In my humble opinion, going to prison has to be one of the most terrifying things a person can experience.

But I hope you and I will never have to worry about dealing with that…so keep your nose clean and I’ll do the same, deal?

AskReddit users who have spent time in prison either as inmates or workers shared their interesting stories.

Let’s have a look, shall we?

1. Oklahoma.

“I worked at a county jail in Oklahoma.

I was 19, scared to d**th of inmates (although I did play checkers with a m**derer), and I ha**d the job. However, one night we had a dude come in on s**cide watch. I was in the “tower,” watching him on camera, and I noticed he started taking off all his clothes.

Naked, my dude climbed to the top bunk and stood on it. I hit the panic button, all guards to the cell asap, he’s gonna jump, let’s go.

Three folks run in just as he jumps. He was aiming headfirst, but got the angle wrong and his shoulders hit first, essentially pulling off an incredible tuck and roll that only knocked the wind out of him. However, when the guards started trying to put a straight jacket on him, he came alive.

He starts flopping around and going nuts, and one poor sumb**ch had the gross misfortune to be down by his cash and prizes. The guy sunfishes and flips over, and when he did, just the tip of his broadsword grazed the tip of the poor guard’s nose. The guard recoiled like he’d been s**t in the face, and scrambled back against the wall slapping at his face like he’s stepped into a horde of mosquitoes.

If one day Alzheimer’s chooses to take me, rob me of my memories, I would want that 45 seconds to survive more than the memories of seeing my first born swaddled in my wife’s arms. We rewound and played that tape back so much it eventually screwed up the film.”

2. Locked up.

“I was locked up 9 days after my 18th birthday and did a total of 12 years. There are too many gross stories to pick from and I really don’t remember any funny memories, but I’ll give you an interesting one.

I was in a Medium security and the setup was mostly huge dorms. This consisted of 2 floors with hundreds of bunkbeds all within 3 feet of each other and a few cleaning supply closets on both floors. There was one guard per block and their desk was on the first floor.

At this time I had been locked up about 7yrs and my bunk was on the 2nd floor. It was late at night and I was on my bunk reading and drinking something while most people were asleep. I ended up spilling my drink and had to go downstairs to the only unlocked supply closet to get a mop.

I did notice the female 3rd shift guard wasn’t at her desk and assumed she was doing her rounds. When I got to the supply closet I opened the door and immediately saw the guard having full on s** with an inmate. I had taken a step or two inside before my brain registered what was going on. The guard and inmate looked at me and froze.

I backed out, shut the door and went back to my bunk without saying a word. A day passes by and then another. On the 3rd day the inmate I had seen came up to me and out of the blue gave me a quarter oz of weed while telling me how cool I was to keep my mouth shut.

That guard worked there for another 2yrs and I was in the same dorm as the inmate for another 4yrs. During that time I never brought up the subject with the guard or inmate and I was never without weed or a 3rd shift guard that would look the other way when I needed it.

On a similar note, a while later another inmate busted a woman guard having s** and the inmate threatened to tell if he couldn’t get some. The guard immediately called for backup and had him sent to the hole for threatening her with r**e.

He hollered at the top of his lungs that he had seen her having s** while he was being dragged to the hole. It didn’t matter, none of the other guards believed him.”

3. No way.

“I went for a job interview at a prison if it counts, any the worst thing I saw was a guy who had serious psychiatric issues, anyway he’d carved a hole into his own tummy that wouldn’t heal properly as he was always hiding stuff in there.

One day he tried to hide a little towel or something in there and apparently bits of it had started fusing to him inside. Pretty much noped out of that job.”

4. My God…

“Worked in a prison kitchen in U.K.

It’s a bit of a long story, but the short version is, one of the inmates managed to smuggle his own s**t in his hand and dropped it onto the soup urn going to the VP wing (s** offender and grass wing basically). The s**t floated to the top, so he grabbed a hand blender and blended the s**t into the soup.

At least 25 p**ophiles ate the s**t soup before they stopped giving it out because of the suspiciously rank smell. I won’t lie I found it f**king hilarious as well as absolutely disgusting.

No I didn’t know what he had done until after the soup came back, I just got on with the lads well enough to get a confession out of them afterwards. The guy in question was sacked from the kitchen the next day.”

5. Infamous.

“My hubby was a state prison guard for 10 years and had Danny Rolling (The Gainville Ripper) on his block.

He said the man was an absolute nutcase, always on his knees singing and screaming things out loud that made no sense, he was put in the hole many times before being put to d**th.

He was the man that k**led the young college kids in Gainesville, Florida.”

6. Politics.

“I did weekends in a jail at the same time a Virginia state senator was serving a 6 months suspended / work release program.

He got re-elected from jail in a special election where they tried to vote him out.”

7. Like a depressing summer camp.

“I spent a night and a morning in the Hennepin County Jail, lotta interesting characters.

They had a bunch of us all locked in big room/cell that had a handful of bunks, like a depressing summer camp.

Come morning they bring us food and everyone lines up to grab a tray and a drink, I sit down at a table and right away people are talking to me about how old I am and what I did to get in there, I was 19-20 so I’m sure they were curious what a young guy like myself did to end up in there.

So I’m talking to a guy and as I go to open up the milk the guy tells me not to drink it, why I ask? He says because they put peter softener in the milk, it makes it so your d**k can’t get hard luckily for him that was ok with me… Still have no clue if that was true or not hahaha.”

8. All kinds of stories.

“I worked in a prison for a few years.

The most interesting story was two inmates busted a hole in the (cinder block) wall in the middle of the night. The room on the other side of the wall was the commissary storage. So they ate their fill of chips and cookies and whatever else then crawled back in to their cell. The damage was discovered the next morning during head count.

The funniest is probably me and another guard chasing away a bear cub who got into the prison dumpsters and the other guard stepped in a big pile of bear p**p. Scary was when an Inmate d**d in his cell.

Gross was the same inmate who d**d was caught eating his own feces a few days before. He had bad mental issues.”

9. Young and scared.

“I went to county jail for a few months right after I turned 18.

I was young and scared and had no idea what I was in for. The jail was extremely over crowded at the time, so they just kinda stuck you wherever. I got put in a cell with this women that was on a 12 day psych lock down. I was not prepared…

The second I get in there she starts talking about the Bible. I hop on the top bunk and act like I’m sleeping, hoping she’ll shut up. Didn’t work. She just keeps pacing around the cell talking about the devil and government, and she’s naked.

Then I hear her peeing, but it doesn’t sound right. She was peeing standing up, getting p**s all over the toliet seat and floor. At that point I really started questioning my life choices that got me there.

I was locked in that cell with her 23 hrs a day for 11 days. She only put clothes on when we were allowed out for showers. It was an experience.”

10. Jeez…

“Saw a dude s**t in the middle of the day room for a bag of coffee (he never got paid).

Saw a dude suck on another dude’s toes for a Snickers bar.

Hell I’ve even seen people snort a Benadryl then pass out walking to their bunk.”

11. I know you!

“Went in to county for two days due to a DUI.

I’m getting escorted to my block, then to my cell. As I’m approaching my cell, I see the top of someone’s head pop around the corner of the cell next to mine.

“Alan, what, what are you doing here?” “Oh, hey doc, uh, just some past stuff”

It was one of our group’s bar buddies, had no idea he was in there. It was just surreal and caught me off guard. Gotta love small towns

This was 6 years ago, he’s since got his act together and living sober life. I moved out of that state and will never get another DUI. Just call an Uber.”

12. Wow.

“My mom taught 4 Hells Angels members make cinnamon rolls.

They taught her how to make napalm. Mind you, this was before internet was what it is today.

She was also allowed to try on an HA vest. (which is a big no-no) All while she worked at a prison in Sweden.”

13. A bit anxious.

“I was a college instructor teaching in state prisons for several years.

At first, I was a bit anxious about being in that environment. After all, I was in a room with about two dozen convicted m**derers, ra**ists, child m**esters, and drug dealers. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming place.

But, after about a month, I realized that I had nothing to worry about. I was surprised to find that these guys were willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect the teachers.

I had just started my lecture one day when a lockdown was called. Our room was locked (from the outside) and we could not move until it was over. We heard, coming from upstairs, what sounded like a riot breaking out.

“Teach, get in the corner,” one of my guys said, practically pulling me off my feet and pushing me into the corner furthest from the classroom door.

The guys then proceeded, without saying a word to each other, to pile all of the classroom desks in front of the door and stand between me and said desks. They were creating a barrier to keep me safe.

It turns out that the riot we heard was not as big as we feared, so the lockdown only lasted about an hour. Afterward, once we got the okay and the room was put back in order, I asked the guys why they did what they did.

“Some motherf**ker hurts you,” one of the guys said, “all the teachers will leave. We don’t want to lose our education because some a**holes can’t control themselves.””

14. Brutal.

“The most gross story I have is a guy who smuggled in a razor blade, and managed to cut himself.

Deep cuts, could see the bone and tendons. I remember holding his arm closed so the bleeding would slow.

The guy ended up d**ng on the ward. The smell of iron in the air stayed for the next two days.”

15. This was county jail?!

“My time to shine. In my younger days, I may or may not have spent some time in a county jail (time served, never actually went to prison).

Now, this country jail was SEVERELY over capacity. So much so that the mess area was used as overflow, and about 40 of us had to sleep on bunk beds they’d plopped down in the middle of this big room. Unfortunately, this area had no toilets of it’s own, so they left ONE cell open and unoccupied for a toilet for all of us. Bad jail food, 40 dudes, one toilet.

Not a movie anyone wants to see. Well I dropped approximately 1/5th of my bodyweight into that poor toilet, in one extremely dense log. This, much to the chagrin of the guys on the bottom floor cells, caused ALL of their toilets to back up somehow, flooding their cells with s**t water.

The guards made us wait outside in the exercise area while plumbers came in. This all happened at like 11:30 at night, in January. No one knows it was me that clogged it all up, which is probably a good thing.”

16. No thanks.

“Did 60 days a few times.

While locked in the bathroom awaiting pill handouts a dude with a full face octopus tattoo asked us if we’ve ever seen someone receive a “fruit basket”. He proceeded to pull his pants down and tuck his nut**ck in between his legs.

When the poor soul came and unlocked the door to handout pills, he greated them by bending over and displaying his fruit basket. While gross, it was honestly pretty f**king funny.”

17. Kind of scary.

“I don’t know if this story is ‘interesting’, ‘funny’ or ‘scary’, depends on your perspective, but I was in a pod once where we had a regular CO who was a complete piece of s**t.

He used to try to provoke inmates into starting a fight so that he and his buddies could kick the s**t out of the inmate. He would destroy inmates’ belongings for no reason. He ripped up a letter from my dad during a search one time and then bragged to me that he did it. He would f**k with inmate’s food. He was complete trash. He thought he was a big, tough dude.

So anyway, there were a lot of young gang guys in the pod. Gangs are really good at communicating within facilities. So the gang managed to somehow find out the names of the CO’s kids. And communicate that to the pod. So one day the CO came to do his shift and the pod spent the whole time casually namedropping the kids’ names into their general conversation while he was walking by.

And that was the last day the CO worked in our pod.

Aren’t jails just great for reform?”

18. Awful.

“Corrections Deputy.

You see a whole lot of gruesome stuff. 1.) A guy tucked his arms in his shirt and jumped off the top tier. Fell head first and brain matter splattered all over the day-room.

2.) Guy beat up another dude so hard, you could see the tendons in his knuckles from scraping the victim’s teeth with every punch.

3.) Guy punched another guy during breakfast. Hit him so hard he k**led him.”

19. Down Under.

“I worked as a guard in a prison in Ravenhall ( in Melbourne, Australia ).

The unit was divided between Pacific islanders , Muslims , Asians and Whites. One day a new young Asian man entered the facility and decided it would be a good idea to play basketball with the islanders. The other Asians couldn’t believe this and wouldn’t stand for it and decided to educate this young buck about who and who you cannot fraternise with during yard time.

The next day I clocked on for my shift at 3 pm (afternoon to evening shift) and went outside just as the prisoners were coming in from doing their domestic duties ( gardening , etc). Well as I passed the basketball court I saw this young man hanging upside down feet tied to the basketball ring. At first I thought no biggie I’ll just help him down.

When I got closer I saw his bottoms had been torn off and he had slash marks all over his butt. Kind of like when someone takes a razor blade to you. What’s even worse is that once we got him down he asked to go to medical because he had a sore stomach. Not wanting to rat out the other Asians he said it was because he wasn’t use to the prison food.

Well it turns out the Asian gang also stuck some items up his a** ; items they had obviously collected from around the yard. You can imagine my horror when the medic told me that he had said to them ” I think they shoved a bird up my a**.”

After 3 days he spent in the medical Ward…can confirm a d**d sparrow was jammed right up his a** and had to be fished out….in bits…”

20. Disgusting.

“One of the C.Os told us a story of the time they performed a bunk search of a block of twelve girls.

Inside a Dorito bag, she found a nasty old bratwurst. The girl whose bunk it was acted extremely nervous, and the rest of the girls were acting strange, too.

It turns out, all twelve of them were using the sausage as a community dildo.”

21. Contraband.

“My dad worked in the prisons in New Zealand for 17 years and he’s told me plenty of great stories.

For example a new prisoner that was coming in, they got him to strip down naked and got him to squat and they noticed there was something sticking out his rear end. It was a bag of weed.

They mentioned it to him and he pulled it out and started yelling at them and then tried to swallow the bag that had just been pulled out of his a**.”

22. A veteran.

“I’ve been out of prison for a decade as of Jul 5, 2021.

Once was enough for me, even if it took five years to realize it. I was young, barely eighteen, and ended up on one of the gladiator camps in Texas, the Roach Unit. From there, I ended up in administrative segregation om the Allred unit for close to three years, until I discharged my entire sentence (A riot against the guards.)

Seg is nuts. On a best case scenario, you spend twenty three hours a day completely alone, and an hour in a small cage that is open to the sky. That rarely happens, because staying out of trouble with the guards is.. hard. Realistically, you just spend twenty four hours a day a lone for years on end.

The craziest things I saw in my time in segregation: The guards are often corrupt and malicious. With the rate of illegal contraband alone, you can’t really argue it. One of the sergeants decided not to feed two black guys. At first he skipped them for a meal; then a full day.

Both of these guys had life sentences, one for a robbery that lead to someone d**ng, one for murdering his children. They were all out of f**ks. They coordinated with the rest of the people on our run (Each run had fourteen cells, seven below, seven on the second floor) to make noise all night. So, we all pounded on our doors, yelled, whatever, basically all night.

The guards can’t really do much to stop something like that other than yell. While we all made noise, these two guys jumped on the steel tables bolted to their walls til they busted off. Then, they used the tables to hammer on their door frames at the bottom, breaking them off the tracks.

Nobody noticed, because again, the guards basically just ignore your existence back there. So, lunch time comes! The sergeant shows up with two COs. An inmate on the second floor called them to his cell door; while they talked to him, the other two guys pushed their doors open.

The sergeant saw them coming up the stairs, and must have realized how close to d**ng he was, because he jumped over these two guys and tumbled down the stairs and ran out of the run, and slammed the door shut. He locked his two men in with these guys, and it went bad. The guards didn’t d**, since they weren’t who they were after, but they got f**ked up bad.

Eventually the teams showed up and shot so many grenades into our run that the nurses couldn’t come into it for two weeks from the residue. The sergeant got fired for abandoning his guys, the two guys got beat half to d**th, and the rest of us choked on tear gas for two weeks.”

23. Unexpected.

“I was in jail for only a few days and was in a pod with about 30 other women.

On my first day, a fellow inmate announced that it was time for arts and crafts and taught the new girls how to make homemade tampons.

Not very sanitary but man was it entertaining. The things they came up with to pass the time, very creative.

Honestly not many dull moments. Just sh**ty food and unsanitary living conditions.”

How about you?

Have you ever spent any time behind bars?

If so, please talk to us in the comments. Thanks a lot!