Alcatraz Island the hands of Confederate sympathizers. Alcatraz, built as a "heavily fortified military site on the West Coast", formed a "triangle of defense" along with Fort Point and Lime Point, and ensured security to the bay. The island was also the site of the first operational lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States. Alcatraz never fired its guns offensively, though during the war it was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers and privateers on the west coast. Because of its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used
Legends of Alcatraz Karpis is said to haunt the prison bakery and kitchen. One visitor and his wife have claimed to have heard canaries singing in what was the cell of Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", and to have seen him on the bed reading a book, yet Stroud was never permitted to keep birds in his cell as he'd done at former prisons. Numerous investigators and psychics such as Annette Martin and Jeanne Borgen and paranormal teams have sought to "contact spirits" at Alcatraz. KGO Radio Morning News anchor Ted Wygant, a skeptic of the paranormal, visited Alcatraz in 1982 with