Prisoner 489 is a horror novella written by American author Joe R. Lansdale. It tells the story of prison workers who help staff a fictional island prison where only the worst of the worst are housed. Most are on death row scheduled to be executed in the electric chair. In the potter's field graveyard the headstones are only marked with numbers in the order in which they were put to death. So prisoner 489 is the four hundred and eighty ninth to be executed. The workers are only maintenance employees and have little contact with the inmates. They have only heard wild rumors about prisoner 489, some quite unbelievable. However, on the night of the execution things go very wrong and the men find themselves to be terrorized and have to fight for their very lives.