Queen City Hometown: Spirits galore at Mount Pleasant prison turned distillery
MT PLEASANT, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — “You spend enough time in here you notice a few things that don’t really make sense.” From the outside, it’s pretty obvious.
The barbed wire fence and the guard tower are telltale signs of time…that keep dragging on. But inside the old prison in Mt. Pleasant, everything is not what it appears to be.
“This first thing you see when you open the door is the jail cell,” said Sebastian Correa. “Eventually you get used to it, but it’s the first thing you notice every time you walk in.”
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As the master distiller at ‘Southern Grace Distillery,’ Sebastain’s main office is the ‘D-dorm.’ Instead of prison beds, it’s stills and barrels. The prison closed for good in 2011 and became the distillery in 2016. Now, every old building is full of… spirits.
“A fair number of the people who were here were here for bootlegging. The ones that are still here – how do you think they feel?” asked the tour guide, Ben Mabrey.
Ben doesn’t have to guess how those prisoners may feel. They tend…to show him.
“I won’t have to tell you if you hear it, you’ll know. Especially if they start walking down here,” said Ben, as the barrels started to creak.
Ben said, there’s a spirit named Lizzy who tends to giggle. Joe who is still in solitary confinement. There’s someone near the stills – they don’t know his name.
They have dozens of pictures and recordings of strange things happening all over the prison.
Now, so do we.
“We’ve got them now,” said Ben.
There are several locations on the property. One is the old prison that was built in 1929. It’s where hundreds of men were crammed into – and there may be one (or more) still there.
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“Alright Donavan, I’ve got a flight light here for you buddy,” said Ben, as he placed a flashlight on the room where ‘Donvana’ is known to hang. “These ladies – okay.”
When Ben set the flashlight down and stepped away, it was off. But the second he stepped away, and asked Donavan to turn it on – it turned on.
It happened so fast, it took us a second to realize it turned on.
But then, it happened again… and again. In different places. Even ‘Joe,’ in solitary confinement turned on the flashlight for us. We couldn’t find out how it was happening, the flashlight stayed off until those certain moments.
“You might be able to get in, but you won’t be able to get out,” smiled Sebastian.
So, despite appearances – all are welcome to come for the spirit of their choice.
For more on Southern Grace Distilleries, please click here.
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