Eerie tornado-ravaged abandoned prison used as Hollywood setting left frozen in time with execution room & rusting cells
CHILLING images have revealed the inside of a notorious prison featured in a Hollywood film and Johnny Cash’s iconic performance.
The once-bustling Tennessee State Penitentiary now sits abandoned near Nashville, with its eerie execution chambers and crumbling cells.
The prison, which was built in 1898, has been abandoned since its closure in 1992.
But almost three decades later, the hellish jail was torn apart after a tornado ripped through Tennessee in 2020.
A 40-yard section of a stone wall and several power poles were knocked down.
Piles of brick walls filled the prison’s courtyard but no people were wounded, CNN reported.
Daring photographer Jeff Hagerman decided to explored the ravaged prison, revealing the harrowing inside of Tennessee State Penitentiary.
The spooky snaps show the prison’s forgotten hospital and dental equipment used in criminals decades ago.
Another picture shows a warehouse full of the inmates’ discarded work overalls and cardboard boxes.
The notorious prison was the scene of acclaimed films, including Stephen King’s inspired The Green Mile, The Last Castle and Walk the Line.
Singer Johnny Cash also performed for inmates in December 1968, and recorded a live album called A Concert: Behind Prison Walls in 1976.
Today the prison can be used only for exterior shots because of its condition.
But parts of the facility are still used by the Department of Correction for storage and as a training site for its Strike Force unit.
The prison’s most infamous inmate was killer James Earl Ray – convicted in the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.
In a 1973 television interview, Ray complained of leading a “cave dweller’s existence” in solitary confinement at the prison.
He claimed that Tennessee prison officials told him he would be kept in solitary confinement until he abandoned efforts to obtain a new trial.
In Cuba, haunting images revealed the inside of the notorious prison where Fidel Castro was jailed.
The feared Presidio Modelo, located in Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth), fell into disrepair after riots more than five decades ago.
In 1953, Castro spent two years there, along with his brother Raul, imprisoned by the regime of Fulgencio Batista after a leading a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks.
The same prison then hosted enemies of the new regime and developed a reputation for overcrowding and harsh treatment, AtlasObscura.com reports.
Presidio Modelo’s architecture is heavily inspired by the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois.
Able to house up to 5,000 inmates, the Cuban hell jail has five buildings in a panopticon design.
In nearby El Salvador, thousands of rival skinhead gangsters are packed together like sardines inside a hellhole prison.
The Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) in Tecoluca opened its doors six months ago in a bid to crack down on gang violence in the world’s murder capital.
The mega-prison is packed with 12,000 bitter rivals from two of the most feared gangs MS-13 and Calle 18, born on the streets of Los Angeles in the early 1980s.