Down a Dark Hall: "I'm Standing over Here!"

Over three hundred halls of many different lengths form a confusing, dangerous maze in this enormous institute for criminally insane youth in the early 1960s. Down a Dark Hall was inspired by the real experience of a sixteen-year-old youth who was erroneously convicted of a crime, then misdiagnosed as criminally insane. In this story he is referred to by the pseudonym of Jeremy Calder. During Jeremy's two-year incarceration, terror swept through the institute for several months, often causing riots when partly dismembered bodies of inmates were being found in the halls. Drugs being smuggled into inmates and inmate drug gangs are just two of the many uncontrollable problems in this enormous institute for criminally insane youth during the early 1960s. The four central characters are Jeremy, Toby, Billy (The Rabid Butterfly), and Gary, with occasional appearances by God, Time, Night, and Magic.