Down here in the tombs, there aren’t any windows,” writes Tremane Wood from inside his cell, in a modern-day American “dungeon” that few people have ever heard of.
“It’s really like living in cave,” he writes in another letter. “It’s dark and damp. Sometimes this place drives people mad. The hardest part is the isolation.”
Or in another: “You end up loosing [sic] track of days and nights and what day it is … It’s a real form of psychological torture that some people never come back from.”
Wood, 46, spent 17 years incarcerated in H Unit – the underground cells at the state prison in the rural town of McAlester, Oklahoma, where no natural light ever reaches.
According to prisoner letters seen by the Guardian and published here for the first time, H Unit – also known by the prisoners as the “tombs” – features a series of windowless cells that are built banked into the earth. The letters also tell of infestations of vermin, unsanitary conditions, and frequent instances of physical and sexual violence.
On Wednesday, the New York Knicks overcame a 29-point deficit to defeat the San Antonio Spurs in the last seconds of the game, the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history.
The numbers “8647” appeared in large scale on the grass of the National Mall on Thursday, June 11, only days before President Donald Trump’s birthday, prompting an investigation from the U.S. Park Police.
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