Creepy Abandoned Insane Asylums U.S.A Edition








Bartonville Insane Asylum, Peoria Illinois:

Construction on the building began in1885 and were completed in 1887.
    When the hospital was fully complete it had a nurse's home, a store, a power house, and a domestic building with a laundry, bakery and kitchen.
    One of the docters that worked their named Dr. Zeller realized that the asylum needed a burial place for the dead. He decided that the asylum would take care of the burials of the unclaimed, but that all other deceased persons would be shipped home to their relatives. The hospital’s burial ground eventually grew to include four cemeteries, which were located behind the main buildings. The older cemeteries are marked with stones that only bear numbers, as many of the patients came there without names. The newer cemeteries have stones bearing names, birth and death dates, and patient numbers upon them. The oldest cemetery here would mark the location of the very first ghost story to be associated with the hospital. But this is no mere folk legend or rumor, this was a documented account of a supernatural event.... and the teller of the tale was none other than Dr. George Zeller himself!
    Shortly after taking over the hopsital, Dr. Zeller created a burial corps to deal with the disposal of those who passed away while in care of the hospital. The corps consisted of a staff member of the hospital and a half-dozen of the patients. While these men were still disturbed, all of them were competent enough to take part in the digging of the graves.
     Of all of the gravediggers, the most unusual man, according to Dr. Zeller, was a fellow called A. Bookbinder. The man was completely mute so no one knew his real name. Apparently, the man had suffered a breakdown while working in a printing house, possibly in Chicago, and his mental illness had left him incapable of coherent speech. The officer who had taken him into custody merely wrote in his report that the man had been employed as "a bookbinder". A court clerk listed this as the man’s name and he was sent to the hospital as A. Bookbinder.
Dr. Zeller described the man as being strong and healthy, although completely uncommunicative. Soon, the attendants enlisted him to assist in the burial corps. Strangely, "Old Book" as he began to be called was especially suited to the work. Ordinarily, when the coffin was being lowered, the gravediggers would stand back out of the way and wait silently for the funeral to end. At that point, they would set to filling the grave. Nearly every single patient at the hospital was a stranger and unknown to the staff, so the funeral services were mainly done out of respect, rather than because of personal attachment to the deceased. Because of this, everyone was a little surprised when, at his first internment, Old Book proceeded to remove his cap, wipe his eyes and begin weeping loudly for the patient who had died.  He would do the same thing at each service.... first his sleeve would be used to wipe away his tears and then he would walk over and lean against the old elm that stood in the center of the cemetery and begin sobbing loudly. This tree, where Book would give vent to his grief, was known as the "Graveyard Elm". It was a massive old tree which had been standing for many years.
    Time passed and eventually Old Book too passed away. Word spread among the employees and as Book was well-liked, and noted for his peculiarities, everyone decided they would attend his funeral. Dr. Zeller wrote that more than 100 uniformed nurses attended, along with the male staff members and several hundred of the patients. Dr. Zeller officiated the service. Old Book’s casket was placed on two cross beams above his empty grave and four men stood by to lower it into the ground at the end of the service. Dr. Zeller wrote, "Just as the choir finished the last lines of ‘Rock of Ages’, the men grasped the ropes, stooped forward, and with a powerful, muscular effort, prepared to lift the coffin, in order to permit the removal of the crossbeams and allow it to gently descend into the grave. "At a given signal, they heaved away the ropes and the next instant, all four lay on their backs. For the coffin, instead of offering resistance, bounded into the air like an eggshell, as if it were empty!"
Needless to say, the spectators were a little shocked at this turn of events and the nurses were to said to have shrieked, half of them running away and the other half coming closer to the grave to see what was going on.
"In the midst of the commotion," Dr. Zeller continued, "a wailing voice was heard and every eye turned toward the Graveyard Elm whence it emanated. Every man and woman stood transfixed, for there, just as had always been the case, stood Old Book, weeping and moaning with an earnestness that outrivaled anything he had ever shown before.
After a few moments of this, Dr. Zeller summoned some men to remove the lid of the coffin, convinced that Old Book could not be inside of it. The lid was lifted and as soon as it was, the wailing sound completely stopped. Inside of the coffin lay the body of Old Book.... unquestionably dead. It was said that every eye looked upon the still corpse and then over to the Graveyard Elm. The apparition had vanished.
    A few days later, the Graveyard Elm mysteriously began to wither and die. In spite of efforts to save it, the tree declined over the next year until it was completely dead. Later, after the dead limbs had dropped, workmen tried to remove the rest of the tree, but stopped working after the first cut of the ax caused the tree to emanate an "agonized, despairing cry of pain". After that, Dr. Zeller suggested the tree be burned, however as soon as the flames started around the tree’s base, the workers quickly put them out. They later told Zeller that they heard a sobbing and crying sound coming from it.
(It should be warned that this is private property and trespassers are not allowed)

Other than A. Bookbinder, the asylum is said to be haunted by a large number of ghosts, a specific number cannot be given but claims suggest at least 15 different ghosts inhabit this location. This is a classic location for ghosts due to the practices of the hospital when it was open, electric shock therapy and prolonged isloation were common practice. Many patients died from suicide and being ill treated.
    The most common reports of hauntings at this location include seeing the apparitions of patients dressed in gowns slowly walking the halls and rooms of the hospital. Unexplainable cold spots are common, as are hearing screams and moans coming from empty rooms in the distance. Also people who have ventured into the asylum have claimed to of been touched by the spirits, with feelings such as a hand being placed on one's shoulder or something gently brushing past as if walking the other way down a corridor.





Byberry Mental Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:
It was home to people ranging from the mentally challenged to the criminally insane.
    The primary buildings were constructed between 1910 and the mid 1920s, the newer buildings were constructed between 1940 and 1953. The facility included over fifty buildings such as male and female dormitories, an infirmary, kitchens, laundry, administration, a chapel and a morgue. The hospitals population was over 7,000 patients in 1960.
    Several investigations into the conditions at the hospital at various points revealed that raw sewage lined the hallways, patients slept in the halls, and the staff mistreated and exploited patients.
    One person wrote of his experience walking through the hallways:
"As I passed through some of Byberry's wards, I was reminded of the pictures of the Nazi concentration camps. I entered a building swarming with naked humans herded like cattle and treated with less concern, pervaded by a fetid odor so heavy, so nauseating, that the stench seemed to have almost a physical existence of its own."
Still reports of patient abuse was pooring in, one complaint came from a patient, stating that he had one of his teeth pulled without novocaine.
    Another famous story of patient abuse was that of William Kirsch in 1987, who was shackled to a bed for 14 months. A female patient was murdered by another psychiatric patient, Charles Gable, who then dismembered her body; parts of her body were found in several places upon the property. Gable was never found, but one patient was found playing with the victim's teeth.
    The hospital was finally closed down in June of 1990.
It is reportedly haunted.
People have gone into the catacombs only to run out crying. Reports of screams bellowing from the basements.








Buffalo Psychiatric Center, Buffalo New York:
The official name for the complex (at least technically so) remains as the Buffalo Psychiatric Center (originally Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, and later, known as Buffalo State Hospital).
    The hospital buildings were designed in 1870. The complex consists of a central administrative tower and five pavilions or wards progressively set back on each side, for eleven buildings total, all connected by a short curved two story corridors. Patients were segregated by sex, males on the east side, females on the west. The wards housed mental patients until the mid 1970s.
    Its said that spirits still walk the halls of this place mostly due to the unorthodox methods used on its patients. 

(It should be noted that this place is protected by the law they do have officers patroling the area.)





camarillo state hospital, Camarillo California:
This was a hospital for developmentally disabled and mentally ill patients. It was in use from 1936 to 1997.  During the 1950s and 1960s, especially, the hospital was at the forefront of treating illnesses previously thought to be untreatable, for instance, developing drug and therapy procedures for schizophrenia. Programs initiated at Camarillo helped patients formerly relegated to institutions to leave the hospital and move to less restrictive group homes or become (at least nearly) independent. The hospital continued to be a leader in the research of drugs and therapies in subsequent years. They also had one of the first units of any hospital to deal with autism.
    However the hospital was also accused of patient abuse and negligent deaths. Among some of its treatments were lobotomies , electroshock treatment, hydrotherapy shock treatments, isolation in restraints, etc.  
    In another sad  testament to Camarillo's incompetence and danger to its patients, a Nov. 16, 1976 L.A. Times article writes that Thomas Riddle, 37, had committed himself to Camarillo's drug and alcohol treatment center for detoxification, yet two hours after he was admitted in Nov. 1976 as a patient, he was "found dead, shackled at the hands and feet in an isolation room at Camarillo's acute psychotic ward." The autopsy said he died from "asphyxia due to compression of the neck and multiple drug overdose." Apparently the patient was full of vodka, methadone, valium, and barbituates when he was admitted but the staff did not check for other drugs in the system before they gave him a "Number 1" cocktail of heavy tranquilizers including Serentil, Stelazine, and Hycocine to "subdue the patient." The article says "Riddle was subdued by five hospital employees, locked into leather cuffs, and tied down to a wheelchair. He was wheeled to the acute psychiatric ward." The staff "psychiatric technician" on duty that night, Mr. Borel, told the grand jury that "he did not feel there was enough staff on the ward to subdue the patient without the heavy tranquilizers." The psychiatric technicians on duty that night all testify that no one choked the patient or went near his neck, yet the autopsy shows someone constricted his airflow at his neck. (Ellen Hume, L.A.Times, "Tranquilizers Linked to Death of Patient" (Nov. 16, 1976), p. B3) In an L.A.Times article published one day after the one just cited, more information emerged. "only one witness, psychiatric technician Ronald Willis, failed to deny having seen a "bar strangle hold" or choke hold at the hospital. Such holds allegedly are used in some mental facilities to subdue patients." When Willis was asked if he had ever used the hold on a patient, or seen others use it on patients at Camarillo, he twice pleaded the 5th Amendment, saying it could incriminate him.
    On November 13 1976 in the L.A Times aonther artical was published about a patient  Steven Miller, 33, died due to starvation.
 In another case from the same Nov. '76 article, a "30 year old retarded patient" died on June 8, 1975 by "choking on her own vomit, after the nursing staff tried for 24 hours to get a staff doctor to look at her.
   Also cited in this article, in 1974, "20 year old Michael Rogers, also a mentally retarded patient, died. The testimony from Camarillo staff said that the patient had two "superficial lacerations" on his face, and when the staff went to stitch them up, the patient panicked and "five male employees struggled to hold him down," and he then went into cardiac arrest and died. The autopsy said his cause of death was he choked on his vomit, and the staff on charge that night says if they had it to do over, they would have put him in restraints, not tried to hold him down with people. After studying the patient's chart, it was found that the night Rogers died he was given an alarming cocktail of drugs from Dr. Moore, on duty that night. Dr. Moore gave Rogers Thorazine, Hyosine, Repoise, antihistamines, antiepileptic drugs and other tranquilizers, and the Physicians Desk Reference of 1974 warns about mixing some of those drugs together.  
    In an L.A. Times article from 1940, a frightening graphic is displayed, showing first a large hand with an insulin vial in it, and a syringe next to the hand, then below this image is a photo of a blindfolded patient with a nurse holding a flask with tubes coming out of it and doctor over him in a bed, and the doctor is injecting him with a syringe. The caption to this picture says, "The insulin is injected. In a short while a sort of mental earthquake will shake the patient's brain. Attendant Clement handles hypo and Nurse Lewis the flask." Further down the page, more alarming images appear, showing a man with an IV in his arm, and the caption, " Nurse Lewis administers termination treatment, a solution of glucose (sugar) and salt." The next frame shows someone writing on a pad of paper and the caption says, "the charts are checked constantly so that no mishap will occur. The shocks are severe." Then the final photo shows a blindfolded patient in a bed with a tube going into his nose and the caption reads, "to reduce the patient's nightmarish convulsions sedatives are administered by Nurse Leah Lewis."
This article says Dr. Jacob P. Frostig, one of the world's greatest authorities on insulin shock treatment, came to Camarillo in Sept. 1939, after studying insulin treatment with its creator, at the Psychiatric Hospital in Warsaw, Poland. Insulin treatments consisted of a series of shots of insulin which lowered the blood sugar, producing a coma, during which time the doctors said the patients were "shocked" back to mental health. The Times reported in 1940 that Camarillo had an insulin ward which held about 40 beds, separating men from women with a screen in the center. Patients were given a light breakfast at 6:30 AM, and then began injections of 10-500 units of insulin. The Times reports, "The first effects of the drug are drowsiness and excessive perspiration. In the second hour, the consciousness grows cloudy and the body becomes restless. In the 3rd hour, the patient sinks into a deep stupor, often crying out, twisting and writhing. Gags are affixed to prevent him from biting his tongue or lips. The coma deepens and the spasms continue in the 4th hour. Saliva pours from mouth and nostrils. In the 5th and final hour, a rubber tube is inserted into the nose while the patient is still unconscious and fixed in place with adhesive tape. Then the termination treatment is administered and the stomach is flooded through the tube with a solution of glucose (sugar) and salt. The glucose counteracts the effect of the insulin and the patient awakens quickly. The salt is administered to replace losses to the body by perspiration." These treatments would continue on for 5 days, and on the 6th day, the patient was watched closely, then on the 7th day the patient "rested." This would go on for several weeks at a time. The minimum was 15 shocks per patient, and the maximum amount of shocks administered per patient was 50, according to Camarillo doctors. Doctors found after 50 shocks, there needed to be lapses of 3 months in between treatments for the 2nd or 3rd cycle of treatment to work. The insulin ward is described by the Times as having white cabinets on rollers with "EMERGENCY" in big red letters on them. Inside the cabinets were reportedly syringes of glucose, sedatives and adrenaline for emergencies.
    It should also be noted that some of these patients who were treated so badly were children.
                                                                    Hauntings:
Accounts from former employees tell of a man who would routinely enter the women’s restroom, only to disappear when someone went inside to look for him. One janitor saw a man’s legs in one of the stalls, but after receiving no reply when she asked him to leave, opened the stall to find it empty.
Beginning in 1999, efforts began to turn the site into another kind of institution. It is now the California State University Channel Islands. School officials would rather forget the sinister history of the buildings, but sightings of strange apparitions and moving furniture continue to plague the grounds. Most of the reported happenings seem to occur in the complex located on the far southern end of the campus, which is still used for location filming, since it is the only place that hasn’t been touched by the renovation crews as yet.
    The sounds of children`s voices at the children`s center, by the Bell tower an old woman walking and asking for directions to the chapel and old woman wearing white wondering the hallways in the daytime. In the restrooms the voice of someone saying, "SSSHHHHH" in parking lot A figure that looks like a man spinning around until it disappears near one of the street lights. objects seen with the corner of the eye and then when people turn they disappear. Many people have had encounters with ghost at this site, during the day and at night the ghost don`t have a preferred time. Some complaints from students and staff are headaches, nausea, feeling of being watched, feeling unsafe, threatened, and extreme tiredness. Also, there have been numerous sightings of at least a dozen different entities in the Bell Tower, Police Station region. (Currently, only very few buildings at the site are used most are abandoned.) Entities seen range from a beautiful woman in white who wanders both night and day in the hallways in and around the Bell Tower, a man by the bus stop, and a rather nervous entity in one of the women`s restrooms in the Bell Tower who not only chatters but makes some kind of rustling sound.



  Central State Hospital, Indianapolis Indiana
The hospital was opened in November 1848. At this time, the hospital opened with five patients and a single building, and by 1928, physicians cared for nearly 3,000 patients. At that time the hospital consisted of one brick building.   
While today, inpatient psychiatric hospitals are generally reserved for patients with severe emotional or psychological stress, in the 19th century, the term “insane” had a broad and varied definition. Those coming through the doors of Central State Hospital (as it was shortly renamed) suffered from a wide variety of emotional and mental health illnesses.


















Use of restrains was greatly curtailed and more attention was paid to treating rather than warehousing patients.Social activities were regularly scheduled for staff and patients and vocational rehabilitation was introduced. It was also at this time that more scientific methods of researching the causes of mental illness were brought to the institution.
However, it should not be assumed that the entire history of Central State Hospital is one of inhuman treatment of the mentally ill. Eventually, a special committee was convened by the state legislature to investigate conditions there. Their report resulted in sweeping changes in the facility and treatment methods. By 1890, in part due to rising public awareness of abuses at the hospital, conditions began to improve there.
    Despite Dr. Evert’s pleas for funding to improve the conditions at Central State, his cries went unheard by state legislators. In 1872, Dr. Everts, frustrated in his efforts to improve the situation there, resigned in protest.
    In his report to the Governor, Dr. Everts goes on to state that even the ‘normal’ wards were “without adequate provision for light, heat and ventilation”. Patients, according to his report, were forced to sleep on straw mattresses amid buildings with rotting floors and leaking roofs.
 Dr. Everts, superintendent of Central State in 1870, vividly reported his findings regarding the conditions at there in a letter to the Governor of Indiana:
“Basement dungeons are dark, humid and foul, unfit for life of any kind, filled with maniacs who raved and howled like tortured beasts, for want of light and air and food and ordinary human associations and habiliments.”
    Other examples of the sometimes barbaric methods employed in retraining patients in the early days of Central State are more easily confirmed. As recorded in the official Indiana archives, on the surface, Central State Hospital seemed to be a fairly pleasant place. A closer look, however, revealed some unsavory realities. For decades, the hospital confined its “worst inmates,” those who screamed incessantly, or who were hostile to staff, to the basement or ‘dungeons’ of the hospital.
   These patients, judged too prone to violence to be housed in less secure institutions, were held under tight security and at times in the early history of the institution, were kept in a state of near perpetual restraint. Though no firm confirmation may be ascertained, it is said that workers in the 1950’s, while renovating some of the over five miles of tunnels that connected the buildings, discovered dark rooms in the recesses of the tunnels that still bore chains and manacles on their walls.
    The conditions treated at the hospital spanned the spectrum from clinical depression to schizophrenia. Sadly, many warehoused at the institution were sent there because they were termed “simple,” a colloquial term for mentally handicapped. Inevitably, Central State was also known to count among its patients those diagnosed as “criminally insane.”
     It should be noted that many of those who worked tirelessly at Central State for many years did so with a care and selfless dedication that was a credit to their lives and profession. As a result of their efforts, many of those who passed through the halls of Central State were treated with respect and dignity. Today all across the state, countless people have had their lives made better through the time they spent at this institution. Still, it must be noted that through the years, persistent allegations of patient neglect and abuse continued to dog the institution. Reports periodically filtered out to the press regarding the callous use of restraints, beatings and worse. Indianapolis newspapers quickly picked up on lurid and sensational tales of patient mistreatment and neglect. Overcrowded conditions, a perpetual lack of funding and sometimes poor training of staff added to a gathering cloud over the hospital.    
    However in 1994 the hospital was closed down for good.
                                       Haunting:
According to some however the horror may not be over, for it is said that the Hospital is haunted by the patients who once lived and died there.
    The most disturbed of patients were housed within the basement, an area with little light and poor ventilation. Many staff (when the building was open) and visitors to the property have heard screams and moans coming from this area when it has been empty. One of the most common experiences of the paranormal at the hospital is to see apparitions of patients running down the hallways and even outside the building wearing patient gowns and robes.
    Other ghost stories from the hospital include seeing the faces of people within various windows of the property, and the sounds of footsteps walking the cold tiled corridors when no one is there. Many orbs have also shown up on photographs throughout the building.



(Notice the orbs in these pictures, the top one seems to show someone standing at the end of the hallway, in the side one there appears to be a face peering out.)














Danvers State Hospital, Danvers Massachusetts:


It was built in 1874 and opened in 1878. It was a multi acre, self contained psychiatric hospital. It is also rumored to have been the birthplace of the pre-frontal lobotomy.
    The hospital itself had a kitchen, laundries, a chapel, and dormitories. On each side of the main building were the wings, for male and female patients respectively, connected by small square towers. The outermost wards were reserved for extreme patients, the west side was male and the east side was female.
    The original plan was designed to house 500 patients, with 100 more possible to accommodate in the attic. However, by the late 1930s and 1940s, over 2,000 patients were being housed, and overcrowding was severe. People were even held in the basement of the hospital.
    the asylum was originally established to provide residential treatment and care to the mentally ill, its functions expanded to include a training program for nurses in 1889 and a pathological research laboratory in 1895. In the 1890s, Dr. Charles Page, the superintendent, declared mechanical restraint unnecessary and harmful in cases of mental illness. By the 1920s the hospital was operating school clinics to help determine mental deficiency in children.

    Danvers has long been termed a brutally fearsome castle and perverted holy place of despair and destruction. Donned the "witches castle on the hill." The asylum resides in the town of Danvers, Massachusetts which many people are unaware was formerly known as Salem Village. Salem Village was the first actual location of the 1692 Salem witch trials. Unbeknownst to some, the witch trials did not beginin Salem, but in Salem Village, or present-day Danvers at a church on Centre Street. The trials were later moved to a larger building in Salem when hysteria ran rampant and onlooking spectators swarmed the church. The reason to the building sometimnes being called The witches castle is because one of the judges of the witch trials, Johnathan Hawthorne lived on the hill that the hospital sits on.
    The hospital was for sure a hell hole sometimes likened to that of a German death camp. A once humane facility had turned dark by the mid half of the century.
    Some of the treatments used there were shock treatment, hydrotherapy, insulin shock therapy, psychosurgery, lobotomies. To keep its burgeoning census under control. Patients became haggard and ghostly, often spending a majority of the time alone in solitary confinement in a space no larger than a small bathroom. The patients were often poorly clothed and sometimes naked, they would often pace aimlessly on the wards, lying on the filthy cement floors, or sitting head in hand against the pock-marked walls, it was so bad that a lifeless patient would gone unnoticed for days.   
     Finally the hospital was closed down for good in June of 1992. Danvers state is now apartments and although the part of the original structure was kept, the foreboding that once emancipated from this great place is gone. 
                                       

                                    Hauntings:
People have reported flickering lights, full body appiritions, hearing invisible footsteps and doors that open and close on their own.






Dixmont State Hospital Pittsburgh pennsylvania:

Dixmont State was once known as the Department of the Insane in the Western Pennsylvania Hospital of Pittsburgh back when it was opened in 1862, with an initial population of 113 patients. It was one of the earlier asylums built on the Kirkbride plan, with three crooked wings stretching to each side of administration; one wing for male and the other for female patients. By the end of the 1800's, the resident population grew to over 1,200 and a nursing school was established in 1895. In 1907, the hospital legally separated from the Western Pennsylvania Hospital and became known as Dixmont Hospital for the Insane, named after Dorothea Dix a pioneer in advocating the humane treatment of the mentally ill.
    As with most asylums, Dixmont became overcrowded to the point that it was not accepting new admissions.
    The hospital like most did use hydroshock therapy as well as lobotomies, electroshock therapy and insulin shock therapy. Some patients were even tied in bed with handcuffs and leg cuffs.
And between 1955 and 1957, the hospital began using dramatic new drugs, including Thorazine, to treat the mentally ill. But huge deficits continued, and by the 1960s, the philosophy for treating the mentally ill began to change. President John F. Kennedy, whose sister Rosemary functioned at the level of an infant after undergoing a prefrontal lobotomy, pushed for a new approach to establish a community based system of helping the mentally ill.
The hospital was finally closed in 1984.
    It should be noted that the hospital is no longer standing it was tore down to make way for a Wal-mart store, the hospitals cemetery is in the hands of the state and is not allowed to be paved over, which should leave you with one interesting shopping experience.
It is said to be haunted, especially in the cemetery.
















Fairfield State Hospital, Newtown Connecticut:
The hospital was opened in the early 1930s and remained opened until the mid 1990s. The hospital sat on 100 acres of land and housed 20 different buildings, including a morgue, library, staff dormitories and a power plant. The original hospital was connected on the outside by a circular network of paved pathways, and underground by a series of concrete tunnels. Certainly the tunnels were meant for convenience, but what they became was a hidden means of transferring patients, both living and deceased.  
    In its early days, Fairfield Hills housed no more than 500 patients, occupied by just 3 doctors.
    In the 1940s and 50s, the hospital was extended with more buildings to accommodate the growing patient population. By the 1960s Fairfield was terribly overcrowded with more than 4,000 patients, plus 20 doctors, 50 nurses and at least 100 other employees.
    The reprehensible deeds that went on at Fairfield Hills over the years were not approved by the state- at least not officially- and some even proved fatal to the patients of the institution. Treatments included seclusion, hydrotherapy, lobotomy, electric shock therapy and shock therapy by administering the drugs metrazol and insulin. Psychosurgery was preformed on more than 100 patients in the first year of it use. 
 
Fairfield Hills was, in reality, more of an experimental institution than a rehabilitation center. Countless patients were essentially tortured for the ‘good of the medical practice’. Finally, in 1995, hospitals for the mentally and criminally insane had gone out of style, so to speak. Other methods of rehabilitation had superseded the need for Fairfield Hills, and it was shut down by the state.
                                                             Hauntings:
The Greenwich House is one building that is said to bring on an overwhelming feeling of despair and suffering.
Strange noises have been reported from all areas of Fairfield Hills, from whispers and moans to outright screams echoing throughout the hallways. The clacking rattle of old gurney wheels have been said to traveling hallways and the underground corridors especially. The morgue is particularly animated with resounding, inexplicable noises.
During its last few years of operation, various electronic machines and appliances were rumored to turn on and off of their own accord.







Glenn Dale Hospital, Prince georges county Maryland:
Glenn Dale Hospital was a tuberculosis sanitarium and isolation hospital. It was a large facility, consisting of 23 buildings on 216 acres that was built in 1934 and closed in 1981 due to asbestos.
    Some parts of the hospital had art rooms, staff housing, nurses' homes, playgrounds, theater, seclusion rooms, storage areas, chapels, morgues, and boiler rooms.

(Note: This place is off limits trespassers will be arrested)

                 Hauntings:
  Sightings have included ghostly patients wandering the second floor, and smoke coming from the crematorium. People have also complained of noises such as banging and yelling coming from the hospital walls people claim to hear screams and sometimes laughter...inside there is sometimes a strong odor of burning flesh and smoke coming from where they used to burn the bodies...in one particular room there is said to be sightings of a man in a straightjacket who went insane after watching his family being murdered by an intruder to his home while he hid in a closet...he was so overcome with the guilt that he didn`t help his family that he went insane and eventually killed himself when he broke into the room where they kept the medication and overdosed.






Kings Park Psychiatric Center, Kings Park, New York:
It operated from 1885 until 1996.
    The hospital was revolutionary at the time in the sense that it was a departure from the asylums of folklore, which were overcrowded places where gross human-rights abuses often occurred. The asylum, built by Brooklyn to alleviate overcrowding in its own asylums, was a "Farm Colony" asylum, where patients worked in a variety of farm-related activities, such as feeding livestock and growing food, as this was considered to be a form of therapy at the time.
   Eventually, the Kings County Asylum began to suffer from the very thing that it attempted to relieve—overcrowding. New York State responded to the problem in 1895, when control of the asylum passed into state hands, and it was subsequently renamed the Kings Park State Hospital. 
    The state eventually built the hospital into a self- sufficient community that not only grew its own food, but also generated its own heat and electricity, had its own Long Island Rail Road spur, and housed its staff on-site.
    As patient populations grew throughout the early part of the 20th century, the hospital itself continued to grow, and by the late 1930s the state began to build upward instead of outward.
    In 1954, the patient census at Kings Park topped 9,303, but would begin a steady decline afterwards. By the time kings park reached its peak patient population, the old rest and relaxation philosophy surrounding farming gave way to pre frontal lobotomies and electro shock therapy. However, those methods would quickly be abandoned in 1955 following the introduction of Thorazine, the first widely used drug in the treatment of mental illness. It fully closed down in 1996.
    (Note that access to the grounds is limited and entry into the buildings is forbidden by law)

People passing through have reported hearing screams and yells.



















Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, Marlboro New Jersey:
It first opened in early 1931. It opened with a capacity to accommodate 500-800 patients. But they enlarged it to hold a capacity of 2,000 patients. However in 1995 the hospital served an average of 780 adults per day with a staff of 1,157 employees.
    The hospital was composed of 17 state of the art cottages and central buildings. The hospital treated adults and children but in 1978, a decision was made to only admit adults and adolescents.
    The cottages were Tudor style dormitories which housed as many as 55 patients each. Additionally, a small cemetery was established for patients who died in residence and were unclaimed by family. The cemetery, opened to the public, is located near Marlboro's main gate on route 79.
    Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital had a history of problems. For example on November 2, 1979 131 patients became ill and four patients died of food poisoning. The suspected cause was Clostridium perfringens. On May 9, 1987 the eight probe was conducted by the public advocates office into patient deaths.
    A woman who disappeared 48 hours before the hospital noticed her missing was found frozen to death outside. A woman restricted to liquid food due to an eating disorder, choked to death when someone gave her a peanut butter sandwich. A patient died from brain swelling caused by a sodium deficiency noted in her charts 6 weeks earlier yet left untreated. A man was strapped to a bed for 80 hours over 5 days died from blood clots caused by the restraints (which must be loosened every two hours). The hospital closed in 1998 following a 1993 investigation by Richard Codey, during which he went undercover at the hospital and found rampant patient abuse, wasteful spending, and other illegal practices.
    Since its closing in 1998, the abandoned hospital has  become the focus of numerous local legends. An abandoned slaughterhouse on the property fueled legends of a murderous farmer.  It was said that the farmer would lure you down "death row," as he had to two slain hospital guards. Trespassing at the slaughterhouse became a frequent problem, and the township publicly stated that trespassers would be prosecuted. According to an issue of weird new jersey magazine, and the book "convergence" Shadow people were often spotted in, or around, the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse was razed.
The hospital buildings themselves are also said to be haunted, and security at the buildings has been tightened to deter trespassers.



Metropolitan State Hospital Waltham Massachusetts:
It was opened in 1930 and closed its doors in 1992. Due to the states cost cutting policy.
   The campus consisted of an administration building, medical-surgical facility, acute and chronic care buildings, staff housing, morgue and power plant. The largest was the chronic care building, called the continued treatment group (CTG); it was laid out as a basic rectangle with wings protruding from the outside on the outer edges and the inside formed an outdoor courtyard. A psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents was built on the property called the Geabler Center, named after the second superintendent. Met State first opened with the capacity of just over 1,000 patients, but was already housing about 100 over the maximum only two years after opening.
    Its most famous for a murder that took place on the hospital grounds,  in 1978, a patient named Melvin Wilson murdered co-patient Anne Marie Davee, dismembered her body, and buried her in several shallow graves on the grounds of Met state. Wilson kept seven of Ms Davee's teeth in his possession which was found on him by staff, and pieces of Wilson's clothing and the presumed murder weapon (a hatchet) were also found two months after Davee's disappearance. Despite these disturbing discoveries, an investigation was not made until 19 reports of negligence by state mental health workers were looked into along with this case almost two years after Davee had been missing. On August 12, 1980, Wilson led investigators to the graves, and was taken to Bridgewater State Hospital (a secure forensic hospital). 
    A cemetery exists on campus, containing 480 anonymous markers, and possibly many more that have sunken beneath the ground, there are no names on them just patient numbers and letters for what religion they were. 
    There is also the sad fact that in the early 1960s more than two dozen children died and were buried on the grounds. The general consensus is that they were poisoned by strontium that doctors were adding to their milk, believing that it was a way to treat their mental illness
                                Hauntings:

The reports started while the building was still open.  Several employees spoke of shadowy figures seen at night.  Described as a looking like a tall slender man but having no solid form, the unknown visitors would walk through walls or appear in locked rooms.  Residents reported the same shadow, but the reports were ignored as delusion.  Then nurses and security officers began seeing them too.  One woman described at least three different men who all walked differently.  She stated it became common knowledge around the main buildings and were talked about but ignored.
    Other residents reported hearing the screams of residents who had passed, especially those who had suffered electroshock treatment at the hospital.  One employee went to assist a certain patient he had had a close relationship with.  The man was screaming about his mother, but when the worker, recently back from a vacation, went into the room a different man was there.  His resident had died over the week.

    Underneath the hospital runs a network of tunnels once used to travel to different parts of the 23 acre grounds.  The tunnels were lit by intermittent bare light bulbs, and patients were often found in them after having wandered off.  There were also reports of deviant workers would take willing and unwilling patients down there for sex.  Whispers were often heard down in the tunnels although no people could be found.  One man described always feeling as if there was someone behind him or in front of him, but he never saw anyone there. There has also been fillings of sudden sadness and depression, there have also been reports of objects in plain sight move by themselves.

 (this building has since been demolished)







Northampton Lunatic Asylum, Northampton Massachusetts:
The hospital was opened on August 16, 1858.  Within 6 weeks the population would reach 220, most of whom were transfers from other institutions long overwhelmed. The original design specified a maximum of 200 patients, but this limit was raised to 250 by the state-wide hospital Commissioners before the asylum opened. After only 2 months the Board of Trustees speculated that the limit could be raised to 300 patients.
    As the patient population accelerated, the wards of Old Main were built onto so much that its original design looked nothing like its new shape, which was jumbled and confusing. Soon, the population grew so much that several new infirmaries had to be built to sustain the patients.
And by 1955 the hospital had reached its peak population at 2,657 patients.
    There are 594 confirmed burials of former patients at the hospital cemetery, but there may be as many as 1,200 people buried there; the reason for the uncertainty is because of incomplete or missing state records. All of the markers have sunk below the ground and are no longer visible. 
    The hospital closed in 1993.
                                     Hauntings:
Some of the Paranormal activity reported at the site consists mostly of sounds. Visitors hear footsteps, doors opening and closing and whispers. Sometimes visitors hear the squeak of wheels as if someone is pushing a wheelchair or a gurney through the old halls.







Norwich State Hospital, preston connecticut:
It opened its doors in October 1904 and though the number of patients and employees were drastically reduced, it remained operational until October 1996, Norwich State Hospital was a mental health facility initially created for the mentally ill and those found guilty of crimes by insanity. Throughout its years of operation, however, it also housed geriatic patients, chemically dependent patients and, from 1931 to 1939, Tubercular patients.
When the hospital first opened, it held ninety-five patients and was a single building. The facility quickly outgrew its meager beginnings, and by fall of 1905, it held 151 patients and had expanded its housing by adding two additional buildings. In 1907, a third patient building was opened, and over the next eight years, there would be the addition of thirteen structures to the grounds. 
The hospital began to branch out, no longer creating housing intended only for patients, but for hospital physicians, a laboratory, an employees club, a main kitchen and various other structures to support the every-day workings of the hospital. Like most mental hospitals at that time, it was self-sufficient, and a barn, two garages, a paint shop and a greenhouse were also added. By the end of the 1930s, over twenty buildings had been added to the grounds.  
To provide an identification system, each building was given a name, usually after that of a superintendent or other state hospital. Some of the more well known structures were the Seymour building, which housed the tubercular patients in the 1930s, the Pines building, which was closed when the Seymour building was built and the Kirkbride, named after a founding member of the mental health field.
Due to the large number to structures and the hundreds of acres they stood on, the majority of buildings were connected by a series of underground passageways. The main purpose of these tunnels were for the utilities, however, they were often used to transport patients from one area to another, and it was speculated that they were locations used for the torture of patients who became uncontrollable.
  The first documented misfortune was a patient who hanged himself in 1914, but many more unfortunate deaths would follow. A hot water heater explosion in 1919 killed two employees; another employee was killed trying to cross the road; a nurse killed herself at her home; multiple patients died during their sentences or while undergoing treatment. Many more died shortly after release following a “successful” stay, usually in tragic or violent manners.
   One of the most notorious buildings was Salmon Hall, which was the maximum-security facility and where some of the most dangerous residents were kept. One of the hospital’s original buildings, it essentially became a prison with bars over the windows, steel doors and cell-like rooms. It was witness to many severe incarcerations and unpleasant events until it was shut down in 1971.
    If the population at Norwich State Hospital wasn’t troubled enough already, over the years there were numerous published reports and investigations into cruelties inflicted by the staff, including beatings, starvings, sexual abuses, overly harsh restraints, prolonged confinements and even the occasional patient being packed in ice! Not exactly an environment conducive for wellness. Other treatments ranged from heavy medication and lobotomies to mechanical restraints and "hydrotherapy". 
                                       Hauntings:
 It seems an especially fertile spirit-hunting ground as essentially every kind of paranormal experience has been allegedly witnessed here, from reports of ghostly shapes and disembodied voices to foreboding feelings and EVPs. Oh, and plenty of spirit orbs and other unexplained mists/shapes have been recorded, also.

(Note the very detailed face, It should also be noted this place is off limits and is being watched around the clock by security.)




The Ridges, Athens Ohio:
Operational from 1874 until 1993, this asylum definitely has some stories to tell.
    The hospital provided services to a variety of patients including civil war veterans, children, and violent criminals suffering from various mental disabilities. It is best known as a site of hundreds of the infamous lobotomy procedure, as well as various supposed paranormal sightings.
    Although not a self sustaining facility, for many years the hospital had livestock, farm fields and gardens, an orchard, greenhouses, a dairy, a physical plant to generate steam heat, and even a carriage shop in the early years.
    The history of the hospital documents some of the now-discredited theories of the cause of mental illness, as well as the practice of harmful treatments, such as lobotomy. The leading cause of insanity among the male patients was masturbation, according to the annul report of 1876. The second-most common cause of insanity, as recorded in the first annul report, was intemperance and dissipation. In the hospital's first three years of operation, eighty-one men and one woman were diagnosed as having their insanity caused by masturbation. Fifty six men and one woman were diagnosed as having their insanity caused by intemperance and dissipation during the same period of time.
    for the female patients hospitalized during these first three years of the asylum's operation, the three leading causes of insanity are recorded as "puerperal condition" (51 women), "change of life" (32 women), and "menstrual derangements" (29 women).
    Epilepsy was also considered a major cause of insanity and reason for admission to the hospital in the early years. The first annual report lists thirty-one men and nineteen women as having their insanity caused by epilepsy. General "ill health" accounted for the admission of thirty nine men and forty four women in the first three years of the hospitals operation. 
    Some of the things that went on here as a means of treatment is of course the lobotomy, Ice dips, shock therapy, they would often restrain the patients and in some cases the patients were forced to sleep in group bunks in rooms intended for one person. In these conditions some restricted patients would carve messages on the sandstone windowsills of their rooms. One poignant carving still reads, "I was never crazy."      
    The 1960s brought about a new emphasis on the humanity of mental patients. The lobotomy was condemned as barbaric, and psychotropic drugs such as Thorazine replaced it. Although the heavy drugs administered in hospitals at this time werent perfect (the "Thorazine shuffle" was a term used to describe the way people move around when they're on it.) 
                                  Haunting:

On December 1, 1978, a female patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared from one of the active wards. On January 12,1979, 42 days later, they found her lifeless body in the abandoned top floor of ward N. 20. The ward at the time, abandoned and closed down for years, was used for sick, infectious patients. A search was done when the women went missing but apparently the only floor not checked was ward N. 20. When a maintenance man found her body, lifeless, cold, and unclothed, she had been dead for several weeks. The official cause of death was heart failure but why still remains a mystery. A stain in the shape of a human figure can still be seen on the floor where she died. It is said that her spirit can be seen peering from the window of the room in which she spent her final moments. People have also said to hear disembodied female voices, lights, shadow people and the sound of squeaking gurneys.
                      
(If this is a real picture I'm not sure but it's still pretty cool if not)


Athens also has a few cemeteries there the most haunted is said to be the main one  which occupies the downslope of the hill behind the hospital itself. Only those patients whose families cared enough to pay for professional stones are identifiable by name, since all the state provided a patient with was a plot and a simple, narrow gravestone marked with a number.  Hospital records tell who each number belonged to, which is why several of the unmarked stones are accompanied by veterans' plaques. Due to missing records, the identities of the male patients with numbers 1 through 63 are lost to history. In total there were roughly two thousand people interred in the Athens State Hospital burial grounds before 1972. Apparently Ohio University also buried the cadavers used in its medical classes here.  To see the two more recent graveyards you need to double back toward the Dairy Barn art museum and climb a hundred or so wooden stairs set into the hillside.  But it's this, the oldest and closest cemetery, where the spirits are most active. 
Several gravestones are arranged in a perfect circle on the hillside for no apparent reason and in no apparent order, though it's been speculated that this was a prank pulled by OU students sometime in the 1920s. This circle is supposed to be a Mecca for witches and practitioners of all sorts of black arts, who hold seances here and use it as a "circle of power." Also unique about the graveyard is the presence of half a dozen more stones on the other side of the creek that runs alongside the graveyard. Crossing a wooden footbridge will take you over to where their final resting places are, beneath the trees at the place where the woods begin. Some say these are the graves of murderers, unable to be interred in the same hallowed ground as the others. Their spirits are particularly violent and vindictive, but they cannot cross the running water of the creek.





Taunton state hospital, Massachusetts:

 This impressive hospital started housing patients in 1854. One of its most beautiful features were its breezeways which were added in the 1890s to connect the end of the wards to the hospitals infirmary buildings.
    The hospital boasted all of the modern conveniences:
central heat, running water, sewer and central ventilation. It contained a chapel, kitchen, bakery, laundry, dining rooms, apartments for staff, washrooms, parlors, open-air verandas and "patient" rooms. Some patient rooms were dormitory style and others private. Private rooms were an innovation and reflected the institution's concern for its inhabitants who would now be called "patients" and not "inmates."
                                  Hauntings:
During its days as an asylum for the insane there were rumors of cult activity at the hospital.  Some even say this caused its initial closing.  Staff members would bring their more incapacitated patient down into the basement to conduct bizarre rituals to Satan.  The stories even tell of several patients sacrificed and the appearance of the Devil himself.  Regardless of the rumors, the basement still has unexplained markings on the walls.  What lends credibility to the stories are the numerous accounts of people who have gone into the basement.  Staff, uniformed about the history of what has happened there, have reported cold spots that move with them throughout.  Many residents, most of whom have been hardened by their history of crime and time spent in similar facilities have lost privileges because of their refusal to go down for chores.  One staff member claimed he reached the final step only to feel himself stop.  He closed his eyes and felt as if he were experiencing the awful things that had happened there in vivid detail.  He quit the next day and still has trouble describing what he saw. 

The evil does not stay in the basement though.  Residents have had their lights turn on and off in the middle of the night.  Many have also experienced a shadowy man who appears out of nowhere. At times he is not much more than a shadow having no specific form and moving as if crawling across the wall.  Other times he is more solid although somewhat stretched out.  Three things remain constant in the report however; his face can never be seen, he is always described as being male and he appears in the corner of the resident’s room in the middle of the night and stands as if watching them. 
   



Topeka state hospital, Topeka kansas:

The hospital was in operation from 1872 to 1997. It was once thought to be sufficient, it quickly became overcrowded with mentally ill inmates.
    Patient treatment and abuse:
There were horror stories from the early 1900s about patients being abused, neglected, or raped. One newspaper reporter spoke of seeing a patient who had been confined in leather straps. A common sight during those times was patients sitting in rocking chairs in the hallways all day long, with no opportunity for other activity. Legal commitment papers couldn't be found for some of the patients, and some patients couldn't even be accurately identified. Many patients still were being admitted as a result of the legal process and weren't having their actual mental conditions evaluated by hospital officials. Patients were sometimes kept chained and nude for months or even years.

Forced Sterilizations:
In 1913, the Kansas legislature passed the first sterilization law in the state. Many felt that the law was problematic, and thus its enforcement was less than stellar. In an attempt to make the process of the law easier, a second law was passed in 1917 which eliminated some of the work for the institutions. The 1913 law was directed at “habitual criminals, idiots, epileptics, imbeciles, and insane”. The 1917 law targeted the same groups, but eliminated the courts’ approval from the decision.
After the passage of the sterilization law in 1913, 54 sterilizations occurred over the next seven years. Because there was still a great deal of doubt and uncertainty regarding the laws, sterilizations occurred at a relatively slow rate up until 1921. However, with the passage of new laws and a new widespread acceptance, sterilizations began to increase rapidly until 1950. The rate of sterilization decreased steadily until 1961, when they ceased altogether. The rate of sterilizations per 100000 residents per year during the peak period of sterilizations, in the mid 1930s, was about 10. At least early on, most of Kansas' forced sterilizations took place in the State Hospital in Topeka.

    In 2001, Cynthia Turnbull, a psychologist at the Topeka State Hospital in Kansas, sued her employer and the state for sexual harassment after she was sexually assaulted by a patient. The jury  found a sexually hostile work environment existed at TSH, but it split over whether TSH should be held legally responsible for that environment. After learning of the jury's inability to decide, the district court granted an earlier defense motion for judgment as a matter of law. The sole issue on appeal was whether that ruling was proper. They held that it was not, and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Murder of Stephanie Uhlrig:
Stephanie Uhlrig worked as a music and activity therapist in the general hospital population. One of the patients at Topeka state Hospital was Kenneth D. Waddell, who had been placed in the custody of state mental health authorities after having been found not guilty by reason of insanity for the charge of aggravated battery. Waddell was initially placed in the Larned State Security Hospital, but on April 1, 1987, he was transferred to the Topeka state hospital where he was placed in the adult forensic ward, which was a special unit secluded from the other units because it contained higher risk patients. This unit was closed due to budgetary  constraints, and Waddell was eventually moved into the general population.
On February 23, 1992, Uhlrig and another therapist took Waddell and other patients off grounds to watch a movie. Upon returning to the hospital and dropping off the other patients, Waddell attacked and killed Uhlrig, and her body was found in the bathroom in one of the buildings on the grounds.
The United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circut, decided on Aug. 30, 1995 that  "While Uhlrig's murder was undeniably tragic, it was not the result of reckless and "conscience shocking" conduct by the state mental health administrators sued in the instant case," thus affirming the district court's grant of Defendants' motion for summary judgment.

                                 Hauntings:
It is said to be haunted people have reported seeing Orbs, apparitions in windows, voices and music heard from many of the buildings on campus. 1,157 people are buried in the hospitals cemetery, 95 percent are in unmarked graves.
TOPEKA STATE HOSPITAL HAS BEEN DEMOLISHED.








Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, Weston West Virginia:
It operated from 1864 until 1994.
    The hospital was intended to be self sufficient, and a farm, dairy, waterworks, and cemetery were located on the its grounds. A gas well was drilled on the grounds in 1902.
    Originally designed to house 250 patients in solitude, the hospital held 717 patients by 1880; 1,661 in 1938; over 1,800 in 1949; and its peak, 2,600 in the 1950s in overcrowded conditions.
    In 1938 a survey committee found that the hospital housed epileptics, alcoholics, drug addicts and non educable mental defectives among its population. A series of reports by The Charleston Gazette in 1949 found poor sanitation and insufficient furniture, lighting, and heating in much of the complex. 
     The treatments here where the same as any where else doctors preformed lobotomies and electro shock therapy. 
    It is said that the last 20 years the hospital operated were aggressively violent.  Numerous murders between patients occurred, including female employees that were maliciously attacked resulting in the death of a nurse who was missing for roughly 60 days before she was found – near the bottom of a staircase that was never used.  Another story includes the brutal murder of a male patient who brutally attacked another male patient.  He took apart the bed post and with great force speared the other man through the skull who was beaten and collapsed on the ground.  Down at the other end of the hallway, near the shower room, another male patient beat another patient and then tied sheets around the man’s neck, hanging him from the shower water pipe.  These are a few of the many horrendous deaths that took place within the walls of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. 
    


 Many have experienced firsthand apparitions in various locations on the inside of the massive structure, as well as on the grounds surrounding the structure. Then, there are some who have been plagued with unusually frightening sounds while on the grounds, and within the structure itself. These sounds have been described in many different ways. Many claim that they hear people talking when there is no one else available to contribute to the voices heard. Then, there are many who have heard the distant screams and cries of someone who appears to be in a great deal of pain and anguish.
(Notice all the orbs in these pictures) 






Waverly Hills Sanatorium, Louisville Kentucky:
It opened in 1910 as a two story hospital to accommodate 40 to 50 tuberculosis patients. In the early 1900s, jefferson county was ravaged by an outbreak of tuberculosis (the white plague) which prompted the construction of a new hospital.
    The hospital had a chapel, a school for the children, and special housing the hospital staff also.
There were also allegations of severe abuse at the hands of the hospital staff, accounts of patients being grossly neglected or mistreated. An electroshock machine, a controversial method typically used to treat psychological disorders was implemented to treat the physical symptoms of tuberculosis. One of the procedures used to treat the disease was called pneumothorax, which involved deflating the infected area of the lung and then letting it heal. Another option was thoracoplasty, which involved opening up the chest and removing several ribs. The idea was that this would allow the lungs more room to expand and take in more oxygen. Only 5% of patients survived this bloody, invasive procedure. Some doctors were accused of performing highly unprofessional experiments on patients who were "going to die anyway".

The most popular story, however, is the legend of Room 502, where a nurse named Mary Hillenburg allegedly hung herself from the doorway there in 1928 after discovering she had become pregnant out of wedlock. A variation of the story holds that she was actually impregnated by one of the (married) doctors working at the sanatorium at the time. The doctor apparently attempted an abortion that went awry and Mary died. To cover his tracks, he made it look as though she took her own life. Another nurse supposedly committed suicide by flinging herself off the roof.
        
There exists a tunnel that was built in 1926 to enable construction workers to easily transport supplies in and out of the building. It operated this way as originally intended for several years, before someone realized that the tunnel could also be used to discretely transport the bodies of dead patients without other patients seeing. The corpses were placed in a cart and transported along a motorized rail and cable system. An untold number of bodies passed through this tunnel, and it is thus the site of many unexplained occurrences and paranormal activity. EMF detectors go haywire in the "body chute", and disembodied voices have been heard coming from down the tunnel.
   
(Notice the orbs in this pic and the bottom one)

 Another popular legend surrounding the sanatorium concerns "the draining room", which was supposedly a room used to prepare the bodies for lighter and easier transport through the death tunnel. Since there was no cemetery at waverly, and the locals were afraid of the corpses transmitting the disease through their town, the dead were hung on poles to drain them of all body fluids. Despite the paranormal activity witnessed time and again by various ghost hunters, and the presence of eight large spear headed poles in the draining room, this legend has been touted as false by skeptics who state the quadrant operated only as the transformer room.
  
(I see a face do you ?)
   

2 comments:

  1. hey we need to talk i was at met.state in waltham it still haunts me

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes I would love to hear about what you experienced, Im sorry I didnt comment back right away as I was in the hospital after having a life threating asthma attack, please Email me at MargaretAlice22@aol.com so we can talk about Met.State and please know I am not here to judge, as I have had experiences myself.

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