I'd been there at least a year by this time. It wasn't too long afterwards that my company lost the contract and I left there for good. By this time I had accepted the fact that the place was haunted, that the whistler was not a figment of my imagination, and that there was something else in the cell block. I sometimes got a little creeped out at night, but in general I was OK with things and pretty much fine with the whister (though like a dickhead, I didn't try talking to her... though I digress).
Anyway, the cell block entrance consisted of double doors which opened into a small room which I suppose is where the guards used to sit, and at the back of this room was a door to where the actual cells were. This was the only way into this building. The only real feature of this small room was a filing cabinet which had been turned over on its side. At the end of my shift, I had to put my keybox and logbook on this cabinet, lock the padlock which closed the double doors, then lock the main gate to the whole site as I left.
Well, this one night, it was snowing. There was about 2 inches of fresh snow on the ground and there were no footprints in it other than my own. It was 12:45 and my shift was about over, so I walked up to the cell block, went inside and put my stuff on this cabinet. It was at this point that I got a weird feeling... this feeling like I was about to get my ass kicked and that I needed to get the hell out of there. I froze for a second, kinda panicking, then walked quickly outside and put the padlock on the doors, enough to keep them shut, but I didn't actually snap the lock shut because I was becoming paralyzed with fear. I looked down at the ground.
A couple of seconds after this, something, sounded like a person, came running at the door from the other side and just slammed into it as hard as they could. If those doors had come open, I don't know what I would have done. The padlock kept the doors from flying open, but this didn't make me any less scared. I could hear the lock swinging from the force of the blow... for a few seconds I just stood there, looking down at the ground. For some reason it seemed really important to me that I not show panic, and I felt that if I looked up and saw that padlock swinging in the lock... that I would just break and run. So I waited a few seconds until I had something like composure back, snapped the lock shut, and walked back to my car. The car was at the bottom of the hill, maybe about a quarter of a mile away, and I can tell you that that was one of the longest quarter miles you could ever imagine. My neck was tingling and I just knew that something was behind me, but I didn't want to run and show how scared I was. I can't explain why this seemed so important but I always felt that I made the right call.
It's what, almost 7 years later that I write this... hell, the prison hasn't even existed in about 4 years. But my hair still stands on end when I think about what happened that night. I think now, and I probably knew it even then, that whatever it was didn't want to hurt me, it was just playing around. If it had really wanted to hurt me, it could probably have gotten to me before I closed the doors, before I got outside, or even as soon as I came in. I also think that if I'd panicked I might have had more things like that happen because to the ghost, my reaction would have been funny. I'm glad I didn't panic. Regardless, even though I didn't feel physically threatened, I never went into the cell block again after that unless I absolutely had to.
Overall, I have to say I loved it at Woodshaven. It was the best job I've ever had. It was peaceful, scenic, and I was left alone. Other than that one night, I never felt like I was in any danger at all, and you can count the amount of times I was rattled by an encounter up there on one hand. Even the cell block stuff seemed more like a joke than a wish to hurt me. If the job paid better, we'd kept the contract, and they hadn't knocked the damn buildings down, It's almost 100% that I'd still be up there :-).
