
you, I won’t sparse details and I’ll lay them out exactly as he laid
them out to me.

My dad was sent to the Telford unit a few months after his 21st
birthday, sentenced to 20 years for armed robbery. It is a maximum
security prison designed to mostly hold suspected gang members
and violent criminals.

“The first day is a total shock to your system. You are stripped and
cavity searched coming in and out of every room, you have a bed
time, you are timed at meals, and thrown into a cell with 3 other
inmates telling you the house rules and which bunk is yours. Then
laying in bed that first night… that’s when it hits you that this is
home, that this is your life now. Out of anything I can recall, that
feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, that loss of freedom,
that’s the scariest part of prison.”

He told me that as the months pass you get used to your routine,
you start to need the structure, even crave it. He said he decided to
make the best of it, learn as many skills as he could, and stay as
busy as possible. One of his vocational skills he picked up was
plumbing, and soon became the in house plumber for ‘A’ building.
Now the way the prison is set up is that there is an A-Building and a
B-Building. Inside each building there are 10 cell houses, each cell
house contains 12 cells that can hold anywhere from 1 to 4 inmates
each. In the middle of each cell house is the Rec Room where the
cells all open up to and this is where the inmates spend most of
their free time.

In addition to the cell houses each building also contains several

solitary wings, labeled from ‘A-Seg’ to ‘Z-Seg’.

“When I first got there, everyone kept joking that if I stepped out of
line the guards would send me to ‘M-Seg.’ One day I asked a buddy,
who had been locked up for 15 years already when I got there, why
people kept talking about ‘M-Seg’ and not any of the other seg
wings.”

“Look,” his buddy told him, “people who have extended stays in M
just don’t come back the same, some don’t come back at all. The
guards know it, that’s why they always fill M last, or put new guys
there who they think might be troublemakers. A night in M and
you’ll straighten your act up real quick. I’ve never been there
myself, but I talked to a couple inmates who have and they both
told me the same thing, something evil lives in that place.”

So like I said, my dad had become the on call plumber for A-

Building. He said it was about 6 months into the job when he had
his first encounter with M-Seg.

“Whenever a toilet was stopped up or something was leaking the

guards would just knock on my door and lead me to the problem. It
was an around the clock type of thing, I didn’t mind though, any
excuse to get out of the cell was fine by me. Plus you get your own
cell since you’d be coming in and out at all hours of the night and
day so that was a nice perk as well. Anyway, one night there is a
knock on my door and the guard tell me to, ‘get dressed Rashell, we
need you in seg.’ I get up, the guard opens my door and we start
heading down to seg.”
“It’s a real mess down there, I’ve seen a lot of shit in my day but
this is crazy…” the guard told my dad as he led him down the
connecting corridors, “just make sure you wear your gloves and
booties, Rashell.”

My dad was curious and asked the guard what had happened.

“Looney-toon on suicide watch, I guess somehow must’ve snuck in

a piece of metal. Look, I shouldn’t tell you this but I don’t want you
to be surprised when you get in there. ‘Crazy’ cut off his own
genitals. He threw his testicles out on the run, but we can’t find his
penis, and that’s where you come in.”

When they reached their destination there was another guard

standing outside with an inmate holding a mop waiting to clean up
after my dad was finished. My dad said when they opened the door
to M-Seg it was almost hauntingly dark, four or five dim overhead
lights ran down the hallway but seemed to act more like spotlights
and gave off practically no ambient light. He said there was a trail of
blood leading towards the back of the corridor. Each seg block had
14 cells with solid steel doors. Each door had a small window that
could be opened and closed from the outside and a tray slit which
the guy must’ve used to toss his testicles out. As he got closer he
could see that blood was running out from a cell towards the end of
the block through a small gap under the door.

“Open 13,” the guard yelled to another guard behind a glass window
controlling the electronic locks.

“When I went in to that cell I couldn’t believe how much blood there
was. It was on the walls and the ceiling, the entire mattress pad
was doused in it… The toilet was flooded up to the brim and it
looked like it was filled with blood. I used a cup to transfer the
bloody water into buckets until I could start to see the silhouette of
something under the water. I could see a big wad of toilet paper so
I pulled it out and sat it on the floor. I could tell something was
inside it. As I started to slowly unravel the wad, all of a sudden I
started hearing this noise coming from the air vents, ‘tunk tunk
tunk,’ it sounded like someone crawling or trying to sneak through
them almost, I didn’t think much of it at the time but I’ll get back to
that later. Anyway, I unroll the paper and sure enough the guy’s
pecker was right there.”

The guard took it and dropped it in a bag of ice and after making
sure the toilet flushed he started leading my dad back to the
entrance of M Seg.

“When we got down the hall waiting for the exit door to open all the
lights went out.”

“Shit,” muttered the guard, “against the wall inmate.”

“I stood back against the wall,” my dad continued, “and as the

guards tried to figure out what was going on I heard that noise in
the vents again. It was coming from the cell I had just come out of,

“‘tunk tunk tunk…’

“I didn’t know what it was but it gave me this awful feeling, and as I
was standing there I realized it was getting louder and faster and
closer to me.

“‘tunk… tunk…. tunk, tunk, TUNK, TUNK, TUNK.’

“It sounded like whatever was in that vent was now in a dead sprint
right at us, the guard was trying to ignore it but I could tell he
heard it too because he kept looking back over his shoulder and
started yelling at the guard behind the glass.

“‘Hey! Hey!’ -TUNK, TUNK, TUNK- ‘Hurry up and get this fucking
door open!’ -TUNK, TUNK, TUNK-

“Just as the noise in the vent got up to us, the lights came back on
and it went silent. The door opened up and the guard got us out of
there as fast as he could. A few days later I saw the inmate who
was waiting on janitor duty that night and asked him if he had seen
anything. He told me he saw them wheel a guy covered in blood out
on a stretcher and that he was screaming about a ‘man in the vents’
and that the man had told him to do it.”

My dad also asked him if he had heard anything in the vents while
he was mopping up, but he told my dad he didn’t hear anything, but
that he found the metal the man from 13 had used to cut himself.

“It was buried in a pool of blood,” the guy said, “damnedest thing
too, looked like a piece of shrapnel cut out from air duct metal.”

The next story my dad shared with me is more graphic and scary in
the sense of what human beings are capable of.

“We get new guys that think they are going to be bad asses all the
time. Sometimes it works out for them and other times it doesn’t.
There were lots of serious gangs in BTU, and sometimes you get a
guy who comes in from a local street gang that doesn’t really
comprehend how violent some of these big gangs are. It’s like they
are ‘playing’ gang to look cool, like kids play cops and robbers, the
problem is that they think other people are just ‘playing’ gang too
or something.

“Anyway we had this one guy, Ricky, come in and everyone but him
knew it was going to end badly for him. He was this young Hispanic
guy, and he thought his small town gang was a direct rival to
another Hispanic gang, MS-13. He would curse out and disrespect
them in front of everyone at chow time and in the halls, and scream
at their members who’d pass his cell.

“He’d only been there a week, some of the elders tried telling him
he needed to calm down before he got hurt but Ricky was hard
headed and just wouldn’t hear it.

“Well one day during dinner the chow hall was quiet and Ricky was
nowhere to be seen. My table was dismissed first and as we made
our way back to our cell house we turned the corner to see Ricky
covered in blood stumbling towards us, arms wrapped around his
stomach.

“He was completely naked, big patches of his skin cut from his body
where his tattoos had been. Both of his eyes were popped out from
their sockets and were just dangling towards the ground. The side
of his head was caved in where they had stomped his skull until his
eyes came out. As he came closer I could see he was holding his
intestines in his hands.

“The worst part to me is that he hadn’t died during it, that he was
conscious for every blow and every cut… He just hobbled up the hall
in our directions crying and asking,

“‘Why can’t I look up? Why can’t I look up?’

“He collapsed and passed out a few seconds later, and died right
there at our feet. They never found out who did it…”

Alright I’ll share one more story my dad shared with me I found
kind of creepy, as this is getting pretty long.

About seven years into his stint in prison my dad said through a
series of circumstances he ended up having to stay the night in M-
Seg. The A-Building was being renovated and repaired and as a
result they were sending the inmates to stay in seg in waves.

Well it had been years since my dad had been to the rarely used M-
seg and he had convinced himself that he was just hearing things
that night. They were leading prisoners out one cell at a time and
transferring them to the various seg blocks. My dad’s cell was on
the end and he had his cell to himself so when they transferred him
he wasn’t accompanied by any other inmates. To his dismay all the
seg blocks had been filled, except for M, that is.

They led him down to the end of M and opened the door to 14,
which was right next to the cell the man had cut himself in all those
years ago.
“Everything was fine until lights out. It was really dark in there,
each cell has a little night light thing above the toilet but it’s not
enough to see anything or read or write. Anyway it was so dark I
figured the only thing I could do was go to sleep. But all night I kept
hearing the guy in the cell next to me talking to himself. The way
the cells are set up the vents carry any little noise to the adjoining
cells. The vent themselves are located right at the foot of the little
cots in each cell. People would sit next to them to communicate and
pass time during stints in solitary but this guy wasn’t talking to me
he was like he was talking to himself and it was starting to really
wear on my nerves. I banged on the vent and told him to keep it
down but he just kept talking in this whispery voice, and it sounded
like he was chanting the same thing over and over but I couldn’t
make out what he was saying. I put my ear up to the vent to try
and see what he was saying and my hairs stood up on the back of
my head when I swear god I felt his breath in my ear as clear as
day I heard him whispering,

“‘I remember you, I remember you, I remember you.’ in this frantic

melodic tune.

“‘Well you won’t remember anything when I bash your head in if

you don’t keep it down in there,’ I told him.

“All of a sudden his voice got a little louder and angrier in tone,

“‘I’ll slit your throat, I’ll slit your throat, I’ll slit your throat.’

“I was a little unnerved but I’ve heard a lot worse after so many
years in prison so I just told him to fuck off and decided I’d let the
guards deal with it in the morning. Well morning came and when
the guard brought me my breakfast I told him if he didn’t do
something about the guy keeping me up all night in 13 that I would.

“‘What are you talking about Rashell? You are the only person in M
seg,’ the guard told me as chills ran down my spine.
“That night as soon as the light went out the whispers started
again, and this time I was petrified.

“‘I’ll slit your throat. I’ll slit your throat. I’ll slit your throat…’

“The whispers were more aggressive this time, clearer too. Then all
of a sudden they went from whispers to deep guttural screams,

“‘I’LL SLIT YOUR THROAT! I’LL SLIT YOUR THROAT! I’LL SLIT YOUR
FUCKING THROAT!’

It scared me so bad I fell out of my cot and scooted on the floor

until I felt my back hit the wall opposing the air vent. As my eyes
came into focus in absolute horror I saw the silhouette of a head
directly inside the vent. I couldn’t make out it’s features but I see
it’s eyes. They were full of hatred and rage and they were locked
right into me. Fast and louder he just continued screaming that he’d
slit my throat, as the vent casing started to shake. Now the vents
go straight up in a duct to a main duct then back down to the next
cell through another duct, so you can’t see into your neighbor’s cell
from your cell. That meant whatever this… thing… was, it was right
inside my vent… I jumped up and banged on the steel door as hard
as I could telling for a guard.

“‘Help! Help! Somebody!’

“A guard came running down the hall and as soon as he slid the
door window open the vent went silent.

“‘You gotta get me out of here, something is in the vents,’ I

pleaded.

“To my surprise the guard didn’t protest my request. Instead he just

told me to hang tight for a second and then clicked his radio and
said,
“‘Need an open cell for a transfer from M seg,’ he paused for a
second then leaned back into his radio and simply said, ‘he’s back.’

“He opened the door and led me down the corridor and as they did
the whole time we were followed by that familiar sound in the
vents,

“‘Tunk… tunk… tunk…’

“I’ve seen and heard a lot in my years, not a lot gets under my skin,
but I was shaking like a leaf the whole way out of M-seg… I don’t
think I took a breath until I walked out the block doors and heard
them shut behind me. I finally worked up the nerve to ask that
guard what the hell was in those vents.

“‘I don’t know, Rashell. Warden’ll tell you there’s nothing in those
vents. All I can tell you is that whatever it is, it’s evil.’”

Part 2
My dad said he had three main jobs during his time at Telford, the
first of which was as the on-call plumber, the second was
maintaining the boilers down in the boiler room, and the last thing
he did before being released was to take care of and train the
bloodhounds. This first story takes place during his time with the
bloodhounds.

“I had gotten in pretty good with the guards. After so many years
with the same old faces you develop a friendship almost. The guys
with good behavior anyway, a lot of people see the guards as
enemies and just really like to make it hard on themselves.

“I myself tried to look at the prison as my workplace and the guards

as my coworkers and supervisors. It helped me to think about like
that, distracted me from the fact that I was in cage, plus you were
allowed more freedoms when the guards liked you.
“It wasn’t uncommon for the guards that had been there a while to
treat us guys doing serious time more like equals than they’d treat
a lot of the rookie guards. In prison respect is earned by years not
titles and badges.

“As I was saying, I had made friends with the senior officer over at
the kennels and when the job opened up after one of the tenured
hounds had puppies he let me fill the position.

“I would feed and train the dogs early every morning and again late
every evening. They just attached a leg monitor to my leg and let
me run the dogs through a big fenced in wooded area. I would set
up obstacles with dummies, going out and hiding them in a tree or
in a hole, marking their scent in various places along the way.

“At first they had a lot of trouble and would get distracted by any
kind of noise or animal smell, but after a while they were so good I
couldn’t trick them no matter what I tried.

“Sometimes the guards would have me hide myself. I’d climb a

tree, jump to another, take a piss on some leaves, double back and
double back again, anything to break the scent trail. But damned if
they didn’t find me. There’s not a lot I have done in my life outside
of having you boys that I’m proud of, but man was I proud of those
dogs.

“So one night we were doing a run in the dark, which we practiced
from time to time. I went out first and I hid several dummies, four
or five of them, and then I hid myself. The object of the game was
for them to find me and not go after the dummies which I would rub
dog food or pheromones on, stuff a domestic dog would head right
for.

“After I hid the last one I circled back using all of my usual tricks
and found a nice climbing tree where I decided to camp out at.
From there I just waited to hear their booming barks blast through
the trees.
“Sure enough not ten minutes had passed and I could already hear
their barks closing in on me. At this point I’m looking around to see
if I could spot them yet. Then off a little ways in the distance,
probably thirty yards from me, I could see them circling a tree
through the fog and darkness.

“I figured it would be any minute now that they’d be at the base of

my tree letting the guards running along behind them know where I
was. But… to my surprise they just stayed where they were barking
up the wrong tree.

“That’s when I saw it, the shape of a man about twenty feet up in
the branches of the tree the hounds were circling.

“‘I didn’t put a dummy in that tree, did I?’ I asked myself.

“It was dark when I hid them, so it was possible I guessed, but how
high it was… I hadn’t put a dummy more than ten feet off the
ground and this thing was up twice as high. I could only make out
it’s silhouette against the moonlight. I noticed it was shaped similar
to a man but not exactly like a man. It’s limbs seemed too long, and
they just dangled lifelessly and limp as it straddled a branch legs
hang off either side.

“Right then I just about fell off my perch when it’s head moved and
now seemed to be staring straight at me. It started tilting it’s head
slowly from left to right over and over. Then all at once it stopped
moving completely before raising one of it’s lengthy arms, and with
a hand full of fingers that had to be at least a foot long, it began
waving at me…

“My heart was pounding, I clicked my ankle bracelet 3 times

indicating to the guards there was trouble. A few tense moments
later, with me staring at this thing and it staring at me, I heard the
guards yelling out to me and calling the dogs off coming from the
direction I was staring in, directly behind the thing in the tree. It
must’ve heard them too, because I swear to you it twisted it’s head
completely backwards and stared in the direction of the oncoming
guards simultaneously waving at me the entire time.

“‘Here! Here! I’m over here!,’ I yelled out taking my eyes off the
creature for two maybe three seconds. I could see a slew of
flashlights beaming out from the woods ahead bathing the leaf
carpet below in a yellow gleam. I looked back up to the tree
where it was, but it was gone.
“When I told the guards what I saw, they thought I was joking or
just seeing things but the senior officer on duty, S.O. Chaney, said
he had seen something too. They radio in to H.Q. thinking an
inmate might be on the loose and the entire prison goes on
immediate lockdown to do a count only to find that nobody was
missing.