There s an award-winning Cellhouse tour on tape, for a few bucks extra . It s a good tour, with interviews with ex-prisoners and guards. They never say what award it won. My suspicion is the Best Audio Tour of a Federal Prison award. The effect of having earphones on is more striking than the actual tour, because tourists aren t talking to each other the whole time, so it s quiet and eerie.
People taking audio tours have a tendency to look dazed and glassy-eyed.
Some of them read the plaques on the wall, but others just meander at random. I think they must walk into each other sometimes, to the amusement of the park rangers. I can just see park rangers pointing and laughing at dazed tourists bumping into each other. The Cellhouse, which is what people go to see, is very much like the Green Mile. It s concrete and steel, dismal and barred.