Some believe there’s a supernatural presence lurking around the Sweetwater County Detention Center in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Deputy Patrick Gross experienced it firsthand when something decided he needed a sip of soda.
Gross was manning the booking desk during a graveyard shift this week when the can of soda he had sitting nearby started shaking and moving toward him on its own. Gross was bewildered by the inexplicable experience.
He might have had a hard time explaining it if it hadn’t been caught on one of the jail’s closed-circuit TVcameras. Now, all of Wyoming is trying to find a plausible explanation for the surprising and unsettling happening.
In the video, Gross is clearly surprised, sitting back slightly when he looks over and watches as the can moves a few inches then turns slightly. He picks it up and holds it up in the air for a couple seconds as if checking underneath the can, the puts it down and watches it.
“Our supervisors sent an email to all detention staff commending Deputy Gross for his courage,” Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily. “He’s a young pup, and his reaction was priceless.”
Prison Poltergeists
Around Rock Springs, the stories of hauntings are usually connected to old, sometimes historic structures with long histories. The Sweetwater County Detention Center was built in 2005, so one may think it shouldn’t qualify.
Nevertheless, many staff and inmates have told stories about something sinister haunting the halls. Mower said he’s heard dozens in his 16 years with the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office.
“Most of the deputies who have worked there for any period of time probably have a story of some sort of inexplicable encounter,” he said. “This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve heard stories of strange encounters.”
Several people have attempted to explain what Gross experienced at the booking desk. If there is a credible explanation for the supernatural soda can, Mower hasn’t heard it.
“I’ve been at that desk,” he said. “It’s a level desk built into the concrete wall. That’s what makes the video so compelling to me.”
Some people have reasoned that condensation formed at the bottom of the can, which caused the sudden shaking. Mower isn’t buying it.
“I’ve never seen a normally refrigerated soda can develop enough condensation in it that it moves several inches across a desk, especially in southwest Wyoming,” he said. “And that can doesn’t just move — it slides and twists out of nowhere.”
Mower has also ruled out that Gross staged an elaborate prank for the benefit of his colleagues. That’s not the mindset for anyone working at the detention center.
“There’s cameras everywhere, and they’re on all the time,” he said. “You know to act right because you’re always being watched and recorded. You don’t think about the cameras because you’re so used to it.”
Unsolved Mysteries
The only people who believed Gross’s encounter with the soda can spirit were his colleagues at the detention center.
“I was working Juvenile Housing once when the rec door popped open behind me,” said Deputy Liz Lopez, who’s worked at the detention center for 20 years. “I called Central Control to let them know and asked if they were playing around or trying to scare me. They confirmed they didn’t.”
Lopez’s experience is inexplicable in many ways. It defies protocol and the logic of the center’s security.
“All the doors need to be secured in this place,” she said. “They don’t just pop open.”
Detention Deputy Mandi Hawkins, who’s worked there for 19 years, said she was working in Central Control one night when she heard a noise. It sounded like coins being dropped into a transfer tray.
“People put papers and other things through that pass-through all the time,” Hawkins said. “I looked out in the lobby, and there wasn't anyone there.”
When Hawkins shared her experience with a colleague in Central Control, she said that sort of thing happened all the time.
“She just ignored it,” she said. “Everybody has stories like this.”
Voices And Shadows
Deputy Dale Weber has worked at the Sweetwater Detention Center for 19 years. He hasn’t had any supernatural experiences, but plenty have been shared with him.
“I’ve had kids in Juvenile Housing tell me they’ve seen faces in the windows of some of the cells,” he said. “At night, they said voices would talk to them. They’ve buzzed me a couple of times asking what I said to them, but I hadn’t said anything to them.”
Several deputies have seen shadows moving on walls and other strange apparitions. Lopez recalled a night she was doing cell checks in Adult Housing when she and several co-workers saw a silhouette of a person sitting in front of the cells.
“We were kind of scared to do cell checks for the rest of the night,” she said. “We were a little freaked out and didn’t really check it out. We left it as it was.”
Still, Lopez said this is tame compared with what she and others have experienced elsewhere.
“I used to work at the old jail in Green River,” she said. “There was a lot of action and movement over there.”
Get Out Of Jail Free
If there are rational explanations for these experiences, nobody at the Sweetwater County Detention Center is seeking them out. They keep their noses to the grindstone and let whatever’s haunting them go on without interference.
“As a county sheriff’s office, we’re tasked with enforcing state statute,” Mower said. “I’m not sure if the supernatural have an equivalent for a criminal mischief statute on the books.”
Hawkins, Lopez, and Weber aren’t interested in becoming the ghostbusters of Sweetwater County. They've declined to detain whatever’s lurking in the detention center.
“The general consensus is ghosts get a free pass,” Lopez said. “I will not entertain a ghost, I will not speak to it, I want nothing to do with it.”
“I’ll go work at Walmart or retire again,” Weber said. “Hell no.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
