The Shawshank Trail

Once we left Columbus yesterday, Doug, Cameron and I spent the rest of that day and all of today following The Shawshank Trail which featured the filming sites of the movie.  Doug and I had visited several of them years ago, but this time I was happy to say that we made it to all of them except the last scene where Red and Andy met in Zihuatanejo.  Maybe one day we will travel to St. Croix, but for now we will just be in happy with the ones in Ohio.  Some of them were a little underwhelming as they included the pawn shop where Red bought the compass that took him to the rock wall in Buxton.  Others were fun like the Brewers hotel where Brooks waved out of the window at us, walking the road to Buxton where Morgan Freeman's character "Red" once stepped, and seeing the paintings on the Food Mart.  

The best part of The Shawshank Trail was by far the Ohio State Reformatory.  We spent three hours walking through the castle like prison with audio wands in hand listening to the stories that the reformatory had to tell.  We not only learned about the filming of our favorite movie, but also the prison system in Ohio and the paranormal activity rumored to occur in the reformatory at night.  Doug and I were even more impressed with the tour than we had been six years ago when we last visited.  They had added quite a bit from the movie and the 25th anniversary celebration of the filming of it.  As I was reading Andy's handwritten letter to Red, I even had to remind myself that these were just characters in a movie.  Everything just felt so incredibly real.  

Doug and Cameron enjoyed the tour just as much as I did.  We took a lot of pictures and visited every spot on the audio tour.  The history of the reformatory as a prison was especially interesting to Cameron as he had spent quite a bit of time studying the penal system while reading Just Mercy this year.  The three of us were a little creeped out listening to the talk about the shadow people, moving chairs and strange noises that had been recorded by ghost hunters.  I quickly left the room with the lone chair that was rumored to move at will and both Cameron and I thought that we heard someone screaming when we walked through the jail cells.  We finally dismissed it as the wind.  Overall, it was an awesome tour that we would that we would recommend to anyone who had seen the movie or loved history.