The scary room in my basement

My house is old. 118 years old to be exact. The basement is scary. There are some doors to pantries that won't open due to the years of floor-shifting. There is a room. Wes discovered it one day. It looks almost like paneling on the wall, but there's a handle, and a place to padlock it from the outside. "This is where they kept the retard," he said.

The room is scary. It's about 8' by 6', with no windows. There is a single, bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, one old chair, a large food bowl, and some old newspapers. Did I mention there is a spot for a padlock on the outside and no way to open the door from the inside? My $4.99 digital camera wasn't up to the task, so I had to borrow Dave's camera to try to capture the essence of the room. And, a bunch of the photos wouldn't come off of the CD he burned the photos do, which is weird. Also, I couldn't zoom out enough, so I will try to describe the photos.

This photo is of the chair in the room, which is against the wall near the bare, cold, scary wall.

This is the bowl we found on the shelf. I envision it as a food bowl, used to feed the room's resident. Next to the bowl, on the top left, you can see the remaining shreds of a newspaper; there are some old, yellowed newspaper scraps on the shelf.

The next photo shows the lock, on the outside of the door. Did I mention there's no way out from the inside??? There is simply no explanation for this room, nor any reason for it to exist in my basement.
Kids are terrified of this room--when we moved in we showed Dave's kids, and they could not get out of the basement fast enough. Perhaps it will be an effective time-out room for our little one?

These photos don't really do the room justice. When I get my new camera, I'll post more.

I really hope I don't have bad dreams thinking about it tonight!