Wraith in The Machine

The haunting of Al Capone

(Photo: Art Vandelay)

For eight months from 1929-1930 Al Capone, the infamous prohibition era Chicago mob boss, served time at Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania for a concealed weapons charge. The charges were a consequence of The Valentines Day Massacre in which Capone sent hitmen dressed as police officers to gun down rival George “Bugs” Moran and seven of Morans crime family associates including Moran’s brother-in-law, James Clark. Pictures of the brutal scene were printed in the news. The public’s immediate outcry for an end to the violence had resulted in Capone being apprehended, charged, and serving the eight month sentence.

The Eastern State Penitentiary itself is a place notorious for being engineered to create a lonely and torturous environment for each one of its prisoners. The cells are about 4 foot 8, dank, dark, and solitary with hardly any light filtering through the nearly solid doors. The guards were not allowed to speak to prisoners and the prisoners were not allowed to speak to each other. When I use the term torturous, devices such as the “steel gag” were used to restrain prisoners and one even died from it according to the incident list which includes more than 1000 horrific deaths

Despite the gray, barren, dungeon-like design of the prison one singular cell was furnished very well with lamps, tables, a writing desk, wall art, and books. Al Capone would have had it made compared to most of the other prisoners except for one thing. He was haunted, tormented, by what he would later identify as the ghost of one Jimmy Clark. It is told that other prisoners would hear Al screaming for Jimmy to leave him alone.

This haunting continued well beyond the walls of the Eastern State Penitentiary. In Georgia, where he was later incarcerated, the behavior continued. By the time Capone was put in Georgia the other inmates were well aware that he receives preferential treatment compared to them and also may be bribing the guards. This caused static between Capone and the other inmates and he was eventually transferred from Georgia to Alcatraz. In Alcatraz prisoners who did time with him would tell the very same story of the sounds of a tortured man screaming out in the night for “Jimmy” to leave him be. In fact the ghostly visits would become much more frequent as time went by and eventually the once imposing figure was reduced to a mumbling mess.

Until he died of a heart attack at age 48 at his massive property in Palm Island Florida his mental health continued to worsen.

Some may know that Al Capone enjoyed intoxicants, famously booze and cocaine, some may even engage in the notion that the unbearable haunting was caused by a conscience that it’s not even clear existed within Capone but there is a far more apparent cause for his anguish

Al Capone, by the time he was paroled and treated was in the final stage syphilis which he allegedly contracted while working in brothels for Giovanni “Johnny” Torrio (or possibly for Jim Colosimo) and had avoided treatment for. Toward the end of his prison stay it’s said that Capone believed he was actually running a factory filled with employees and would wear winter clothing in his heated cell because he genuinely thought it was winter. Though the prison had attempted to *infect him with Malaria* to fight the disease his health continued the downward spiral and so he was paroled and sent to a medical facility in Baltimore where one of the Japanese cherry trees he donated afterward still stands.

Despite all of the evidence, paranormal enthusiasts and conspiracy theory blogs continue to tell the tale of “Jimmy the ghost” and rarely, if ever, draw the line between eyewitness accounts of Capone’s observable madness and the brain damage which the disease had left in its wake.