The Electric Chair.com

^{V and the electric chair (1995 photo at the Greenhaven Correctional Facility Death House)}  

Introduction

This is the Web version of Sing Sing Unplugged, a short film my brother and I made about our visit to New York State's electric chair. For this presentation, we've expanded our horizons to include the death penalty, serial killers, Andy Warhol, lightning, electrocution, electroshock therapy, and other related phenomena of our Wired society.

The electric chair has become a technological icon of our culture. From its original role as a media weapon in the Edison-Westinghouse fight to control the electrical grid in the late 1800's, to its ubiquitous presence in the current controversy over the death penalty, the electric chair has been an object of horror, fascination, tragedy, and even humor. Somehow, it seems to deserve its own place on the Net.

Sing Sing Unplugged - Annotated Film Description

Our movie is ten minutes long and 120 megabytes, still too much to send across the Net. The following is a section by section description, with some interesting stills and sound bites. Since it was a student film, we took the liberty of using clips from television and music from copyrighted songs,  so some of it can't be shared. However, the tour of the New York State Death House and the Electric Chair segments are the most amazing parts of the film and the footage is totally ours. We hope to make it available on the net in the near future, so please check back if it's not ready yet.

Update!!!:  We're SHOCKING our site!!!!!!  Browse our site NOW!!! for a rather gruesome Shockwave experience that we've conjured up for testing purposes. Coming soon: Visit the death house and see the electric chair in a Shockwave movie

Scene-by-Scene Description of Film

• New Life for the Death Penalty? Mario Cuomo's 1994 defeat  by George Pataki leads to the return of the death penalty in NY.
• Interview with Charlie, a technical expert on Ol' Sparky Our interest in the electric chair, however, was sparked by our friend Charlie, who worked as an electrical engineer in Ossining.
• On the Road in New York ("Never to Be Found" by the Meat Puppets) We take a road trip to Ossining to check out Charlie's work.
• The Death House at Green Haven Correctional Facility Walk throught the maze-like corridors that lead to the execution chamber.
• The Chair A close-up examination of the chair.
• Credits (Includes lyrics to "Green Haven Is the Place to Be" sung to the tune of "Green Acres")
• The Making of Sing Sing Unplugged Some general background information

Other Electric Chair Stuff

• History of the Electric Chair
• Biology of Electrocution  WARNING!!!! This is inappropriate for children!
• Electric Chair Design
• Photo Opportunities - Have your picture taken in an electric chair
• The Howard Stern Connection
• The Andy Warhol Connection
• Attorney's Electric Chair Desk Trophy
• Women in the Electric Chair
• Books, Movies, and other Art about the Electric Chair
• Electric Chair Humor
• Botched Electrocutions
• WARNING!!!! This is inappropriate for children! Ted Bundy after being electrocuted - A photo of Ted Bundy's corpse following his execution in Florida's electric chair in 1989.

Death Penalty Issues

• People on Death Row
• Anti-Death Penalty Organizations and Resources
• The Most Compelling Opponents of the Death Penalty
• Death Penalty Statistics
• State-by-State Update
• Death Rituals

Cops, Crimes, and Prisons

General background on the criminal justice system.

• Alcatraz  Take an on-line tour of the famous prison
• Help the Police Solve a Crime There's been a murder in Yokhaneptawa County
• FBI's Ten Most Wanted List See who they're after this week
• Crimelinks - Everything you want to know
• Prison Updates What's happening in one of America's fastest growing industries

Serial Killers

Serial killers probably provide the best argument in favor of the death penalty.

• WARNING!!!! This is inappropriate for children! Ted Bundy after being electrocuted - A photo of Ted Bundy's corpse following his execution in Florida's electric chair in 1989.
• Visible Human Project - This is the digitized body of Joseph Jernigan, who was executed in Texas by lethal injection in 1993.
• Kill! Kill! Kill! - One of many serial killer net sites
• Natural Born Killers Home Page Batongaville Times NBK Fan Club
• Would the death penalty really deter serial killers like Ted Bundy? Some expert opinions

Gas chambers, lethal injection, hanging, etc.

Update, August 1996

We have had many queries as to when we would be getting this part of the site up and running. Unfortunately, since we do this site on top of our regular full-time jobs, we simply don't have enough time to do everything we want to. Perhaps at some point we'll figure out how to actually make some money from all our efforts and free up some more time to expand our coverage. In the meantime, we hope that the following updates will whet your appetite for information about execution methods other than electrocution.

• Gas chamber Under construction
• Lethal injection Under construction
• Hanging Under construction
• Firing Squad Under construction
• Guillotine Under construction
• Historical methods of execution and torture   WARNING!!!! This is inappropriate for children!   Under construction
• International practices    WARNING!!!! This is inappropriate for children!   Techniques outside of Europe and North America
• Sources of Information Books, movies, etc.

Electrocution in our society

• Getting struck by lightning
• Electroshock therapy Under construction
• Cattle prods and worse Under construction

Other strange electrical phenomena

• Spontaneous human combustion This may be caused by the body short-circuiting
• Kirlian Photography Photographic method that displays auras. Under construction.

Why a chair?

Why not a bed?

Other sites that may be of interest

• Nurses' Home Page Celebrity corpses among other odd things
• Murder, Mayhem, and Miscellaneous Junk Just what it says
• Dark Side of the Web One of the only women on the net running her own server, so she says...
• Weird Places on the Net Also just what it says and lots of them
• The Point Index The people who voted us in the Top 5%
• Internet Crime Archives  This could be the definitive site on mass murderers and serial killers
• Club Moral  Interesting art site done by interesting people in Antwerp. Sample work in progress: an opera about serial killer Joachim Kroll

E-Mail Contact for this site

[email protected]

  This counter was added on  Saturday, August 10, 1996  at  12:50 A.M.

An eye for an eye--and everyone is blind. _Gandhi

Hey, thanks! We finally figured out how to check our traffic and we're getting about 12,000 hits a week! Also, we've been selected for this Top 5% index. Wow! It will certainly motivate us to add some new stuff and be more responsive, so keep watching, and thanks again for making us a popular site on the web.