PRISONS, HOSPITALS, AND ASYLUMS
So many ghost stories are associated with places where great suffering and death took place. Places where men, women, and children were subject to pain, isolation, abuse, and even torture. It is in the halls of prisons, hospitals, asylums, and institutions for the insane or infirmed that the agony of the past survives as the ghosts of today, seeking respite from their pain even in death. In many cases, people died under heinous circumstances simply because they were exposed to the crudest attempts of science and psychiatry to save their lives and minds. In other cases, people who were cast out of society because of deformities, disabilities, debilitating illnesses, or committing crimes became subject to daily abuses that must have made them cry out for a quick death.
Overnight ghost hunts at these locations often produce the most activity, according to paranormal investigators who visit often and brave the dark in places that would terrify even during daylight hours. The pain of the past seems to be trapped within the walls of these buildings, manifesting in spirits and entities that carry with them the anguish and agony of their own pasts to be experienced over and over again for all eternity.
HAUNTED PRISONS AND PENITENTIARIES
Criminals are often treated like animals, even those who commit minor infractions. Society is cruel to those behind bars, and in many cases, such as killers and rapists, that cruelty is well deserved, at least according to those on the outside of the cells. Haunted prisons exist the world over, but none has the reputation of the place called “The Rock,” now a legend thanks to motion pictures and television shows set on the island prison off the coast of San Francisco, California.
The infamous criminals who have stayed in the cells of this most infamous prison include some of the most notorious mobsters and murderers such as Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and Arthur “Doc” Barker. So many of the men confined in this maximum-security island facility have gone down in history themselves until the prison was shut down in 1963; it was later reopened to the public for tours by the U.S. Park Service.
Alcatraz was said to have been designed specifically for hard-case criminals. This prison was where the most defiant, rebellious criminals broke, given only the very basics of food, clothing, shelter, and medical aid. Anything else was not given. No bribes. It had to be earned, and earning it meant being able to withstand the brutality of guards and staff. Each cell had only a toilet, sink, and one light bulb. At night, a mattress would be placed in the cells. This was a federal penitentiary, not a spa, and the prisoners were treated as such. Over its long history, thousands of inmates spent time there, and a number of men committed suicide, were driven insane, or were murdered by fellow inmates.
No longer a prison, Alcatraz was possibly the harshest, least escapable incarceration center in the United States for over a century. The horrors that occurred within its walls have left a dark, sinister impression that can still give tourists a sense of dread.
One of the most notorious locations was D-Block, which was composed of forty-two cells with different restrictions for those incarcerated there. They had no contact with the general population and were restricted to one visit to the yard and two showers per week. Meals were taken only in the cells. A handful of cells were called “Strip Cells” or the “Hole,” and only the most serious offenders spend time in these cold, dark, isolated rooms. There was often only a toilet, sink, and a dim bulb, and the prisoners were not allowed outside for exercise or to shower. They had no reading materials and were left alone for up to nineteen days. The most severe punishments happened in the “Oriental” cell, a dark, steel-encased cell with only a small hole in the floor for waste.
Inmates were thrown into the totally dark, cold cell naked and given little food, although usually for only a night or two. That was usually enough to cause their minds to snap, and many men came out with permanent psychological damage.
Alcatraz was often called “Hellcatraz” by inmates, and it’s easy to see why. It’s also easy to see why after the prison was turned over to the public, it became a hot spot of paranormal activity. Cell 14-D, one of the notorious “hole” cells, is one of the most active in the prison, with visitors and employees reporting cold spots, overwhelming feelings of dread and foreboding, and the sound of sobbing and crying from within the empty cell. One story often told is of a prisoner who was locked inside the cell in the 1940s. He began screaming one night, claiming a creature with glowing eyes was killing him. The next day, guards found him strangled to death. Yet, guards the next day counted one extra prisoner in their head count, as if the dead man’s ghost was in line with the living inmates.
Another story is told of “Warden Johnston,” who experienced someone sobbing inside the prison walls while he was showing a group around the prison. A cold wind blew past the group, although no doors or windows were around. In cellblocks A and B, visitors have heard crying and moaning from inside empty cells, the smell of smoke, unexplained cold spots throughout, and the ghosts of prisoners and military personnel inside and on the grounds. Before it was a federal penitentiary, Alcatraz was a military barracks and before that, it was believed by Native Americans to be the stomping ground of evil spirits.
Sometimes, when the island is shrouded in fog, people report screams, clanging metal doors, whistles, shouts of men’s voices, and cries of pain coming from the prison, especially near the dungeon area. Guards and their families who lived on the island when it was a prison claimed to constantly experience apparitions of phantom soldiers and prisoners as well as a strange entity with glowing eyes they dubbed “The Thing.” They also heard phantom cannon fire, gunshots, and screams so real the guards believed prisoners had escaped and were firing at them. But there was never anyone there. Now that the island is a national park, park rangers are often on scene, and some have reported hearing the sound of a banjo coming from the shower room inside after all the tourists have gone home for the day.
Many men died, prisoners and guards alike, during several escape attempts, including one in May 1946 that resulted in the deaths of three inmates and two guards, with eighteen other men wounded. Two more prisoners were executed after a trial was held, and they were found guilty.
Some psychics and paranormal researchers suggest Alcatraz may be a portal to another dimension, known to the Native Americans who once lived on the island. That could explain the decades of terrifying events, or it could just be haunted by the ghosts of those humans who suffered there.
WEST VIRGINIA MOUNDSVILLE PENITENTIARY
From 1867 to 1995, the West Virginia Penitentiary operated in Moundsville. Over its century of operation, it would gain the reputation as being one of the most notorious prisons and even made the Department of Justice’s Top Ten Violent Correctional Facilities. It was considered the final stop for over one thousand criminals. One location in the prison was a recreation room labeled “The Sugar Shack,” a hotbed of raping, fighting, and gambling. Thirty-six murders occurred in the prison before it was closed, and in 1983, Charles Manson asked to be transferred there but was denied.
One of the most notable dates associated with the prison is January 1, 1986, when one of the most infamous riots in history took place at the prison caused by a combination of lax prison security with declining conditions, overcrowding (often there were three men in one cell), and the rapid spread of diseases. The fact that it was also a holiday meant fewer employees and guards on staff. Knife-wielding inmates took over a dozen hostages, and in the end, two prisoners were killed.
But even prior to the riot, death was everywhere. From 1899 to 1959, ninety-four men were executed there, often by hanging. Up until 1931, the public was invited to view the hangings. Around 1951, execution by electrocution was the order of the day, and an electric chair named “Old Sparky” was built by a prison inmate named Paul Glenn. In 1965, the state outlawed execution.
Ghost-hunting groups visit the prison often and report a host of paranormal activity, including apparitions, ghostly screams, voices from empty cells, cold spots, and an overwhelming sense of heaviness and foreboding. Some of the more notable ghosts on-site include the spirit of an inmate who posed as the maintenance man to spy on other prisoners and report them to the staff. He was attacked in the bathroom and brutally murdered. His ghost now lurks about the bathroom where he was killed. Another ghost, Robert, was an inmate killed by guards who enjoyed beating the prisoners close to death. In Robert’s case, he died, and his body was buried inside the wall. His ghost now walks the prison and terrifies visitors who try to communicate with him.
Another inmate, Avril Adkins, was hanged to death, but his execution was botched when he fell through the gallows trap doors and bled from a head injury. The guards took him back up and hanged him again, this time killing him for sure. His ghost is reportedly seen walking around the gallows.
PHILADELPHIA EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY
Opened in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary served as a prison until it was closed in 1970 and was eventually abandoned. It was once the most famous and most expensive prison in the world, but today, it is a National Historic Site that relies on fundraising efforts and notoriety from ghost hunters to preserve the building, now home to the “Terror Behind the Walls” haunted attraction and tour. The great, grand architecture looks like a gothic castle and once housed an experimental prison that sought to reform prisoners through strict isolation for twenty-three hours of the day, with only a daily visit from the guards or warden. The prison had running water, heat, and flush toilets before the White House did and became the model for prisoners worldwide both for its wagon-wheel floor plan and the use of solitary confinement.
Former inmates include gangster Al Capone and bank robber “Slick Willie” Sutton, and although the prison doesn’t have the violent reputation of Alcatraz, visitors today report phantom shouts, whispers, laughter, and weeping from inside the empty cellblocks as well as mysterious images captured on cameras.
THE OLD JAIL
In St. Augustine, Florida, a city itself steeped in history, the Old Jail was built in 1891 by a man named Henry Flagler. It served as a prison until 1953. There were about sixty prisoners, and the sheriff and his family lived inside the same building, adjacent to the prison. Visitors to the jail today can tour and see the actual cells, weapons of the time, and even the execution gallows that took the lives of many prisoners who didn’t die of disease and pestilence. Many tourists report strange odors, the sound of footsteps, disembodied moaning, jangling chains, and the barking of phantom dogs. The building has since been listed in the National Register of Historic Places and the National Directory of Haunted Places.
Once one of the most expensive and secure prisons in America, the Philadelphia Eastern State Penitentiary now hosts haunted tours.
THE NOTORIOUS ANDERSONVILLE CIVIL WAR PRISON
No doubt the most notorious prison ever built on American soil, the Civil War prison in Andersonville, Georgia, was a horrific place. Home to over forty-five thousand Union Soldiers from 1863 to 1865 and hundreds of guards and prison staff, the horrendous conditions led to the deaths of at least thirteen thousand men before it was shut down. In fact, historians and researchers alike have said the war was the easy part. Andersonville was living hell. No wonder its front gates became known as “the gates to hell.” The stockade fence was made of fifteen- to twenty-foot-tall pine logs, and twenty feet within the perimeter was a light fence known as the “deadline.” Prisoners who attempted crossing the deadline were immediately shot by guards.
The Confederate prison camp was built about sixty miles southwest of Macon, Georgia, and took its name from a village in Sumter County, as it was originally named Fort Sumter. It was built upon swampland and bisected by a stream, which no doubt led to some of the thirty thousand prisoners being exposed to deadly typhoid and typhus. Along with starvation, lack of water, infections and injuries left untreated, scurvy, fevers, and other illnesses, the men held in the hellhole known as Andersonville died at a rate of three thousand per month from March to August 1864.
The horrific treatment caused outrage in the outside world, but it didn’t save the lives of the thirteen thousand who died there. When the war ended, Captain Henry Wirz, the stockade commander at the prison, was convicted of murder and sent to the scaffold on November 10, 1865. The prison has gone down in history as an “American Auschwitz.” There are numerous ghosts to attest to the suffering experienced on the grounds.
The ghost of Captain Wirz is often seen near the old stockade grounds, and the sounds of large groups of men talking can be heard by visitors, including shouts and yells from inside the camp. At night, it is not unusual to hear phantom cannon and gunfire and the moans of men pleading for mercy. People also report apparitions of Civil War soldiers in Confederate and Union uniforms in and around the old prison grounds and the Andersonville National Cemetery, including a man with one leg and a crutch who floats just above the ground.
The cemetery contains 13,714 graves, 921 of which are unmarked. When fog surrounds the area, the sound of invisible horses can be heard as well as men talking and crying and the smell of food cooking over a fire. Strange lights dance within the fog, but upon further inspection, there is nothing and no one there.
OHIO STATE REFORMATORY AND OHIO STATE PENITENTIARY
The state of Ohio is home to two notoriously haunted prisons. The Ohio State Reformatory is in Mansfield (often referred to as Mansfield Reformatory) and was made famous in the popular movies Air Force One and The Shawshank Redemption, the latter of which was based upon the novel by Stephen King. Opened in 1896, it specialized in reforming prisoners who were too old for a juvenile facility but not violent enough to be sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. Those sent to the Mansfield facility were first exposed to humane conditions before the prison, which saw thousands pass through its walls during its operational years, deteriorated into a place where abuse, torture, and death were commonplace. By 1930, the prison was drastically overcrowded, and inhumane treatment was the norm until it closed in 1986. In fact, a number of inmates filed a federal lawsuit against the prison for abusive practices.
Now that it has been closed, the only residents are ghosts of former inmates, guards, and staff in the form of apparitions, phantom footsteps, and overwhelming feelings of dread upon entering the cells. Ghost hunters love the site for its rich activity and even claim the ghost of Helen Glattke, the wife of a former warden, wanders about the apartment they lived in. She was killed in a rather bizarre way, when a loaded gun fell from a closet shelf and shot her.
Ohio State Penitentiary opened in the city of Columbus in 1834, when 189 prisoners were moved there under guard from the small frontier jail. It stayed open until 1983 and over its history, hundreds of thousands of prisoners were sent there, thousands of whom died. It was condemned as a place of great abuse to the more violent hard-case criminals incarcerated there, and in 1885, the outdoor gallows were moved inside the prison and the first of twenty-eight men were hanged there before death by electrocution took over in 1897. Over 315 men and women died in that electric chair over the years.
It was not unusual to die from outbreaks of cholera and other diseases related to the awful sanitary conditions if prisoners didn’t die first from fire, executions by electric chair, torture at a whipping post, hot ash and coals rubbed into wounds, starvation, or beatings from guards. Those who were sent into the underground “hole” suffered unthinkable agony. Often, prisoners murdered other prisoners, adding to the facility’s death count. In April 1930, a massive fire in the prison killed 322 inmates in the west block. It was the worst fire in state history and the worst prison fire ever in the country. After that, inmates reported sightings of apparitions until the entire building was destroyed and replaced with a modern sports arena, which is also said to be haunted! In 1968, a horrible series of riots broke out, which led to the eventual closing of the facility. In 1972, most of the prisoners had been transferred to the Ohio Correctional Facility. Those who remained were the most violent, the psychotic, and the infirm until 1983, when everything was closed for good.
Before its closure, inmates claimed many of the cells were haunted by the ghosts of those who died there. The roar of phantom flames has been reported, as have the screams of men who were burned alive trapped in their cells. Even today, as the sports arena and home to the Columbus national hockey team, people claim to see ghostly apparitions and hear screams and moans inside the facility with no apparent origin as well as in the parking lot late at night.
LAKE COUNTY JAIL
Notorious gangster John Dillinger put Crown Point, Indiana’s Lake County Jail on the map of infamy when he escaped from this “unescapable” jail in March 1934. Lake County Jail was built in 1908 and consisted of residences for the local county sheriffs and jail cells as well as police station processing facilities. There were 150 maximum security cells, living areas for the warden and law-enforcement families, a kitchen, barber shop, and garage. Thought to be the finest of its kind in the state, it stayed in operation until the 1970s and is now a historic site. It had the reputation of being unescapable, but Dillinger took away that title.
This photo of a cellblock at Missouri State Penitentiary illustrates what an absolutely grim, soul-killing prison it was for its inmates.
Though the facilities have undergone restorations, it hasn’t stopped stories of people seeing apparitions in the cells and walking the corridors, doors opening and closing by themselves, lights that turn on and off, phantom footsteps and voices, and spooky images appearing in photographs by volunteer staff and visitors. Don’t look for Dillinger’s ghost, though, as he did successfully escape!
MISSOURI STATE PENITENTIARY
Also known as “The Walls,” this state prison system in Jefferson City was built in the 1830s by the soon-to-be inmates themselves, who made the bricks that the walls were built with. It was originally a small prison with only fifteen inmates, a guard, a warden, and a foreman to oversee the brick making but was expanded upon over the years until it was closed in 2004. The prison was home to some infamous criminals like gangster Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray, and notorious kidnappers Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady. All were executed within the prison. A riot in 1954 resulted in the deaths of several inmates, dozens of prisoners and guards suffered injuries, and several buildings were burned.
Forty inmates were executed by gas chamber over the history of the prison, and Time labeled it “The Bloodiest 47 Acres in America” due to the rampant violence inside the walls. Nowadays, it is a favorite paranormal hot spot thanks to staff and visitors reporting seeing and interacting with apparitions and ghosts.
YUMA TERRITORIAL PRISON
Arizona’s Yuma Territorial Prison opened on July 1, 1876, when seven inmates were locked inside cells they had built themselves. Over the next thirty-three years, more than three thousand prisoners, including twenty-nine women, would live at the prison. One hundred and eleven of them would die there, mostly from tuberculosis, and although the prison had a reputation for humane treatment, one terrifying place was called the “dark cell,” in which misbehaving prisoners were put into isolation and kept on a ball and chain. The prison gave well-behaved inmates regular medical attention and the chance to learn to read and write in the library, where they could check out books for a fee. They also had well-lit and well-ventilated cells compared to others of the time, thanks to a nearby electric generating plant.
Overcrowding forced a new facility to be opened, and the last prisoner left Yuma in September 1909. Yuma High School occupied some of the former prison buildings from 1910 to 1914, and afterward, the prison was overrun with the homeless and drifters, including poor families who lived there during the Great Depression.
Today, there are many ghosts that haunt the prison, offices, and a museum on the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park, including apparitions and prankster ghosts that state historian Marshall Trimble says like the color red and are attracted to children. Objects in the museum move about. At one time, the coins in the cash register drawer of the gift shop lifted out and threw themselves across the room before going back into the register on their own, and people are poked, pinched, and touched with ice-cold fingers. One ghost is claimed to be inmate John Ryan, who was imprisoned around 1900 and wasn’t liked among the prison community; he committed suicide in cell 14. Visitors who dare enter the “dark cell” report feeling a dark presence and a strong sense of someone being inside the cell with them. A writer from Arizona Highways magazine attempted staying in the dark cell for two days and nights and was given food, water, and a blanket but couldn’t survive one day. Within just hours, she was calling out for help and claiming she was not alone in the cell.
OLD CHARLESTON JAIL
Once called the Old City Jail, the Old Charleston Jail sits upon 4 acres (1.6 hectares) in Charleston, South Carolina. Operational from 1802 to 1939, the prison saw upward of ten thousand deaths from illness, execution, or injuries. It was originally built to house just 130 prisoners, but the usual head count was often double that or more, causing overcrowding and violence. Diseases spread like wildfire among the inmates, many of whom had gained notoriety. Among the most noted inmates were Lavinia Fisher, the first serial killer in the country, along with her husband and gang members; high seas pirates; Denmark Vesey, who attempted a slave revolt and was executed in 1822; and a number of Civil War prisoners of war.
In 2003, the facility was opened to tours and ghost hunters and has been featured on several ghost-hunting television shows that claim paranormal activity, including doors that open and close, shadow figures roaming the corridors, strange, white orbs floating throughout the building, phantom footsteps, and the sounds of chains dragging across the floor. A few visitors report seeing a female ghost they believe is that of Lavinia Fisher.
MAXWELL STREET POLICE STATION AND JAIL
Imagine a police station located in the heart of a neighborhood so violent, it’s been given the nickname “Bloody Maxwell.” The Maxwell Street Police Station was built in Chicago, Illinois, in 1889, when the city was made up of Italian immigrants, including the Genna Brothers, who worked with gangster Al Capone making bootleg liquor during Prohibition. When the prison opened its doors, it quickly got a bad reputation not just because of the criminal inmates but because of the crooked police department, who enjoyed mistreating, even torturing, the prisoners. The basement of the prison served as a torture chamber, where inmates were kept in horrific conditions. These prisoners were often poor and incarcerated on minor offenses but subject to brutal treatment because they didn’t have the money to bribe the guards or police. Another nickname soon given to the facility was “The Wickedest Police District in the World.” Those who visit the imposing corner building today report hearing phantom moaning, crying, and chains rattling as well as shadowy figures moving about the premises.
HAUNTED HOSPITALS, ASYLUMS, AND SANATORIUMS
Today, we think of hospitals as places we go to in an emergency. The goal is to be treated, healed, and hopefully sent home to recover. But there are many older hospitals and institutions where patients didn’t fare very well either because of lack of proper treatment or falling victim to strange experimentation. Some hospitals shut down long ago, but the ghosts remain. This is especially true for asylums and institutions for the mentally ill and criminally insane, for often, these people are institutionalized against their will or volition by family members or the courts, and while the end goal may begin as a means to see them get well and become functioning members of society, it rarely ever ends up that way.
These facilities are notorious for the emotional and physical suffering endured within their walls. Whether at the hands of cruel staff or due to a lack of knowledge of correct psychotherapeutic practices, it mattered not because the patients suffered regardless, and their cries and moans of pain and fear can still be heard today.
LINDA VISTA COMMUNITY HOSPITAL
Ghost hunters talk about California’s Linda Vista Community Hospital as a truly paranormal hot spot filled with ghastly, ghostly activity. The hospital was built in 1904 as the Santa Fe Coastlines Hospital in East Los Angeles, and for a time, it was a great facility that mainly serviced employees of the Santa Fe Railroad. In the early twentieth century, it became the hospital for the growing family neighborhoods of Los Angeles—namely, Boyle Heights—and in 1924, the hospital underwent an expansion, allowing it to increase staff and serve more patients. It officially became the Linda Vista Community Hospital in 1937.
Both the Great Depression and World War II took a toll on the hospital and the neighborhood around it, both becoming less and less affluent. Eventually, gangs came in, and violent crimes escalated. The hospital lost a lot of its funding and staff, and in the 1970s and 1980s, the death toll rose, often consisting of gunshot victims and gang stabbings. In 1988, the hospital was no longer able to accept ambulances, and the level of care declined until the very last patient was released and the hospital closed in 1991. Rumors would persist for years that the high death rate was not about gangs or gunshots but because of abuse and mistreatment of patients by hospital staff.
One hospital that paranormal researchers have considered a hot spot for ghosts for many years is Linda Vista Community Hospital in East Los Angeles.
Even after it closed as a hospital, the site was often used in movies and television series, and soon, security guards and production crews were talking about the ghostly activity. Some were being pushed and touched by unseen hands. Others saw apparitions and shadow figures and heard strange humming from inside the building when no one was there. Three spirits reported most often include a young girl in the surgical room who died in the middle of a surgery, an orderly making his daily rounds, and a nurse or young woman pacing a third-floor hallway. The now abandoned and empty rooms are a favorite spot of overnight ghost-hunting groups, tourists, and vandals. Ghosts and demons seem to prefer room 323, according to those brave enough to have stayed in the hospital overnight. This was where a patient died, and his angry spirit is said to have stayed behind, growling and howling at night. The boiler room is also a hot spot where doctors burned the bodies of the dead patients to make room for new ones. Here, people claim to hear moans and wails of pain.
Part of the hospital was converted to the Linda Vista Senior Apartments, but the ghostly activity remains despite attempts to remodel and remove them.
THE OLD TOOELE HOSPITAL
The Old Tooele Hospital in Utah was once the Lee family home back in 1897. In 1913, it became the Country Poor House, where elderly and special-needs patients were sent to be attended to. By 1953, the building became the official Old Tooele Hospital and boasted improved patient care and accommodations, including bathrooms in each room and an on-site morgue. It closed down in 2001 and is famous for being featured in the television miniseries The Stand based on the Stephen King novel.
The site now is haunted by a former Alzheimer’s patient called Wes, who likes to visit the room he stayed in before his death. A young child ghost roams the halls as well as Samuel F. Lee, the man who originally built the house in 1897. One of the creepiest reports claims that the child can be heard saying “Daddy, shot, sorry,” and the Utah Ghost Organization later researched and learned there had indeed been a child patient in the hospital who had been shot by his father!
SPANISH MILITARY HOSPITAL
This hospital operated in St. Augustine, Florida, from 1784 to 1821. During those years, patients and staff often reported a powerful sense of dread or evil, hanging like a dark cloud over the hospital. In 1921, the original building housing the Spanish Military Hospital was torn down to be rebuilt. Part of the restoration involved replacing water lines, and when the city dug up the old ones, they made a horrific discovery. Thousands of human bones had been buried below the hospital, and it was then learned that the original land was once a sacred Indian burial ground. Now, the spirits of the dead had been awakened and soon joined the ghosts of the many patients who came into the hospital sick, horribly disfigured, or wounded. Some patients had to undergo amputations, and their screams of agonizing pain can still be heard echoing against the walls.
Today, the Spanish Military Hospital Museum stands in its place. Every room of the hospital is said to be haunted, and hospital beds often move by themselves, doors open and close on their own, and apparitions appear and disappear throughout. Visitors also experience strange cold spots and thick fogs and claim they can feel the heaviness of despair that hangs over them like a blanket when they enter the hospital, just as the patients and staff did so long ago.
TAUNTON STATE HOSPITAL
Massachusetts’s Taunton State Hospital carries the notorious reputation of having housed some of the most notoriously evil people on Earth, including the infamous Jane Toppan, a serial-killer nurse who took the lives of thirty-one people while at Cambridge Hospital. Axe murderess Lizzie Borden claimed she stayed there, but records show she was never admitted to the hospital, only to the jail nearby during her trial. Originally called the State Lunatic Hospital, the facility opened in 1854 on a sprawling piece of land and was later expanded in the 1870s. In the 1930s, juvenile facilities, sick wards, and group homes were added to the 154-acre location. The original main Kirkbride Building stood for over 150 years. The hospital closed in 1975 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In later years, the buildings fell to disrepair, the main dome collapsed, and a large fire in 2006 destroyed a large part of the complex. It was later restored in part, enough to stay open to house at least forty-eight beds, and today, the site is also home to a women’s addiction recovery program, a residential program for youth offenders, and a greenhouse that provides produce to the staff and public.
During its early years, the hospital was known for mistreating patients, nothing new for many older institutions, but the true evil that occurred there involved satanic rituals and sacrifices in the basement, where doctors and nurses used patients to torture and kill. The building today is haunted by shadow figures who creep about the basement and crawl up the walls.
ATHENS MENTAL HOSPITAL
Athens Mental Hospital opened in the town of Athens, Ohio, in 1874 and specialized in the treatment of mentally and criminally insane patients who were admitted by their families through the court system. Before closing in 1993, over 1,900 patients died there and were buried on hospital grounds with headstones marked only with a number. Though the hospital was home to violent criminals, many were just mentally ill and were subjected to horrendous treatment, including electric shocks, ice pick lobotomies, and being immersed in ice-cold water for extended periods of time.
People visiting the Kennedy Museum of Art on the Ohio University campus in Athens might not realize that it was once a mental hospital that closed in 1993.
In December 1978, a woman named Margaret Schilling was a patient at the hospital. She was playing hide and seek with the nurses. The nurses were distracted and forgot about Margaret. One year later, a maintenance worker found her body, and today, visitors say you can see the imprint of her form on the floor, even after years of cleaning.
The burial site is known to be haunted by a number of ghostly entities that appear at night beside the grave markers along with the sounds of tortured screams.
ALTON MENTAL HEALTH HOSPITAL
This mental hospital in Alton, Illinois, still operates today and had the nice and politically correct sense to not call itself a “lunatic asylum.” Built in the early 1900s, it had a reputation for patient abuse and even torture, including ice pick lobotomies, electric shock therapy, and ice-cold water immersion, all of which were “normal, standard practices” in mental institutions of the time quite simply because they lacked the scientific knowledge of more modern times.
Today, staff, patients, and guests all report doors slamming shut, disembodied voices, unusual noises at night, and even a voice that asks, “Who’s that?” when no one is around. The hospital is not open to tours, as it is still a functioning facility, but visitors of sick patients report seeing strange orbs with painted human faces on them.
BYBERRY MENTAL HOSPITAL
This Pennsylvania mental institution opened its doors in 1907 and was originally a working farm for the mentally ill. It became an actual hospital in the 1920s and soon, the population was overflowing and conditions deteriorated. Patients suffered from neglect and, in some cases, horrific abuse, and many had no clothing, little food, and slept in sewage-filled hallways. Money was tight, and the hospital operated on such a low budget, it often took it out on the most vulnerable, the patients, who soon became subjected to regular beatings, padded cells, restraining devices, and lobotomies to control their behavior.
The state shut down the hospital in 1990 after the horrific living conditions were exposed in an investigation, and it soon became the home of Satan worshippers, vagrants, drug users, gangs, and criminals. There were claims of huge catacombs beneath the hospital where a violent patient was said to hide out and slit the throats of anyone who crossed his path. Today, visitors and ghost hunters alike experience a host of strange sounds, apparitions, humanlike growls, and scratches on their bodies.
ARKANSAS TUBERCULOSIS SANITORIUM
Known to locals as “Booneville,” the now abandoned sanitorium was built in 1863 on a rural hill just outside of Booneville, Arkansas. The eight-hundred-acre property is off the beaten path and once housed over a thousand patients and three hundred staff members. The main hospital was named after state senator Leo Nyberg, who himself was a tuberculosis (TB) patient. The disease ran out of control for thousands but in the 1800s and early 1900s, there was little known about the causes and proper treatments. Sanitoriums were built all over the country to accommodate and quarantine the sick away from the general public, and often, patients were kept in horribly inadequate conditions until they died. Young people suffered the most from TB as well as the poor.
Booneville consisted at one point of seventy-six different buildings and became its own city with telephone lines, a chapel, lodge, water treatment plant, and fire department. Patients paid ten dollars a week to stay. The sanatorium closed in 1973 and is now owned by the state. Some of the buildings still serve patients as the Booneville Human Development program, and the first floor of the main Nyberg Building was completely renovated. The basement and additional floors are vacant. The sanatorium has been added to the National Register of Historic Places as of 2006. It is not open to the public, but some ghost-hunting groups have been allowed on-site to do investigations and have come away with tales of being touched, having pebbles tossed at them, and seeing apparitions, including one of a little girl and another of a man wearing a top hat. Maintenance crewmembers report encounters with apparitions, cold spots, and a foreboding heaviness and sense of dread on the upper floors and basement.
DANVERS LUNATIC ASYLUM
The Danvers, Massachusetts, asylum was a prison and an asylum in one. The gothic building was built in 1878 as a prison for the criminally insane but soon added mentally ill people, the handicapped, alcoholics, and regular felons into the mix. In the early 1930s, the facility had become so understaffed that patients would die and days would pass before their bodies were even discovered. Designed to house only six hundred patients, there were often over one thousand waiting in complete isolation for days, even weeks, to be attended to. As with most asylums, shock therapy and lobotomies were standard practice in those days, and this facility is considered one of the first to use prefrontal lobotomies.
To take care of the large number of deaths, a large cemetery is located on the grounds. The asylum was officially closed in 1992, demolished, and replaced with apartment buildings. But what makes this particular place so spooky, and allegedly haunted, is the fact that it was built upon the original “Salem Village” of the Salem witch trials fame, and it is even referred to as “The Witch’s Castle on the Hill,” which explains the vast array of paranormal activity on the grounds from full-body apparitions to flickering lights moving about the halls to unexplained noises, phantom footsteps, doors opening and closing, and shadowy figures in and around the cemetery.
PENNHURST ASYLUM
Spring City, Pennsylvania’s Pennhurst Asylum is considered one of the most haunted places in the state. Its actual name is Pennhurst State School and Hospital and was originally intended as a school and hospital but not a mental hospital. Yet, when it opened its doors, it was under the name Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic. It was supposed to offer rehab services for mentally challenged and disabled individuals, all good intentions, of course, and in 1908, the first patient was admitted to the complex of buildings.
Below the buildings, fireproof tunnels had been built that connected one to the other, and there were dormitories and cottages throughout the grounds. Though it was described as a school, very few patients got any education services there. Instead, patients were taught basic hygiene and self-care, and soon, there were reports of patient abuse and humiliation by staff. Other patients were drugged through their IVs to be kept sedated, and some were chained to their beds to keep them from getting out of control.
An aerial view of the Pennhurst State School and Hospital taken in 1934 shows an extensive complex of buildings. The hospital was under investigation a couple of times for poor conditions and staff abuse of patients.
Like so many other mental hospitals, overcrowding became an issue, and lack of funds meant there was a shortage of clean diapers, food, and even water. The building would stink of urine, mold, and feces, and residents were filthy and miserable, but they couldn’t speak out because of their mental illnesses. Over ten thousand adults and children passed through the asylum doors over its history, including many who were autistic, an illness no one at the time knew how to treat or even deal with. Child patients would be found trapped inside metal cribs, smeared in their own waste, injured from trying to pry their way out.
Cruel treatment and punishments were common, and many patients simply lost their will to live. Often, they would bite as their only way to show anger only to have their teeth removed in a disgusting, rusty dentist chair with old, rusted tools. Visitors were appalled at the conditions, and in 1968, a television news station did an exposé and uncovered the many atrocities there. The asylum closed its doors for good in 1987, and the buildings and tunnels were left to neglect.
Caretakers on the property today, as well as visitors and ghost-hunting groups who love to explore the site, report slamming doors, angry spirits of past patients, phantom footsteps, and the sound of vomiting from inside empty rooms. The spirit of a little girl is said to roam the main building, and it is normal to experience sudden drops in temperature in different places in the building. Items move about on their own and sometimes are hurled across the room at visitors. People are also pushed by unseen hands, and chilling EVP has recorded disembodied voices saying things like “Get out!”, “Why won’t you leave?”, and even “I’ll kill you!”
Full-body apparitions are seen in the school areas of the building, and ghost hunters report feeling something brushing past them. Doors slam and open and close, and in the mental hospital section, where a great deal of suffering occurred, children can be heard crying and screaming in pain.
SIERRA SKY RANCH AND RESORT
Apparently, it’s never a good idea to turn a cattle ranch into a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, then turn that into a guest ranch. All those changes tend to stir up spirits. The Sierra Sky Ranch was once a working cattle ranch in Oakhurst, California, near Yosemite National Park back in 1875. By 1898, it was the largest cattle ranch in the state. It was sold in the late 1920s and turned into a tuberculosis sanatorium. In World War II, it was also used to treat wounded and sick soldiers after the U.S. Army purchased the land. Today, it is a popular guest ranch for tourists heading to Yosemite National Park nearby and is haunted by a number of ghosts, including a cowboy who committed suicide during its ranching days, two children and a nurse who died at the sanatorium, and a piano-playing spirit that can be heard at random times. Spooky mists float through the air on the grounds, possibly apparitions of other ghosts that died on the property under one of its many incarnations.
NORWICH STATE HOSPITAL
The doors to the Norwich State Hospital in Preston, Connecticut, opened for business in October 1904. The grounds took up almost one hundred scenic acres of land along the Thames River that was once a Native American village. At the time, there were only ninety-five patients, but with the advent of tuberculosis, the hospital was expanded to 470 acres (190 hectares) with over thirty buildings housing over two thousand mentally ill and sick patients as well as those who were chemically dependent or alcoholics. There were also approximately seven hundred patients labeled criminally insane. The first death was recorded the year it opened when a patient hanged himself. In 1919, a hot water heater exploded, killing two hospital staff members. Other deaths occurred over the years, both patients and staff, before the hospital closed its doors in 1996. A hospital employee was killed crossing the road outside the grounds. A nurse committed suicide in her home, and many patients died at the facility while undergoing treatments that no doubt bordered on barbaric. In fact, published reports and investigations into abuse allegations revealed the staff members were starving, beating, sexually abusing, and exposing patients to solitary confinement and harsh restraining methods. They were even accused of packing living patients in ice!
Open from 1904 to 1996, Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut grew from one to thirty buildings treating the mentally ill, drug addicts, geriatric patients, and people with tuberculosis.
Underground tunnels connected the main buildings, including the most actively haunted according to ghost hunters, the Salmon and the Earle buildings. The town of Preston purchased the property in 2009, and it has been abandoned since. The buildings have been vacant for years partially due to the cost of clean-up of the original site.
Paranormal activity has been reported by ghost hunters who visit the site, including apparitions, disembodied voices, unexplained mists and shapes, objects moving about the hospital on their own, doors opening and slamming shut, the phantom cries of a woman sobbing, strange beeping sounds coming from the former lobotomy room, and sudden blasts of cold air during the hot summer months with no visible source.
ESSEX MOUNTAIN SANATORIUM
In 1873, the Newark City Home was opened as an orphanage in Essex County, New Jersey. The building, often called Overbrook because it overlooked the Peckham River, also served as a place to reform children with behavioral problems, but a fire forced the reconstruction of two buildings, and the decline of female patients resulted in the female “dorm” becoming the new Essex Mountain Sanatorium in 1906. This would be a place specifically devoted to tuberculosis patients. It was known by locals as the Hilltop, and in 1917, the county took control of the facility and added eleven new buildings.
When medical treatments for TB caused a decrease in patient numbers, the buildings at the top of the hill eventually became abandoned; however, rumors spread of activity at the asylum involving torture using medieval restraint devices and surgical tools. By the 1970s, the vacant wards took in an overflow of mental patients from the nearby asylum, and soon, stories were spreading of lunatics running loose in the hills around the facility.
The sanatorium closed its doors officially in 1977. Since then, it has become a popular ghost-hunting spot, and some people love to drive up the sanatorium road to the top of the hill and explore the vacant buildings that stand amid the forest, often encountering ghost faces looking at them through windows, wheelchairs moving down the halls on their own, phantom footsteps and the sound of running, and eerie, disembodied voices shouting, “Get out!” Only the really brave dare to explore the tunnel complex underneath the facility or the lower-level morgue, where shadow figures are commonly seen. Apparitions are sometimes attributed to the twenty-four patients who died over the course of twenty days at the facility when the boilers failed and a spate of cold weather caused frostbite and eventual death from exposure.
ROLLING HILLS ASYLUM
Rolling Hills Asylum began in 1827 as the Genesee County Poor Farm in the small town of East Bethany, New York, near Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, between the cities of Buffalo and Rochester. It was basically an immense almshouse where the poor, infirm, orphaned, and widowed were sent to live alongside the severely mentally handicapped, criminally insane, and alcoholic. Over 1,700 undocumented deaths occurred on the site, and hundreds of unidentified bodies are buried beneath the asylum, making this one of the most haunted places on Earth. Over the years, it also served as a tuberculosis sanatorium and as an orphanage and in 1964 became a nursing home until it was closed in 1974 because of building code issues. Many of the outbuildings were torn down, as were the dorms, to keep out vagrants and criminals.
The 53,000-square-foot (4,925-square-meter) main building is haunted by shadow figures that creep out from rooms and shuffle or crawl down the hallways. Phantom screams are commonplace, as are doors slamming, ghostly touches, full-body apparitions, and weird voices heard on EVP. The apparition of Roy Crouse, a 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) giant who died as a patient there in 1942, walks the building. He was fifty-two and had spent most of his life at the asylum. One hot spot is “Hattie’s Room,” a room on the first floor in the East Wing, where an elderly woman’s voice was captured on a digital EVP recording saying “hello.” Former employees who heard the tape identified the voice as being Hattie’s. On the second floor of the East Wing, people report shadowy figures moving down the hall toward the infirmary, sometimes human-shaped and other times more amorphous.
Ghostly voices are common down in the morgue, and people have been shoved and pushed in the room. There was once a cemetery on the property, with tall grass now covering crumbled stone markings. Many asylums did have on-site burial grounds for the horrendous number of deaths that occurred within their walls. Rolling Hills appears to be no different.
TRANS-ALLEGHENY ASYLUM
TALA, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, is hugely popular with ghost-hunting groups and has been featured on numerous television reality shows. The building itself is incredibly impressive and is the world’s second-biggest, hand-cut stone masonry building in the world after the Kremlin. Even before entering, the building looks imposing and the stuff of horror and thriller movies. It was built during the Civil War and began taking patients in 1861 even before construction was completed. It officially opened in 1864 to house about 250 patients but, as with other asylums written about here, ended up overcrowded. At one point, over 2,400 people were patients there, including cult leader Charles Manson.
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is a treasure trove of history and stories about the Civil War, a gold robbery, ghosts, and more. Tours are available, and the facility has been featured on ghost-hunting TV shows.
Formerly known as Weston State Hospital, it sat upon, eerily, 666 acres (270 hectares) of land, and the first floor was called the Civil War Wing, the oldest, and many claim the most haunted, part of the building. Many of the patients in the asylum were thought to be possessed by demons, and many others were sent there for ridiculous reasons such as “female troubles,” falling off a horse, and laziness. Women who were deserted by their spouses often were committed alongside murderers and the truly insane. Soon, the abuse and barbaric treatment of these individuals, who often had no family to look in on them, marked this facility as a place of great suffering and horror. As overcrowding spread, so, too, did the abuse and poor living conditions. It officially closed in 1994 and was reopened in 2007 for historic and ghost-hunting tours. It soon became a favorite ghost-hunting destination and favorite spot for paranormal events and guided tours with popular television stars, charging hundreds of dollars to attend and get a firsthand look at the asylum and its resident spirits.
Ghostly activity has been reported for decades since the closure of the asylum in 1994, including apparitions roaming the hallways, disembodied voices, doors opening and slamming shut, strange smells, phantom screams from the electroshock room, and the sounds of gurneys squeaking down the corridors. A ghost boy is often spotted in the corner of one room, and a former staff member claims she saw forty doors slam shut at the same time. The ghost of a woman named Jane Harvey, who committed suicide in 1884, roams the second floor of Ward B. Her voice shows up on EVP recordings, and visitors claim someone is strangling them when near her room.
Another ghost of a man named Jesse Albright, who died in 1949 after spending seven years at TALA, is often heard whispering to guests, and he answers when his name is called.
WAVERLY HILLS
Anyone interested in ghost hunting and paranormal research is sure to react to the name Waverly Hills. This two-story facility located in southwestern Louisville has been a hugely popular destination for those interested in seeking out the spirits of the dead, and it is considered a highly active site, if not one of the most active in the country hands down. In the late 1800s, Waverly School opened in Kentucky and in 1910 was converted into a hospital intended to accommodate up to fifty tubercular patients. But no one knew just how badly the disease would spread, and as the epidemic grew, so did the asylum’s capacity, taking in over four hundred patients at one time. The facility had a great reputation for cleanliness and care and stayed open until 1961, when antibiotics were introduced to fight TB.
But that’s not the whole story behind Waverly Hills. During the fifty years it was functional, over 64,000 patients died there, mostly from TB, but others from mistreatment, outright abuse, and, rumor has it, human experimentation, including illegal syphilis studies. Deaths became so frequent that a “death tunnel” was created—a type of chute to send dead patients underground via a motorized rail and cable system that took the bodies to trains waiting on the tracks at the bottom of the hill.
Today, it is open to tours and ghost hunts, and one of the most haunted rooms is Room 502, where a distraught nurse who was pregnant by the owner of the sanatorium hanged herself in 1928. A second nurse fell to her death from the same room; she has been caught on EVP and may be the ghost of a nurse in her white uniform that roams the floor. The death tunnel is actively haunted with apparitions and disembodied voices. A little boy ghost named Timmy can be seen and heard playing with rubber balls. The ghost of a man dressed in a white coat and pants lurks around the cafeteria and kitchen and visitors report smelling cooking food, despite the kitchen, having been closed to the public for over forty years.
Children are seen and heard running through a third-floor solarium, slamming doors, and walking in many of the rooms. Perhaps the eeriest spectral spook is that of a phantom, old-fashioned hearse that is seen delivering coffins to the back of the facility. Waverly Hills is now closed to the public except for arranged tours and special paranormal events.
