For immediate release: June 12, 2011
JEFFERSON CITY, MO -
The two most famous plumbers in the United States just made a memorable trip to Jefferson City. That's right, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, better known for their paranormal investigating gigs, from the hit show Ghost Hunters brought their entourage to the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City last week.
Ghost Hunters contacted the Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau to inquire about investigating the historic Missouri State Penitentiary site in January. This month, in cooperation with the Missouri Office of Administration, the Bureau was able to make plans for Ghost Hunters to conduct their investigation from June 6-June 13.
Other independent paranormal investigation groups are currently booking their overnight investigations of the Missouri State Penitentiary. This year is the first year that the Bureau has offered these types of tours at MSP; ghost tours, twilight tours, history tours and themed tours are available as well.
Premiering in 2004, Ghost Hunters is an American paranormal reality television series that shows once a week on Syfy. Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, leaders of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), worked during the day as plumbers and at night investigated sites. As the popularity of the show has grown, so has the scope of work for Hawes and Wilson, who now focus predominantly on their ghost hunting profession. Their goal is to track down paranormals in sites across the country.
According to the Ghost Hunters web site, TAPS is "a group of fairly ordinary people- office managers, factory workers, teachers and even psychic-hotline gurus- moonlighting to understand seemingly unexplainable disturbances."
The Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau began offering tours of the decommissioned Missouri State Penitentiary in May of 2009. Before it closed, MSP was the oldest continually operating penitentiary west of the Mississippi. The prison was nearly 100 years old when Alcatraz began taking inmates. When MSP opened in 1836, the Battle of the Alamo was going on in Texas and Andrew Jackson was in his second term. The Missouri State Pen housed infamous inmates such as heavyweight champion Sonny Liston, who learned to box during his time in the big house, notorious gangster 'Pretty Boy' Floyd and James Earl Ray. Tours also include the gas chamber where 40 men and women were executed, the dungeon cells, several housing units and the upper yard. In 1967 the Missouri State Penitentiary was infamously named the "bloodiest 47 acres in America" by Time magazine because of the incredibly high number of serious assaults on the grounds between 1963-1964.
For more information about the Missouri State Penitentiary tours or to schedule your tour, go to www.MissouriPenTours.com or call Megan Wadley at (866) 998-6998.
Photos available upon request.
