Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society

Haven’t been here since it closed years ago. Being from Mansfield, we used to actually perform in the «old prison» for the prisoners when we were in high school. It was scary then and even scarier now. Worth the money for both the historical prospective and the «haunted» feeling you get when you walk through the cell blocks. Shawshank Redemption being filmed here also adds to the feel of this gorgeous old prison. Great day trip! I plan to come back again!

This is a VERY cool your. Word of advice: get there when they open (11am I think) because they already have a line. We did the «tour yourself» instead of the guided tour and we were soooooo glad we did. If you go on your own you can go EVERYWHERE and explore versus being on a guided tour with 40 people and only seeing about 3 sections. We bought the earphones and tour on tape for extra history. It was really cool — lots of history — a wonderful experience and CREEPY to boot!

Wow! Continuing our exploration of Ohio, a friend suggested this day trip from Columbus. Was sold when I was told it was used in the filming of the Shawshank Redemption. absolutely worth the drive. Make sure to take a camera! The building is gorgeous and forbidding at the same time. A bonus was the gathering of 40’s classic cars while we were there.

Historic Mansfield Reformatory is an entertaining way to spend an afternoon. Spooky and atmospheric, it evokes imagery of the Victorian era and echoes in stone that society’s notions about crime and punishment. With its 12 foot high ceilings (most residential homes have 8 foot ceilings), the Reformatory was designed to make the individual feel small. Society at the time believed that criminal activity was a result of an excess of pride.
That being said – it’s a great display of architecture and it’s fun to find the huge mural of Stalin that was used as a prop in a movie. I highly recommend the Reformatory as an entertaining way to learn about architecture, and sobering reminder about the nature of crime and punishment in a different era.

My husband has been wanting to visit here since he found out it was open for touring. We were not disappointed, it was as dismal and spooky as we had hoped.
To start out we were pleased to discover the price to tour was very affordable (only $ 25 for all three of us). We also rented the audio tour wand for $ 5, it was so full of information, it’s invaluable.
Usually I can poopoo the ghost stories I hear. But, when I was in the ladies room I had a hard-​to-​dismiss ghost encounter.
We had an awakening about the prison system in the U.S. The cells were terrifying, and the solitary confinement was nightmare inducing. The warden’s quarters are a beautiful mansion hiding the horror of the inmates areas. What a beautiful castle covering up a scary past.
It was also interesting to see the movie sets and music video backdrops.
If you are in the area, take a few hours to soak in the old ways, and learn from our history.

No problem with the reformatory which is very cool. However, they didn’t charge my credit card for the visit in May until the end of August. The bank suggested I refute the charges but I couldn’t get a returned call to even speak to someone. Pay cash or just keep the money set aside for an entire season until they figure out how to do something regular businesses do every single day.

This is a place beautiful piece of history, with several renowned movies that have been shot here, including Shawshank Redemption and Tango and Cash. When it comes to the month of October this place definitely doesn’t disappoint. The Mansfield Reformatory hosts weekly haunted tours of the facility that will surely make you wet your pants. If you want take a tour or even spend the night in the Prison they even do that year round.

I was passing through and I stopped here because I heard it was a cool place to visit. I was not disappointed. The building exterior was awesome to look at. The self guided tour cost $ 9 and I believe it was well worth the cost. For an added $ 5 you could get an audio wand that gave you more history throughout the tour but I opted to not use it. I am more into just looking at places like this. A lot of the rooms in the wardens area are run down and creepy feeling. The chapel was huge and also creepy. The cell blocks were pretty amazing to look at. Six levels of cells, just really cool to see. You could go in many of the cells but the people who were selling the tour tickets made sure to tell us not to close the cell doors because they do lock and they do not have keys. There are also signs posted up throughout the areas to not close cell doors. I think it would be cool to do a ghost hunt here, since it was pretty creepy in the daylight hours, nighttime would be crazy. It makes me glad I never went to prison though.

Took a self guided tour on a rainy Friday afternoon… one word to describe this place is awesome. Not to be missed for anyone who loved the movie or history buffs in general.

Full disclosure: I’m more than a little bias about haunted places. I give them 5 stars. I don’t want to upset the ghosts that live there, and I love learning about the history of a place. Ghost stories provide some of the best kinds of history lessons.
The Mansfield Reformatory (also known as the place where they shot ‘The Shawshank Redemption’), is a big, beautiful old jail, originally constructed in the late 1890’s as a place for first time juvenile offenders to rehabilitate themselves and become honorable members of society. But as the famous Stanford Prison Experiment taught us, good people in evil places (or evil people with power) don’t always make it out the same. The Mansfield Reformatory changed from a minimal security jail to a maximum security jail for hardened criminals in the early 1900’s.
Operating until 1990, which is WAY longer than anyone should have lived in this place, the jail is huge, and eerily silent even with tours going through. Signs of decay are everywhere from the peeling layers of paint to the rusted bunk bed frames and cracked toilets in the cells. If you like taking pictures of ruin porn as much as I do, this is your wet dream.
With floor to ceiling jail cells, rising up about 6 stories, it’s horrifying and mesmerizing to imagine people crowding the narrow stairwells as they walked to the kitchen, showers, rec room, chapel, or «the hole» (yes, the very one Andy Dufrane got thrown in). All of these rooms are still accessible today. The jail does a nice job of leading you through the maze of corridors and hallways, giving you a sense of exploring the space while also knowing how to get around. During the week they have self-​lead tours with earphones to guide you and give you the history of the place. A few areas of the jail are tastefully recreated to look like the scenes from Shawshank Redemption. You can even see the movie prop pipe that Andy Dufrane crawled out of to escape. Spoiler alert: it isn’t nearly as long or gross as it looks in the movie.
As for ghosts, I didn’t see anything conclusively but in one area, near the end of the tour in a shower room, I got a very weird feeling. When I went to take a picture using my flash, there was a lot of weird light streaks and orbs floating around and the picture has weird marks on it, like shadows that weren’t visible when I took it. Whoohooowhooaaahahhahaha! (that’s my ghost story laugh)
Also, fun fact, my great uncle Marty was incarcerated in this jail when it was operational. He burned down the family store in the 1920’s. I come from a classy bunch, huh. I asked a staff member if they have access to the list of inmates that have come through the jail over the years. He said they don’t have access to it on-​site, but if you contact the state prison system (he did not explain how to do this), and they will ask the state worker who handles that type of thing to look up the person you know. Depending on when they were incarcerated at Mansfield, they can give you their jail cell number and you can see their jail cell when you visit at a later date.

We took the self-​guided tour. If you do the same, invest in the audio wands. It’s worth the $ 5 to get the extra info. Also know that you aren’t going to see everything on this tour. Some parts are reserved for the guided tours (Sundays only), but you will still see some of the highlights from the movies filmed there. Stop to watch the clips on the monitors set up in two locations on the tour. Those are really informative on things ranging from paranormal activity to escape attempts. The museum is well organized and worth the time to go through it.

Ohio Reformatory (Prison)
Arriving in town over an hour later than our goal we did the Prison visit first since it was the focus of the trip. Arriving at the prison. saw cute baby geese outside the gate and was awed by the beauty of the building. Did we arrive at a castle ‚… manson or a old prison. I guess we came in the wrong door because there was no one at the desk … so we wandered around for about 10 minutes until we followed the people heading to the gift shop area. There they were buying tickets and getting the tapes for the self guided tours. There was a sign outside saying the self guided tour was all they offered that day but there was a tour ahead of us with a guide??? We opted to ditch the group and wander by ourselves … and we didn’t do the tape. More just wanted to just see it. I was surprised my history loving husband didn’t want to do the tape and hear all the details. It was his choice so we just explored by ourselves. I preferred seeing it without all the crowd of people getting in the way. It’s a vast place and was more visually striking to get see things empty as far as your eyes could see.
The cells were very small and dank … everywhere paint peeling but it was much more interesting than I’d anticipated. It’s reputed to be haunted. don’t know about that but it was eerie in areas. I’d say we spent an hour there between inside and out. Outside it looks like a Castle or some grand manor vs a Prison. There is a lake and a LOT of geese and geese poo … but it was landscaped. All and all a nice visit and the groupon ticket saved us over half. Since we had to look for an area to show our ticket at least that day people could have just walked in and looked around without having a ticket but that is not ethical and may not usually be the case.
There is a saying in Ohio: If you don’t like the weather. just wait a minute and it will change. Last week the temp high was in the mid 80’s. this week a cold front moved through and it’ll be lucky to be 60 and threat of frost at night. I wore shorts that day and the tour through the prison I was freezing but didn’t mention it because I didn’t want him to rush through for my sake. Tomorrow you can bet I’m wearing jeans and a jacket.
The Prison had been on my Husband bucket list for a few years … to be honest the thought didn’t initially interest me but he’s taken me everywhere I wanted to see … so this was his turn. :) We got discount tickets through
but there are limited number and they expire at the end of May. This was perfect for us because we’d wanted to come in the spring. We had been advised to go when the weather is cool. The Prison is not air conditioned and we heard it was rather uncomfortable to tour in the summer. We tried to go in the fall only to learn … after Sept 1^st they are closed focusing on doing a haunted house there (which we weren’t interested in). We aimed for May and planned a trip around it. Our goal was to tour the prison, visit the Bird Sanctuary and Kingwood Gardens (, which i will review separately) then head towards Youngstown. then Cleveland. Some parks, gardens, waterfalls and whatever else we could find.
look on
for discount tickets in the spring if you want to come early in the season. It’s reputed to be Haunted and they do special ghost hunter tours with ghost hunters from a tv show. The place was creepy enough in day time. not going at night.

Horrible experience. 40 minutes in linen to buy tour tickets to only learn that either the tours we wanted were not available or there were no opening left. Only one person selling tickets and line all the way out to the parking lot. If you are looking for a way to kill some time this is definately it as you will spend lots of time and get nowhere. Great attraction but very poorly organized.

I don’t know what expectations I had going in. I bought a Groupon to go a couple months ago and Danielle managed to convince her friend Erin and Erin’s husband, Luke into going with us for the day.
First thing i’ll say is don’t wear flip flops. there’s a lot of walking and climbing stairs. my feet were really uncomfortable by the end of the day.
we took the self-​guided tour so we were on our own to scour the building (as much as we could anyway). outside the building is beautiful, but inside it’s just falling apart. it’s sad that there’s no upkeep to the actual main housing area where the warden’s quarters are. sadly this will all eventually be torn own one day as the rest of the building falls apart.
the cell blocks are creepy at first but i found them kinda boring after a few floors. occassionally you’ll run into a kiosk w/​videos and those i found to be most interesting as you get to listen to stories from former guards who tell some stories of their days at the prison.
at the end of the tour is a museum and a gift shop. didn’t bother with the gift shop but the museum was interesting — especially some of the old inmates’ weapons.
obviously, this place is a fun time for most others. I liked it enough but don’t see a reason to go back.

This is such an awesome experience! We opted for the self guided tour because, well, we don’t like people. There were definitely a good number of people there, but the place is so big it still feels empty. I can’t say much more, other than you need to go. A lot of the cells are open so you can go inside them and just roam around the whole place. The main building is very nice and cozy… But the prison itself was very chilly… Easily 30 degrees cooler. Bring a jacket and gloves.

Plan and simple this place is great! I should start off by saying I love the look of decaying buildings. I love taking photos in them. I love learning about them. I love the silence that they usually offer. I also enjoy going to old prisons. With all of that said, I guess you could say a place like this is made for me. If you didn’t know,. this is the prison they filmed Shawshank Redemption in. They also filmed the Lil’ Wayne Go DJ video here. I don’t really know what to say about this place outside of the fact that I liked it better than Alcatraz and Eastern State Penitentiary. There is a lot to explore so leave time to do so. If you want to know details of everything you are looking at, get the tour wand. If not, you get some basic info reading signs and talking to the staff. There didn’t seem to be too many places that were off limits, which I liked. I guess instead of continuing to read this you should go and spend the day at this reasonably priced gem…

On a Saturday in Spring, we chose to tour the Reformatory at our own pace. Naturally, the building and its history will apeal to one’s interest in architecture, the evolution of the penal system, tales of criminal exploits and incarceration, preservation, Hollywood connections, and perhapse even the paranormal. We spent a fair amount of time enjoying ourselves: poking around, peeking through gates, and standing in cells imagining daily life within the now peeling walls.
My only note would be the lack of written aids (i.e. detailed lables) for those unable to visit when there are guides. Nevertheless, information is not hard to be found on one’s own and we had a good experience.
As a historian myself, I am thankful we still have the ability to physically explore our past with our present literally visible through the bared windows.
P. S. Dress accordingly. With the thick walls slow to warm in the sun, I found myself fairly cold. While this added to the eerie impression, I could have used a jacket. Closed toe shoes are also recommended.

I should start by saying that I know a bit about what I’m about to say, as I have acted at a few haunts and helped with the construction of one over the years.
There was a long line, which is normal for most good haunts. This one has some hype about «how good it is». In fact one of the employees had no problem saying «oh yeah, we were rated number one». By who, they did not say… The exterior of the building is very cool looking. The interior was also very interesting, and worth checking out sometime.
The haunt they do however was not scary.
The actors lacked energy, and did not even attempt a dialogue with patrons. There was a heavy reliance on animatronics, and that «oh its dark and something might be in there» type of scare. The placement of the activating pads for the animatronics was visible. Some of them were pretty cool, but far apart mostly.
The place has great potential as a haunt, its just that they are not utilizing what they have there properly.

I happened to be spending the day working less than 3 miles from here, so I felt like I *had* to stop. My review is a little biased as the Shawshank Redemption is one of my all-​time favorite movies (my grandma and I could watch it over and over — yeah, I had a bit of a weird family, but that’s another story). I also have weird interest in prisons, so this place sounds kind of like my ideal Honeymoon spot. And my friend Liz says that they do sleepovers!
They offer discounts to senior citizens and students (bring that student ID!). This is one place where I didn’t try to pass off my old student ID because the money goes to a good cause. You can pay extra to have the audio tour (one of those little electronic things on a wrist-​string. You press in a number at various points along the tour and get some extra info about the place). Supposedly some days they have real life guided tours, but I stopped in on a Monday, and honestly I preferred it more deserted. At many points, I was the only one near by (this leads to one of my favorite pics: I was alone and went to take a selfie and there was some weird sound and No One Around. That’s when I may or may not have peed a bit and then hightailed it out of that area). I slammed down my money for one tour plus audio please.
Very few places seem to off-​limits during the tour. There are signs through out that have some information, but I do think that the audio tour was well worth it — there is extra info on the building, how it operated as a prison, and movie info. Did you happen to know that the main stairs are made to look as if they are made of wood when they are really metal and just painted? And yeah, it looks just as run down in real life. Some portions look like they are trying to restore it.

This place had us in awe. We got a few bucks off for being students. So it was only $ 7 for the self-​guided tour and $ 5 for the audio. The audio was interesting because you punched in the number written on the plaques that speckled the walls and then listened to the audio. There were a few ghost stories and some history snippets. I think being able to tour such an old building for cheap was awesome. We could even take pictures! We spent a few hours here. Just don’t get in the cells and close them… they warn you that they don’t have keys. How awful would that be!