1. “My cell mate was truly crazy and was tortured by hallucinations.One day he managed to gouge one of his eyes out with a fork at lunch in front of everyone, then puncture the other eye with something before the screws could get to him.He was screaming like a banshee when he ripped the first one out and threw it on the floor, and everyone just stared in shock, including the screws, at first it looked like a skit or something. After the one was out he went really quiet and pulled something from his waist and started rapidly stabbing the other eye with it. I heard it pop.”

2. “When I was 20 years old I thought I wanted to be a correctional officer. One night I was sent to work at the medical ward where each inmate had their own isolated cell where they were let out twice a day. That night I was going around with the nurse giving the inmates their medicine and we came to one inmate's cell and as soon as we opened the door I was knocked backed by the most putrid smell I have ever smelled in my life. I've been to the dump plenty of times in my life and it was nothing in comparison to the smell this inmate had going on. Once we were done giving out the medicine, I went up to the officer training me and asked him what was going on with that inmate and why he smelled so God awful. He said "Oh, you met Grady? He sh**s and pisses himself on purpose. He never changes or showers so he constantly lives in his own filth." I found out that he was r*ped once in prison. So he started sh**ting and pissing himself so he wouldn't be r*ped anymore.”

3. “I was in Lawrenceville Penitentiary in VA, from 2011-2014. From a penitentiary standpoint it was quite accommodating! They had all the drugs, alcohol, cigs and cell phones you could ever dream of. I was working in the kitchen towards the middle of my bit, making myself an egg sandwich one morning. This young dude got into a dispute with a dude everybody knew as Unk, who by the way was a super quiet guy who didn’t mess with anyone. They were apparently arguing over a cigarette, when the young buck called Unk a “Bitch”. Unk grabbed an institutional can of green beans, baseball pitched it across the kitchen and nailed young buck in the face. Unk ran over to young buck, picked the can back up and beat him across the face with it! When he was done ripping young bucks face off with that can, he spit on him and said ”that’s what happens when you call a real man a bitch!” That was the last time I ever called any man a bitch!”

4. “Not me, but- I spoke to a former inmate after his release who had developed severe ptsd from some of the things he witnessed while incarcerated. One of the stories was that he was playing cards with some guys and one of them was smoking a cigarette. Another inmate who was not playing with them approached the table and asked the guy smoking if he could get “shorts” on the cigarette ( shorts means, before you finished smoking, you gave the cigarette to someone else so they got the last few puffs of the cigarette before putting it out) the smoker agreed, the inmate wandered off and they went back to playing cards. Well the guy playing cards must have forgot and finished the cigarette. A little while later the other inmate came back to the table asking for the short, and the guy at the table told him that he had forgotten about it and finished the cigarette. Guy wanders off again and they go back to playing cards. Shortly afterwards, the inmate who wanted shorts comes back to the table, comes up behind the player, pulls his head back and started shanking him in the eye and throat with a pen/pencil. Dude died over forgetting to give someone a damn cigarette butt.”

5. “My criminal justice professor always used to tell us about the "million dollar man" in his prison he used to work at. The prison was an old school style with multiple floors and the open part of the middle like you see in the movies. To avoid jumpers they put chainlink fencing along the walkways. One day this guy managed to squeeze through the fencing on the third floor and swan dive face first to the concrete floor below. When they came in they all thought he was dead until he began making noises. The prisoner was then transfered to a hospital for a year and a half getting around 12 different surgeries. Eventually he was released back to the prison and on his second month back he did it again but didn't survive this time. The running joke was that he was named the million dollar man because he had cost taxpayers millions from all his surgeries and time in the hospital. Our teacher also liked to add in every time he told the story that some how his glasses survived both falls completely fine.”

6. “A dude got two full kettles of boiling water poured on his head. And a convicted murderer explaining how he killed, dismembered with an angle grinder then disposed of the body.”

7. “My brother said a guy across from him had a new cellmate who had gastrointestinal problems and wouldnt stop farting these rancid horrible farts after the guy told him repeatedly to stop (not like he could help it,) so the guy beat the farter to death in their cell with his bare hands. My brother said he had never seen so much blood from one person before.”

8. “I did a 4 month stint in Kajang (Malaysia). This Nigerian dude used to pilfer from other cells. This Malay gang found him and dipped his hand in boiling oil (basically deep fried it while it was still attached to him). That scream, it still curdles my blood. Poor guy was reduced to an unconsious pool of blood, sweat, tears, vomit, shit and piss. He lost more than his hand on that day.”

9. “In another unit in the same month a guard suplexed a dude who had to weigh 110lbs wet for talking back to him. The guy broke his neck and died. You can find the story of this online by searching WCDC bodyslam death. The guard was charged w manslaughter, not sure if he was convicted.”

10. “I was in a South American prison, there was a lot of drug addicts, they usually sold their food in order to buy more drugs so they were always hungry. One day I was eating my lunch: rice, a leg of chicken and some beans. When I finished my meal there were some chicken bones left in my plate, and a drug addict approached to me to ask if I could gift him the chicken bones. So I lend him my bones and he started eating them. It was heartbreaking”

11. “A guy got stomped to death my first day in. The 2 guys fighting were rival gang members. The guards didnt do anything until the guy getting stomped stopped breathing. Then they came in and took them both away. One in a bag and one in cuffs.”

12. “Dude in the cell next to mine tried to kill himself with a sharpened pencil. He just kept stabbing himself in the chest but couldn’t get deep enough. He was hauled off by COs kicking and screaming, begging for death. He was going to be deported.”

13. “Brixton, A Wing. Coming back from canteen this scary looking wild eyed dude steps across and tells me to hand over my burn/tobacco. I laugh and say no and walk by, waiting for him to do something. Nothing happened. Few minutes later, same guy opened some poor lads stomach with one slash and he was lying there trying to hold his intestines in, I saw the fear and panic on his face. The scary guy just casually walked away. No idea what happened to either of them. Alarms went off. Everyone back to their cells and locked up again.”

14. “Boiling hot peanut butter dumped on a sleeping child molesters face …. The screaming and thrashing was pretty intense…. The idea is that you can’t wipe it off or something to mitigate the damage caused, it’s going to burn deeply. And in my opinion, that was worse than watching a guy on the bench press take a 35k plate smash to the scull repeatedly…. He was dead pretty quickly… the peanut butter burn is a permanent disfigurement that will have months of pain and suffering.”

15. “I don’t know if this counts but, my dad was in prison with Richard Speck, who is, if you don’t know, an American mass murderer who brutally murdered and raped 8 nurses. My dad told me during his time in prison, Speck bragged about what he did all the time, and said prison was a wonderful vacation for him and he would do it all again if he had the chance. He would even go as far as saying how much he loved to kill those women. So sickening. Speck also made porn in prison, which I’m sure is on the internet somewhere.”

16. “I was never in prison, but in jail a bit for drug charges. I was in my 30s, but my bunky was a really nice 19 yo kid in there for selling drugs. He seemed a bit over his head, but introduced me to the jits (I didn’t know anyone) and we’d play cards and shit. He had a real high bond, and one day they said to get his shit he got bail. He didn’t know who, but I was so happy for him. The next morning the co told me he was shot and killed that night (Being very respectful, everyone liked the guy). It was confirmed on the evening news. Really fucked me up, and I can guess who got him bailed.”

17. “I saw someone take a hotpot fill it up with baby oil add a pound of sugar, add some magic shave, bring it to a boil then splash it in a person's face...... It literally melted the guys face off. This happened around 1999 and I still have the occasional nightmare about it”

18. “Just the way that some people talk about murder. Some of the people in there would be telling a story, casually drop the fact that they killed someone, then keep going on with the story like nothing happened.”

19. “I was sitting in TV room in the Feds. The inmate phones in this particular institution are situated in little phone booths. No idea why, but on the move, a guy ran up in the housing unit and stabbed the guy 15 or so times in the booth. 3 in the face. Dude couldn’t go anywhere. Slumped immediately. Second, two guys in the kitchen made a bet that one of them wouldn’t go through the commercial dishwasher. Guy took the bet and went through…. Came out the other side as one human sized blister, 100% of his skin was blistered full of juice. He was airlifted out in a bubble wrapped suit to hospital. I was fresh in at the time and working in the kitchen when this happened. But I wasn’t in the dish room. The blood curdling screaming as the dishwasher cycled on still gives me goosebumps 10 years later. And I can’t un-see what a human covered in blisters looks like. I don’t know if he survived as they don’t give updates to inmates. I do know the guy who bet him was charged with fresh street charges."

20. “Not a crazy story but was in for a few days and didn't realize they put you in cells based on the color of your skin. I'm a white dude with a Hispanic last name and they put me in a cell with a straight nazi who told me if I went to actual prison ( I was only in for a weekend) that I would be a misfit because I wasn't one thing or the other. He openly called the black dudes next to our cell horrible things.”

22. “Massive open wound flesh gashes down to the bone made by herself on her forearms and top of the legs that she used to “hide” things in, like paint brushes, coffee rations, pens etc. I could literally see her bones.”

23. “Relayed by a friend but he said the craziest thing about prison is how you inevitably meet someone who is more psychotic / sociopathic than the next guy. You think you’ve seen it met some bad dudes on the streets but there’s always a bigger fish.”

24. “Some forensic photos the guy in the cell next to me showed me of his victims (corpses, he killed them after he tortured them), in gang related abductions. He "removed" a tattoo with an electric sander, and knives in both eye sockets, still in. (They were part of his trial evidence.)”

25. “Ok so unfortunately, my bunk was close to the corner where everybody came to fight or whatever. So this one guy claimed that he was a gang member but it was discovered that he was a false-flagger. So, the gang members put him in the corner and took turns beating and raping him. He was in the infirmary for bout a week. When he came back, the gang got him all over again. He was transferred after that. I promise there aren't many things more terrifying than hearing a grown man scream while he's being raped.”