My name is Timothy McLee, ID # 15532. I was sentenced 9 1/2 years ago to a 12-year sentence at Rodale Correctional Facility in Rodale, South Carolina for involuntary manslaughter. I wasn’t what people would call a bad guy. I was drunk one night driving home from a bar and ran over an innocent by-stander. Now that I introduced myself, I have a story to tell you. The story I’m about to tell you is the unbelievable truth.

One year ago, I was released from a 90-day lock-up bid for disobeying an officers orders. I finally settled in my new cell on the yard. I used my library time to escape the walls of my imprisonment. In the prison library was a section of books that inmates had written to pass their time. I came across a book called “The Burials”. It was supposed to be a ghost story, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. After returning to my cell, I started reading and I realized it was about the Rodale Correctional Institution being built on an Indian burial ground.

The State of South Carolina built the Rodale Facility in 1952 using state inmates. The book said that 13 inmates lost their lives while building the prison. Treatment was cruel and the South Carolina sun was hot. As the inmates died, the State replaced them with fresh prisoners. Not even a second thought went to the lives lost for this forsaken place.

The book had no author and I had no way of knowing if it was accurate. The book was written within the walls of Rodale and everyone knows that prisoner do not lie, right. The book looked as old as the prison and had never been checked out of the library. The book tells how the local Indians made their burial grounds sacred and off limits to the white man. 

After reading the first few chapters, I was getting tired of the book. I was about to close it when I realized that the contents were changing. I knew the history of the prison, but the author started to explain how Rodale was built and how inmates secretly started digging tunnels from tomb to tomb under the foundation. They used these tunnels to pass food and sometimes information during the construction. Some inmates were able to escape through the tunnels. I wondered if this was really true or if an old prisoner was running his con on me.As I continued to read I realized that there might be a hatch to access the tunnels under the industrial oven in the institution’s kitchen.