HGB Ep. 540 - Edinburgh Manor

Moment in Oddity (Suggested by Karen Miller) - Barnett Grave in Road

We have heard about bodies getting exhumed to be relocated to new burial sites. Near Franklin, Indiana, along County Road 400 there lies a most unique grave. Nancy Kerlin Barnett died in 1831 and was buried on a hill overlooking Sugar Creek. By 1912, the community planned to build a road which would run through the existing cemetery. The decision was made to exhume and move the bodies to a new location. As the construction proceeded, the grandson of Nancy protected her grave by brandishing a shotgun. He stated that the location was where his grandmother wished to be buried and he would not allow her body to be moved. The workers conceded and built the road around her grave. A headstone and historical marker identified her plot for decades. In 2016, the road was in need of repair and the preparations entailed exhuming Nancy's body temporarily while the road was worked on, then she would be replaced once the road was finished. To the astonishment of everyone involved, six more bodies were discovered during the exhumation. Two women, a man and four children were found.  Once the road and median were completed, the bodies were reinterred and a new marker was placed on the spot. People still leave coins and flowers at the burial today. It was surmised that perhaps Nancy's grandson fought the exhumation due to the fear of a family secret being uncovered. The burial is definitely one of the most unique gravesites in the United States to date and certainly is odd.

This Month in History - SpaceX Dragon

In the month of May, on the 25th, in 2012, SpaceX's Dragon C2+ capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. The flight was performed under a funded agreement from NASA as the second Dragon demonstration mission in the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services also known as the (COTS) program. This was the first American spacecraft to visit the ISS since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle program. The initial launch from Cape Canaveral took place three days earlier on May 22nd. Various objectives were completed successfully prior to the docking which was accomplished utilizing the Canadarm2 to capture and dock the Dragon. For nearly six days the spacecraft stayed docked at the ISS while astronauts unloaded its cargo and then reloaded cargo destined for Earth. On May 31st, Dragon undocked from the ISS and its capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. All the objectives of the mission were successfully completed, and the Falcon 9-Dragon system was then authorized to begin regular cargo delivery missions to the ISS under the Commercial Resupply Services program.

Edinburgh Manor (Suggested by: Karen Miller) 

The Joker isn't just a comic book villain. This is an entity said to reside at the Edinburgh Manor in Scotch Grove, Iowa and he too seems to be a villain. The manor was once a poor farm and as we have found through the years, these locations tend to come with haunts. After the original poor farm was dismantled, the brick manor was built and used to house the mentally ill, disabled and elderly. There are several spirits who have joined the Joker here. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Edinburgh Manor!

Edinburgh Manor sits a few miles south of Scotch Grove in the middle of eleven acres of cornfields, making it an easier place to investigate because there isn't a bunch of outside contamination. The land upon which the manor sits was originally set aside for the construction of a courthouse. The plan originally was to have the then-town of Edinburgh serve as the county seat for Jones County. President Buchanan had signed a grant for that purpose in June 1840. This was section 36 in Wayne Township. When the decision was made to build the courthouse elsewhere, commissioners kept the grant so that they could build a poor farm. It was going to be needed because the area would become impoverished as Edinburgh faded away. The first settlers in this area had come from the Red River Settlement that had been in Winnipeg, Manitoba. These were called the Selkirk Settlers because they were sponsored by Lord Selkirk. This group had been through a lot. Fur traders had tried to drive them West and by the time they got to the future Scotch Grove, they were starved and terrorized. Their ancestors had experienced the same as they were evicted from Scotland during the Highland Clearances. This Scottish heritage is where the name Scotch Grove came from. The town was officially laid out in 1872 and remained a rural crossroads community despite having a train depot.

Several decades before Scotch Grove was officially founded, the poor farm was built on section 36 in Wayne Township. A husband and wife team known as the matron and steward would run the poor farm for the government and raise their children there. If you lived on the farm, you worked on the farm. Most residents were elderly, disabled people abandoned by their families, the incurably insane and orphaned children. During the nineteenth century, poor farms popped up all over America as a way to house and care for the indigent and needy. By the 1950s, most poor farms were gone. In 1909, it was decided to replace the residential facility on the land with a better building and that was finished in 1912. This new rendition was run as a county home and stood two stories with a basement and was built from red brick. The building covered 12,000-square-feet. The manor was split by gender with male inmates in the west wing and women in the east wing. 

From the time of the poor house to the closing of the manor, at least 230 people died on the property. There were suicides, disease and natural death. If families didn't collect the bodies, they were buried in a pauper cemetery on the grounds. By the 2000s, there were very few people living here, somewhere between 20 and 40 residents. The county government decided to hire a not-for-profit company to provide care. And before long there was a scandal, which led to a Medicaid fraud investigation that uncovered mismanagement and abuse and the sexual assault of a resident by three employees at another facility that the company managed. The company was fired and Edinburgh Manor was cited for being “dangerous… and not conducive to having disabled people live there.” On top of that, Social Security and other public safety nets had made the need for these kinds of facilities obsolete. The manor closed officially in 2010.

The building was bought in 2011 and reopened for tours and paranormal investigations under the ownership of Cindy Anderson and her partner. The initial plan was to renovate this into a bed and breakfast, but that didn't happen. The building needs much love as the paint is peeling heavily from the walls, ceiling fan blades are literally drooping and everything is in a state of disrepair. Anderson told Curious Iowa that they figured out that the property was haunted after her partner spent a night alone in the manor shortly after they acquired the property. About midnight he went to go to sleep with his dog on an upper floor and he called Anderson to tell her that something was touching his foot right at that moment. Something he couldn't see. And then the dog pops up out of a dead sleep and she starts barking and doing a guttural growl. Anderson's partner described the feeling as though someone was squeezing his foot and releasing it, over and over. Then a family member asked if he could investigate the place and after some hesitation, Anderson agreed. They hadn't told this family member what had happened or what room it happened in and in Room 200, which had been where the paranormal touch happened, the investigators caught an EVP that said, "I grabbed you." 

Over the years, Anderson has been pushed and had her hair pulled. She believes that the time she was pushed, was by The Joker because she was down in the basement. Everybody agrees that whatever The Joker is, it is a malevolent spirit. Once, it threw a bunch of dishes. It keeps to the basement, mainly in the boiler room and a small padded cell on the opposite end of the basement, and has appeared as an apparition and has grabbed and choked people. He is said to have ended his life in the padded cell. There are claims that this is a demon and that it is joined by four other demons down there. Uh huh. There are several other spirits in the building. Visitors and investigators claim that there is a spirit of a little girl. She has been heard playing and laughing and likes to play with toys. She has rolled balls when asked. There may also be a second child as well. Both seem to stick to the first floor and any poltergeist activity is attributed to them. There is a Puzzle Room where jigsaw puzzles still remain, partially completed, and that sometimes pieces follow guests home without them knowing. Toys light up on their own and move, doors slam on their own and people have heard the disembodied running of children. One of the most common things that happens is that stairway doors open and close on their own. Paranormal Investigator Noah Leigh was in the men's recreation side when his group heard a door close on its own.

Another spirit may be connected to a brutal rape that occurred in the manor on the first floor. People claim that there is an uncomfortable presence in that room. A woman in white has been seen on the second floor landing dozens of times. Is she connected to this rape or is she another woman? She vanishes after being seen. Paranormal investigator Marilsa, of Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee, claimed when the group investigated the manor that she saw a white mist near the ceiling while they were setting up. It's thought this might be connected to the lady in white.

We were watching this video by Twin Paranormal, which is a team of three young men, and the story they tell about one of the ghosts started this way, "This next story is about an elderly man in his fifties..." WHAT!? Geez Kelly, now we are elderly. Anyway, the story continues that his family abandoned him here at the manor and he was very upset about it. He decided to tie a bedsheet around a door handle and then around his neck and he hanged himself. This man is now seen walking the halls as a dark or shadow entity. Some stories claim that the man was actually a janitor who hanged himself in the janitor closet. Twin Paranormal had a ton of interaction, loud bangs and noises, lots of words coming across an ovilus. They were told that there were seven spirits there and that one is bad. About 30 minutes in there was an interaction that peaked our interest. They asked the spirits to either speak into a device or interact with the devices that were set up and the ovilus said, "We will hurt." Now, these guys assumed that perhaps the spirits were threatening them. We were wondering if the spirits were saying that touching the devices would hurt them. We've been told that in the past. They were down in the basement and when they asked where the Joker was, they got "Boiler Room" across the ovilus. During the hours long investigation "tall man" came up twice when the team mentioned The Joker. It is said that the Joker appears to be tall and slender. There is a Basement Kitchen Office and Cindy Anderson saw a tall male ghost down there with a brown cowboy type hat and a long duster coat. It was in the middle of the day. Could this have been the Joker?

Paranormal Quest investigated in 2022. They are a great team that goes into these places with respect and because of that, they got this endearing and sad interaction with a spirit that said its name was Mark and that he ended up here because he had PTSD from combat. "Please help" and "pray" came through the spirit box. They caught shuffling and loud thumping on video. @theamazingoz9764 commented under their video on YouTube, "I’ve toured it with my dad and felt something tap my shoulder with no one behind me." Ghost Adventures investigated during Season 11 Episode 1. Zak was sitting in the Padded Room and claimed to be "possessed" and felt an evil presence in there. Billy was in the Basement Laundry Room and a plate was knocked off a table and shattered and it spooked him real good. On the SLS camera they captured what appeared to be a figure the size of a child. Aaron said he saw a tall and slender figure down in the basement.

Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee wrote on their website, "Personal claims in the basement are not at all uncommon. On a previous investigation, one of our investigators was walking into the Main Basement Hallway from the Basement Kitchen together with a second investigator when she felt the second investigator pull on her arms as if to stop her. When the investigator turned around to see why she was being stopped, she realized that our other investigator was in another room at least twenty feet from her. During a recent public investigation at Edinburgh Manor, hosted by PIM, one of our guests claimed to experience what she described as a hand on the back of her neck which were at the same time cold and burning hot. Although she was completely fine after a minute or so, her neck was observed to have a pronounced red mark after this occurrence. Although we are unable to say that this was anything but a personal claim, it still adds to the mystery of Edinburgh Manor’s famous basement."  

Ace wrote a year ago, "Always love coming here, been here 8 times now and always seem to experience something new. I've caught a female's voice on evp in the boiler room responding to a question I asked. Also the last time we went on 9/12/22 the person i was with left the restroom house to meet me in the manor and she heard kids playing and screaming and we went across the street to the small cemetery at 9pm and as we were leaving to go back to the manor she heard a little kid laugh at me due to me saying it was creepy in the cemetery. Same night we went to 2nd floor of manor where we were told the resident of the back room liked bird songs so we set up an evp and a YouTube video of birds singing and as we were sitting in the hall in the dark we heard someone say something it was like a whisper but unfortunately the evp didn't catch it due to being turned off." 

A man named Sean had gone to the manor for a photo shoot and they did a little exploring after. He said, "Forgot to mention that while we were in the attic, we heard an organ playing. There is an organ in the front room as you walk through the front entrance, but it doesn't work." A paranormal group investigating in 2021 left a recorder in Room 200 and caught a clear EVP saying, "Hello." Another group wrote in a review, "Our group first went there in 2013 and we try to go there every year. Full body apparitions, beds being dragged, strange lights, and much more!"

Paranormal Investigator Chris Nielsen spent five days and nights alone in the manor back in 2013. He wrote the book "Fear and Fascination in Edinburgh Manor" about his experiences there. He told the Paranormal Housewife Blog this about the manor, "The place is alive. Some strange type of organism. Each individual spirit in the building contribute to making the Edinburgh Manor a ‘living’ thing, like cells in the body. The halls speak. The walls have eyes. If you listen closely, you can hear it breathe." She also shares on the blog, "He said that they have heard “blood curdling” screaming. People have asked why they were screaming inside the manor but it wasn’t either of them. Chris said that the sound echos down the hallways. Another thing that Chris said that he has experienced is hearing an infant crying. He said that hearing it really unsettled him. He said that a former employee was talking to him during an investigation when the former employee said that he use to hear an infant crying while he worked the night shift. Chris also said that sounds are constant in Edinburgh Manor. He said that knocks, taps, bumps, voices, doors slamming and other noises are constantly happening. He said that the first night he spent the night at the manor, he was only able to sleep for maybe half an hour because of all of the noises. 'The manor has a way of playing cat and mouse with whoever in it.' He recounted a time during an investigation that the group he was with listened to a full on conversation between an older man and what he assumed was a child...He said that he has heard both plates and chairs being thrown. He also warned that people do get touched. Some of it is light touches or hair being lifted up but they have seen bruises and other marks from the not as polite spirits that roam the halls...they have experienced disembodied humming, a small green light, and even a full bodied apparition. They have also played peek-a-boo with a shadow form. Chris also had a note about The Joker. He said that Kelly believes it is a former tenant who had a mental disability that kept him from socializing normally. Chris thinks its an old maintenance man who believes he still has a claim to the manor and likes to try to keep the manor his." 

Desination Fear investigated the Manor and they captured disembodied footsteps. In the basement they asked the Joker to set off a REM Pod across the room and it did. There was definite audible laughing in the distance in the basement. They captured a snarling EVP, which was very creepy. At the end of the EVP Session Dakota says that it is the spirits last chance to say something before they turn off the recorder and there is a very loud "No!" that sounded bizarre, like a screech or something.

*How we would go about investigating the basement.*

Edinburgh Manor is ripe for hauntings with its history. Poor farms and county homes and asylums all seem to be magnets for paranormal activity. Very few enter here without getting some kind of paranormal evidence. Is Edinburgh Manor haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 438 - Glore Psychiatric Musem

Moment in Oddity - The Wheel Bug (Suggested by Jannae McCabe)

There's an insect known as the wheel bug. It's found in Florida but is also known to be found from Rhode Island to California and further south into Mexico and Guatemala. This insect is part of the assassin bug family and measures 1 to 1 1/4 inches long. This insect is a dark, robust creature with long legs and antennae, a stout beak, large eyes on a slim head, and a prominent thoracic, semicircular crest that resembles a cogwheel. As steampunk fans, this insect caught our eye with its cogwheel feature immediately! These are largely considered beneficial insects as they prey upon many garden pests that harm crops and blooms, although they have also been known to prey upon bees and ladybugs and sometimes are cannibalistic. Interestingly, some brave souls have been known to keep these specimens as pets, however be forewarned, a bite from these little buggars has been compared to being more painful than a bee or wasp sting. But those who enjoy this insect state that once adapted, they are very unlikely to bite if handled gently. Although these insects can give many gardeners the creepy crawlies, the only insect species in the United States that sports a cogwheel as part of it's exoskeleton, certainly makes it odd.

This Month in History - Edison Patented the Electrographic Vote Recorder

In the the month of June, on the 1st, in 1869, Thomas Edison patented the Electrographic Vote Recorder. This invention was registered with patent #90,646 and was meant to be a voting machine for Congress. Legislative bodies would be able to record their votes accurately and instantaneously with this invention. Unfortunately, his creation stirred little interest and was never manufactured. This was the FIRST of Edison's 1,093 US patents. Some of Edison's most famous patents are the light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera, and storage battery. He meticulously recorded his work in 4,000 notebooks to protect his intellectual property, but also with hopes to influence generations of inventors. Despite the lackluster interest in his vote recorder, Thomas Edison went on to be one of the most inspiring inventors of all time.

Glore Psychiatric Museum

The term asylum means refuge and that is what lunatic asylums were meant to be, places of safety for those experiencing various forms of mental illness. But as we have found, very few asylums did more than house the mentally ill and use them as guinea pigs for various forms of torture. That is why so many of them have spiritual residue. The Glore Psychiatric Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri is a location that documents both in words and visual recreations, what life in an asylum was like for many people. Objects from many former asylums have become part of the collection and possibly have brought along attachments. Join us as we discuss the history of the former asylum that was here, the history of asylum treatments and the hauntings involved!

The rise of asylums began in Europe in the 17th century. Treatment of the mentally ill before this time was horrendous. The Age of Reason should have brought a time of better care for those suffering from mental illness, but that anything but the case. Rather than being places of refuge and care, asylums became like human zoos, places to store those not fit for society and observe their odd behavior. Bethlehem Royal Hospital was the earliest official mental asylum, opening their doors in 1247 in London. In later years, the asylum opened up their doors and charged for public viewings. Why take a stroll through the park when you can walk through the local asylum and tease the patients? Bethlehem Royal Hospital charged two pennies each for this kind of access. The doors leading into these areas were nicknamed the Penny Gates. And while it is horrifying to think people were walking through these places unsupervised, imagine what happened when the public had no access and asylums could do what they wanted unfettered with no public oversight.

Francis Fauquier was the Royal Governor of Virginia in 1758 and in 1766, he called on the House of Burgesses to establish a public hospital for confining and treating people “deprived of their reason…a poor unhappy set of people who are deprived of their senses and wander about the countryside, terrifying the rest of their fellow creatures.” The House of Burgesses agreed that a place needed to be built. The first public hospital for the mentally ill in America opened in October 1773 in Williamsburg, Virginia. And asylums continued to open throughout the United States. The Missouri General Assembly approved $200,000 for the creation of a second asylum in the state in 1872. They chose the city of Saint Joseph as the site for the State Lunatic Asylum No. 2, which opened on November 9, 1874. The original plan was a Kirkbride building, that would house 275 patients in 32 dormitories in 76 individual rooms, but the hospital actually started with 25 patients. Thomas Kirkbride had designed these plans for asylums to provide healing through architecture with lots of light. The wings were staggered to allow sunlight into all areas.

The first superintendent was Dr. George C. Catlett who had been a medical purveyor for the Confederate Army and oversaw the treatment of soldiers for several years. He wrote of the hospital that they were “taking it from mere name, bare walls, untenanted and unfurnished halls into a systematically arranged operating institution prepared to take its position in the benign firmament with its sister associates, and to be consecrated for all time to the noble work of reviving hope in the human heart and dispelling the portentous clouds that envelope and penetrate the intellects of minds diseased.”

Two years after opening, the asylum had 293 patients. This was on the route out west and families occasionally dropped off "problem" family members along the way. A new wing was added at this time and this was for more violent patients. This brought 120 more beds, which were eventually increased to 250 beds. A fire damaged much of the original Kirkbride building in 1879, but no one was killed thanks to the efforts of the staff. A new hospital building was constructed near the burned shell of the former asylum and the new asylum was opened in 1880. This new building could house more patients and had a bowling alley, billiards room and gym. And like many of the other asylums in the country, this one was completely self-sufficient with its own livestock and crops on a farm, a slaughterhouse, poultry house and greenhouse. They only needed to purchase sugar and salt. 

Dr. Charles Woodson became the new superintendent in 1890 and he brought some reforms with him. He asked to have a separate hospital building to be built for patients with contagious diseases. A Typhoid outbreak in 1893 was kept at a minimum because of this action. Woodson also was behind the building of a power plant on the property and getting a proper sewage system. He also installed pipes with small holes around the porch and when the weather was warm, staff would run water through them to produce artificial rain, which helped to calm the patients. This was a type of hydrotherapy. In 1899, the name was changed to the St. Joseph State Hospital. This took away the terms lunatic and asylum. Dr. Woodson would move on in 1907 and Dr. W.F. Kuhn came on board and he brought with him an exercise regiment. All patients were required to walk a mile every day. He also started staffing the men's wards with women, which was considered controversial at the time, but proved to be brilliant because the male patients were better behaved and more well-groomed with the women around. Kuhn also implemented a non-restraint policy.

The farm expanded under Dr. Kuhn's watch and patients started making things like furniture that could be sold to help raise money for the operations of the hospital. As the decades passed, the asylum became more crowded. Getting enough staff was always hard and became even harder during the World Wars when staff joined the military. The Red Cross Gray Ladies were brought in to help with the under staffing, but there were never enough beds or staff. After World War II, there were 2,485 patients in a mental hospital that was meant to serve far fewer people and the staff turnover was very high. This led to a series of experimental treatments being tried on patients, including lobotomies. Dr. Walter Freeman arrived at the St. Joseph Mental Hospital on July 8, 1949. That day, Freeman performed 10 lobotomies in three hours and the local paper reported that this gave patients hope that they could return back to their homes and their lives. As we know, lobotomies were not a good thing. Dr. Willis McCann came to the hospital in the 1950s and this era would end the labor work for patients. Most would be left to wander the halls or stare at TVs all day long. Tranquilizing drugs would be used to keep patients even. Climate control would come to the hospital.

Towards the end of the 1950s, a Dr. George Glore came to the hospital. He eventually became the director and in 1967, he started a little museum a ward of the St. Joseph State Hospital. This became the Glore Psychiatric Museum and was an extensive collection of implements used in the care of psychological disorders dating all the way back to the 16th century and carrying up to the 19th century. Glore spent most of his 41-year career with the Missouri Department of Mental Health gathering his collection. He retired in the 1990s. Most patients had been released by the early 1990s. In 1993, the Renz Correctional Farm was damaged in a flood and the 150 inmates were brought here temporarily. But the move proved to be permanent. In 1994, Missouri approved a bond to allow the asylum to be converted into a jail and today it houses around 600 inmates mostly serving time for drug charges called the Western Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center. The Glore Psychiatric Museum was moved into another building on the property. The rest of the patients were moved to a new facility in 1997 that is across the street from the original campus and was named Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation.

The Psychiatric Museum documents the times when patients were kept busy with menial tasks like sewing, cooking and farming. But they also got to hold dances, play croquet and board games and exercise on gymnastic equipment. The museum displays many artifacts from the mental hospital that include uniforms, medical equipment, artwork and photographs. One exhibit tells the story of a man who spent 72 years as a patient in the hospital. There is another exhibit featuring thousands of empty cigarette packs in a cage. Apparently, a nurse had told a patient that empty cigarette packs could be redeemed for a new wheelchair, so he saved them even though the nurse had been lying. The staff did eventually get him a new wheelchair for his efforts, which came to 100,000 packs. Another exhibit has an old TV stuffed full of 525 written notes. A patient thought he could communicate with the people on TV through these notes. A more disturbing display is a stomach contents one. A patient was suffering from pica and liked to swallow nails and other objects. This patient ended up swallowing 1,400 metal objects, including nails, screws, pins, bottle caps, bolts and buttons. She died on the operating table when the items were being removed. Someone arranged the objects into what looks like an ancient sculpture of a bursting sun. Visitors can even buy a postcard featuring this uh "sculpture."

Things were not as bad here at the State Hospital No. 2 as they were in other asylums. The museum reveals how patients who weren't docile were treated throughout the years. Those that were harder to maintain were locked away from the public and restrained and basically tortured in a variety of ways. Chains, Strait jackets, cages and Utica cribs were used. Utica cribs were popular in asylums during the latter half of the 19th century. The Utica Crib was invented in 1845 by Dr. M.H. Aubanel, who worked at the Marseilles Lunatic Asylum, and was introduced at the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica in 1846 by the first Medical Superintendent there, Dr. Amariah Brigham. This device was archaic at best and torture at worst. Different institutions designed different cribs, but they all basically were coffin-sized, enclosed boxes with wood slats or metal screening that latched closed. The term crib was used because they resembled cribs, but in a much narrower design. A patient could only lie flat inside. Superintendents that approved the use of the contraptions defended them by pointing out that all varieties of restraints were used on patients and this was just another form. They also pointed out that violent patients would become calm and stop acting out after hours of confinement in the crib. As the years progressed, there was enough of an outcry that the lids were removed from many of the cribs. 

Dr. William A. Hammond fought to remove all mechanical restraints from asylums. He wrote of the Utica crib, “It is a bed like a child’s crib, with slatted sides, eighteen inches deep, six feet long and three feet wide. It has a slatted lid which shuts with a spring lock. A lunatic put in it can barely turn over. There is not as much space between the patient’s head and the lid as if he were in a coffin. He is kept in the crib at the will of an attendant, the key being in the possession of the latter and not of a physician. Patients have sometimes died in these cribs. DR. MYCERT, who is an authority, says the crib is a most barbarous and unscientific instrument because there is already a tendency to a determination of blood to the brain in excited forms of insanity which is increased by the horizontal position in the crib and the struggles of the patient. The crib was introduced by the superintendent of the Utica asylum. The padded room could always be substituted for the crib.”

This was a difficult topic. Some patients needed some kind of restraint to protect them, especially at night. The crib was thought to be better than bed restraints. Perhaps it would not have been as objectionable if it were bigger, but there were doctors who thought that would make patients more able to get hurt. For some patients, the Utica crib might have been helpful for them, but as is the case with any kind of treatment or device, the possibility of abuse can be real trouble. Ten minutes in a Utica bed might be fine, but hours? Many patients were left for hours and even days like this. The Utica crib was far from being the worst implement used on patients in asylums however. 

There was the "Bath of Surprise", which was a large bathtub or tank with a platform in the middle that the patient would lie down upon. This platform could easily be submerged in the water, which was ice cold. The "Giant Patient Treadmill" was like a human-sized hamster wheel made of wood. Patients were said to be able to walk their worries away, but again, this was abused for patients who were not able to remain still. The wheel was used to exhaust them with exercise. There was the "Fever Cabinet" that was lined with rows of high wattage light bulbs, so the patient's body temperature could be raised and kill viruses like syphilis. The "Lunatic Box" was a more extreme form of the Utica bed. This was an upright, coffin-like box in which patients were confined. The "Tranquilizer Chair" was the worst form of confinement. This looked similar to an old electric chair with patients having the hands and feet locked into restraints and then a hood was put over their head. This chair had a built in portable toilet, which seems to indicate that a patient would be left in this chair for hours most probably naked. Benjamin Rush, the "Father of American Psychiatry," designed this chair. And then there were the rectal dilators...

There was a morgue on site at the St. Joseph Mental Hospital and many patients were buried on the grounds. The first burial took place on December 12, 1874 and the last burial was in October 1949. The cemetery probably has 2,000 burials, but only several hundred headstones. Did some of the patients decide to stay on in the afterlife. Are there attachments to some of the artifacts within the museum? No one knows for sure the answers, but many people have experienced strange things in the museum. The building itself had once been the surgery building, so people did die here and lobotomies were given here. Dr. Glore himself claimed to experience strange things in his museum. The apparition of a man has been seen near the elevators and he usually breaks into a run and screams. Museum employees, volunteers, and visitors all claim to here disembodied screaming throughout the building. Bursts of cold air have been felt.

The disembodied laughing of children is heard as well as the sound of crying and whimpering. The soft voice of a woman has been heard asking for help. The spirit of an elderly man is seen walking the hallways and a well-dressed male apparition is seen on the third floor. Sensitive visitors claim to feel intense feelings of despair. The basement is said to be the most haunted part of the building. We've heard that the freezers in the morgue are still kept cold. Which gives it an added creep factor. A male apparition down here asks visitors what they are doing. The sound of a gurney is heard down here as well. The motion detector in the basement goes nuts at random times when no one is supposed to be in the basement. EVP has caught a man screaming "Get out!"

Troy Taylor of American Hauntings visited the museum with a small group of people one night and he walked away from the group to visit a Civil War medical display. He heard disembodied footsteps coming down the hallway. It sounded like they were coming from someone wearing hard-soled shoes. Troy glanced behind him and saw that the corridor was completely empty. The footsteps continued to come towards him and then walked past him and continued into the darkness down the hallway. Three women in the group passed a room with the door closed and they heard voices inside. They assumed some other members of the group were investigating in there, so they kept going, but one of the women went back just to verify that someone was in the room and when she opened the door, she found no one in the room. Troy recounts the experiences of a woman named Becky Ray in his book Cabinet of Curiosities 3. She had heard knocks on the third floor. She said, "While it may have been coincidence, the knocking corresponded with not only our requests for knocks, but how many knocks. We tracked the source of the sound down to a door that was locked. At this point, we all took turns listening at the door and several of us heard what sounded like a child's voice coming from the other side." A staff member unlocked the door and the office behind was completely empty.

Glore Psychiatric Museum has been named one of the "Top 50 Most Unique Museums" in the country and quite possibly it could also be one of the most haunted. Is the Glore Psychiatric Hospital haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 335 - St. Albans Sanatorium

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Moment in Oddity - Oran Asa Pruitt Falls Out of Plane Into Cemetery
Suggested by: Mike Streibel

We've all had that nightmare where you are falling through the sky, but imagine if it was not a nightmare. This is what happened to Oran Asa Pruitt in 1956. He and his wife Blandene Smith were newlyweds who had met while working at a hotel together in North Carolina. They arrived at the Charlotte Airport on June 13, 1956 with plans to leave on their honeymoon, but they had not prepared properly and they arrived late. They could not board their flight, but were given another one leaving at 5:44pm for Asheville. They got the last two seats aboard a Piedmont N45V, a DC3, known as the "Tidewater Pacemaker." The airplane was piloted by Captain Baxter Slaughter and experienced a tragedy in the skies over Shelby, N.C. as it cruised at 6,500 feet. Blandene was not feeling well and so Oran got up to get her some water. He found the lavatory door at the rear of the plane locked, so he tried the other door back there, which happened to be a cabin door. The Purser felt the change in pressure and went to the cockpit to get the co-pilot to help him with closing the door. They found a terrified woman trapped in the lavatory because she needed to walk past the open door to return to her seat. The two men locked arms to form a chain and pulled the woman to safety, but they couldn't close the door. The plane continued on to Asheville. When it landed and people started investigating, they found heel marks on the side of the plane indicating that Mr. Pruitt had hung on for a while. Witnesses in the area where he eventually landed, reported hearing his screaming. He was more than likely alive for most of the fall. The place where Pruitt's fall ended was ironically Zion Baptist Church Cemetery in Cleveland County. To memorialize the fall, a small monument was placed in the spot where Pruitt landed. He was buried at another cemetery. He was the first Piedmont passenger to die in their eight years of prior service. No one knows why Pruitt opened that door. Was it an accident, was he drunk or had a fight he was having with his wife caused him to act in a drastic way? Whatever the case may be, a man falling out of a plane and landing in a cemetery, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - The Penny Black Stamp is Issued

In the month of May, on the 6th, in 1840, the Penny Black was issued. The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp to be used by a public postal system. The name came from the fact that the background of the stamp was black and it cost a penny, thus the Penny Black. The face of the stamp featured a profile of Queen Victoria, which was engraved by Charles Heath and his son Frederick. They based their design on a sketch done by Henry Corbould inspired by an 1834 cameo-like head made of Queen Victoria by William Wyon. The stamp was embellished in the corners with Maltese crosses with solar discs radiating out in the center. The Penny Black made it possible to mail things at a flat rate rather than the usual where the recipient paid upon delivery. The stamp was only used for a year because it was hard to see the red cancellation stamp over the black and people were able to re-use the stamps. In February 1841, the Penny Black became the Penny Red and black ink was used to cancel them, which was harder to remove and thus the stamps weren't re-used.

St. Albans Sanatorium (Suggested by: Whitney Zahar)

St. Albans Sanatorium, in Virginia, started out as a Lutheran Boys School before becoming a psychiatric infirmary. As was the case with so many hospitals for the mentally ill, this one started out with promising expectations that unraveled into crowded conditions and abusive treatments. There were deaths and suicides. There is so much paranormal activity at this location, that many refer to this as one of the most haunted places on the East Coast. Join us, and our listener Whitney Zahar, as we delve into the history and haunts of the St. Albans Sanatorium!

Radford, Virginia is located in the Shenandoah Valley and was named for Dr. John B. Radford, but that name wasn't the original. This town had been Lovely Mount and started with a few settlers and stayed a small village until the railroad was built and the town grew. Once the depot was established, the name was changed in 1891. Radford was a railroad town and then it became a hotbed for manufacturing with creameries, preserve plants, piping plants and an ice company. This is where the St. Albans Sanatorium would be built. But before that, the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain would take place in Dublin, Virginia, which was just a few miles away. The ridge that St. Albans would call home proved to be the perfect spot from which the Union could fire off artillery on the Confederate forces of Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins. This battle finally went to hand-to-hand combat and was fiercely fought for about an hour, ending with the Confederates retreating. Jenkins died later from a wound he received during the battle. The Union had 688 casualties while the Confederate's had 538, some of whom were killed by a fire that broke out on the battlefield.

St. Albans Sanatorium was originally meant to be a Lutheran Boys School and was built in 1892. George W. Miles was the Headmaster and his goal was to help the students to grow to be "future southern gentlemen." The high standards caused a lot of hazing and this inevitably ended up with suicides and even some homicides. The school eventually closed in 1905. Dr. John C. King bought the building for $500 of his own money, plus $16,000 in borrowed funds. He renovated the buildings to become a sanatorium and opened it on January 15, 1916. There were 56 acres and like many other sanatoriums and asylums, this was its own community with a farm, dairy herd, chickens and much more.

Patient numbers increased and by 1945, the hospital had treated 6509 patients. St. Albans eventually became a fully recognized hospital in 1960 and in the 1980s it became a private, full service psychiatric hospital. The hospital eventually relocated to new buildings and the property went to the Radford University Foundation in 2004. The oldest building was slated for demolition in 2007, but was saved by a group of concerned citizens. The next owner of the property was Tim Gregory and he transformed the place into the Research and Enlightenment Center. St. Albans was then opened for tours and that is what it does today, also hosting overnight paranormal investigations.

There is a lot of paranormal activity reported here and Whitney Zahar shared some cool experiences. Is St. Albans Sanatorium haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 333 - Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

This episode sponsored by Kobo Audiobooks, check out http://kobo.com/HISTORYGOESBUMP and use code HISTORY40 for 40% off and also by the History or His Story Podcast at http://hisstorypodcast.com.

Moment in Oddity - The Mystery of Skeleton Lake

In 1942, a British troop in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery that came to be known as the Mystery of Skeleton Lake. And that is just what they found. A lake full of skeletons, only this lake was frozen. This lake was 16,000 feet above sea level and set at the bottom of a small valley. The troop waited for the summer thaw to investigate it properly and they were left with two big questions: what year were they from and what killed some 200 people? Since the war was on, many suspected that these were Japanese soldiers who were sneaking through the air and died of exposure. Archaloegists studied the bones and found they they were much older, so the skeletons could not belong to Japanese soldiers. The dry, cold air had preserved the bones and scientists found that they dated to around 850 AD. Now they needed to figure out what had killed these people. Was it some kind of exposure? Had there been an epidemic? Was there a natural disaster? Was this some kind of weird death ritual? Modern DNA tests helped scientists to figure out that these were two different ethnic groups and based on clothing and items found nearby, that this was probably a traveling group of people who were being lead by a hired group of local guides. Studying the skulls revealed little deep cracks and the only other wounds found were on the shoulders, leading experts to believe that the blows came from above. But it didn't seem that weapons had made the wounds. This was probably a weather event and based on stories we hear about baseball-sized hail stones, it's easy to believe that being out in an open valley during one of these storms, could lead to massive head trauma. That is what scientists concluded. And an old Himalayan folk song lends some credence to that theory because its lyrics describe a goddess raining death down on those who defile her mountain with hailstones that were as "hard as iron." Finding a large group of skeletons frozen in a lake some 1,800 years after a hailstorm killed them all, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Hank Aaron Beats Babe Ruth's Home Run Record

In the month of April, on the 8th, in 1974, Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run. Aaron was born in 1934 in Mobile, Alabama to a poor family. He practiced by hitting bottle caps with a stick and made balls and bats out of anything he could find laying around. Aaron dreamed of being like his hero Jackie Robinson and just like Robinson, when he finally made it into the Negro American League in 1951, he experienced some overt racism. For three months, he played for the Indianapolis Clowns and then he got two offers from the MLB, one from the Boston Braves and the other from the New York Giants. He went with the Braves because they offered hom $50 more a month. His teammates called him "Pork Chops" because he ate them for almost every meal. 1955 was a banner year for him in which he hit with a .314 batting average with 27 home runs and 106 RBIs. Each year he did even better. In 1969, Aaron passed Mickey Mantle's total home runs and moved into third place on the career home run list, behind Willie Mays and Babe Ruth. When Aaron closed in on Babe Ruth's record, he started receiving death threats. He actually feared that he wouldn't live long enough to surpass that record. Aaron broke the record on that April day in 1974 in front of a record breaking Braves' crowd. Aaron ended his career with 755 home runs and he retired in 1976.

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (Suggested by listener Astrid)


Creepy. That's the one word we hear from everyone who has ever visited the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. This was a place of immense sadness that was for many years home to the mentally ill and other unfortunate souls. The name would change later to Weston State Hospital. The hospital closed in 1994, but the building reopened as a historic site offering tours. And as is the case with so many of these places, one can investigate the paranormal here and there are so many stories of unexplained experiences coming out of this place, that it is hard not to believe that this is one of the most haunted places in the world. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

West Virginia is a gorgeous state and one full of mystique. We've shared before about the legends of this state that is completely engulfed in the Appalachian Mountains. This is a state of coal mines, rolling hills and trees. There are many well known haunted locations here as well with this being the home of the Mothman, Flatwoods Monster, Moundsville Penitentiary and Lake Shawnee and Harper's Ferry, both of which are on our suggestions list. The settlers who founded Weston, West Virginia seemed to have a tough time choosing a name for their town. The town was founded as Preston in 1818 and changed to Fleshersville right after that and then finally they chose Weston in 1819 and that was the one that would stick. Weston incorporated in 1846. The Museum of American Glass is here with over 20,000 pieces on display including historic glass and art pieces. This would also be the place chosen to build the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

The former asylum is located at 71 Asylum Drive and is the largest hand cut stone building in America and the second largest in the world, falling just behind Moscow's haunted Kremlin. Stone masons came from Germany and Ireland to cut the stones. As was the case with many of the asylums we've covered, Trans-Allegheny was designed following the Kirkbride plan. Thomas Kirkbride thought of mental illness in a different way then many people of his time. He believed that the mentally ill could be treated and cured. This could be facilitated with moral care, which is just basically good food, lots of rest, exercise, light and getting out in nature. And he came up with a design that would work better for asylums and wrote about it in his book "On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane With Some Remarks on Insanity and Its Treatment." This design was in a flattened V shape, branching out like stair steps on each side. This would allow for ventilation and sunshine for every room. One side of the V was for men and the other for women and the outer reaches of the wings were reserved for the toughest cases.

Architect Richard Andrews designed Trans-Allegheny according to the Kirkbride plan. Construction was begun in 1858, using prison labor, and would not be completed until 1881. One reason for the delay was the Civil War. During the War in 1861, the Union 7th Ohio Infantry took over the asylum and called it Camp Tyler. This was an important military post. Despite not being completed, the first patients were welcomed in 1864. The asylum was meant for a total of 250 patients, but far more would end up being housed here. Studying the architecture of the asylum, it is easy to see the Gothic and Tudor Revival style influences. There are Tudor arches, drip moulds above the windows and the very distinctive Curvilinear gables, which is what is seen at the top front of The Alamo. There is a central clock tower that was completed in 1871 that looks a bit out of place and is painted white. Segregated rooms for people of color were added in 1873. When construction was finished, the asylum was like its own little community like all those that came before and after it. There was a vegetable garden, a dairy, a waterworks, a gasworks and three cemeteries. The apothecary in the old Civil War Wing offered an assortment of medicinal items from thorazine to heroin to bourbon!

Things started out good with positive intentions, but this would unravel over time. By 1880, there were nearly 500 more patients being cared for than the hospitals maximum of 250. These numbers just rose until there was a peak of 2,600 patients in the 1950s. Clearly, this caused overcrowding and poor sanitation. Obviously, not just the mentally ill were housed here. People could be sent here for a number of reasons including epilepsy and addiction and even very trivial matters like a husband who just didn't like his strong-willed wife talking back to him. Women could get committed by their husbands for reasons like "disappointed affection," "imaginary female trouble," "medicine to prevent conception" and "time of life." Unruly patients were often locked in cages. In 1913, Trans-Allegheny became Weston State Hospital, but the name change did nothing for conditions. In the 1980s, the population was lowered. The hospital was closed in 1994 when another hospital was built. For many years, the buildings on the campus were left abandoned and many areas were damaged by vandals and the elements. The Weston Hospital Revitalization Committee, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, was formed in 2000 to help preserve the buildings. Joe Jordan bought the property for $1.5 million in 2007 and they have put together a museum and offered historical and ghost tours ever since. His daughter Rebecca Gleason is now the operations manager.

Many forms of therapy were used on the patients and doctors liked to experiment. There were cold baths, electro-shock therapy, insulin-shock therapy, bloodletting and confinement cribs. One of the darkest stains on the history for Trans-Allegheny was its West Virginia Lobotomy Project headed up by Walter Freeman. This project started in the early 1950s and was authorized by the West Virginia Board of Control. There was a control group of 228 patients who were subjected to transorbital lobotomy. The procedure led to four fatalities, two of them due to hemorrhage and two to dehydration. After a year, eighty-five of the subjects were released from the hospital. The main goal of this project and for even doing the lobotomies was to help empty out the hospitals. Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, pioneered the method and Freeman adopted it in 1936. He was the one who named it "lobotomy" and he was the one that developed what we consider to be the barbaric transorbital version of the lobotomy. This was basically using an ice pick through the eye, beating it with a mallet to get into the skull and severing the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain by moving that ice pick around. Most patients did not consent to the procedure. The project ended in 1955 and there seemed to be no positive outcome. Violent patients were docile, but they also were basically catatonic. (STAT Podcast did a series featuring Freeman back in 2017 that was excellent.)

 Some of the things listed as reasons for being committed:

    Asthma
    Epilepsy
    Dementia
    Tuberculosis
    Addiction
    Seduction
    Egotism
    Bad whiskey
    Indigestion
    Doubt about his mother’s ancestors
    Loss of arm
    Change of life
    Menstrual derangement
    Childbirth
    Disappointed love
    Death of sons in war
    Overstudy of Religion
    Domestic trouble
    Laziness
    Snuff Eating for 2 Years
    Reading too many novels
    Masturbation
    Fits
    Desertion of husband

Thirteen buildings still stand on the property. The total acreage of the property is an ominous 666 acres. There are countless ghost stories connected to the place. They all seemed to start after the hospital was abandoned, but that doesn't mean that there were not experiences while the asylum still had patients. Many ghost programs have featured this location from Ghost Hunters to Ghost Adventures to Portals to Hell to Paranormal Lockdown. Several areas that can be toured and investigated include the operating room, apartments and morgue. Trans-Allegheny could be straight out of a horror movie with dim and dingy hallways full of peeling paint, crumbling floors and broken windows. And even though it has been undergoing extensive renovations for years, it still looks as though it were abandoned. The experiences that people have run the gamut of everything we have heard about from every other reputedly haunted location: cold spots, strange sounds, disembodied voices, apparitions of doctors and nurses and patients.

Jim James was a former patient who liked cigarettes. Investigators are usually able to coax him into communicating by offering him one. Marisa Kashino visited the asylum in 2018 and wrote an article for the Washingtonian sharing her experiences during an investigation. Jim was one of the spirits she believed she interacted with and she wrote, "We placed a Maglite on the floor and asked Jim to turn it on. The light was Julia’s, but I inspected it and it seemed totally ordinary. A few beats passed—then it came on. By itself. I offered Jim a cigarette to turn it back off. It went dark."

The Apothecary in the Civil War Wing reputedly hosts black or dark figures or masses. This is said to be a very haunted area of the main building. Guides claim to hear disembodied voices and doors slamming. One night, a guide witnessed a door slamming against the wall over and over and there was no one near the door. Another guide had the most traumatic event he had ever experienced in the pharmacy one night. His name is Mike Heath and he was assaulted by a spirit. He came through the door and felt four fingers press against his back and push him forward in a violent way. It was the first time that anything in the building had touched him.

Eddie is a former patient who liked to play poker. He seems to like to communicate with flashlights and was documented doing so during a visit that the New York Times paid to the location in 2013. The author of the article was John Searles and he found himself wondering if his guide had some way of controlling the flashlight. Diane had often wondered the same thing until our own investigations with our own flashlight started going on and off without us being anywhere near it. Searles writes, "As soon as we set up our cots, a strange noise — like something heavy being dragged across a floor — started coming from a distant part of the asylum. Thomas sat up and asked if I had heard it. At first, I told him that it was coming from that ghost-free waiting area, which was not far away. But then we heard the sound again, this time unmistakably coming from the space near that rusted cage door that led to the lobotomy area. When we heard the sound a third time, louder than before, Thomas bolted. He returned with Copperhead. The three of us walked quietly with our flashlights through a series of rooms, some with old hospital equipment still in them and bars on the windows, until we entered a room that had what looked to be roofing material on the floor. Copperhead stepped on it with his boot, and we heard that distinctive dragging sound. We were in the off-limits part of the asylum, where no one else was supposed to be, so that meant the noise we had heard had to be otherworldly. I couldn’t help but feel as if we were in a 'Scooby-Doo' episode, and at any moment we would figure out who had been trying to scare us away."

The Women's Auxiliary Building is the second oldest building on the property and no one is allowed access in this building. The building is in real sad shape, so it is not surprising. The show Paranormal Lockdown did get to go inside on episode 1 of their first season. Nick and Katrina caught a very clear EVP answering "Yes" when they asked if they had seen a figure standing in a room here. They then got a "No" when they asked if the spirit knew it was dead. They also felt an electrical charge and the owner, Rebecca, who was giving them the tour, had goosebumps on her arms. It was hard to tell the gender of the voice on the EVP. Nick and Katrina returned to this building the next night with their Geobox, which is an upgraded spirit box or something, and they picked up two voices. The first said, "Hello" in a female voice and the second was male and said, "Don't say a word."

Up on the fourth floor, Paranormal Lockdown caught the creepiest thing I've seen if it was the real deal. This is a floor that Nick was afraid of because he had seen a shadow figure up here during a previous visit. He spent the first night up there in the complete dark with a camera on him that had night vision and there was a sound that he didn't make and is hard to describe, kind of like a banging. When the crew was up there earlier, the camera man and Nick both heard something say, "Shhh." On the final night of their 72 hours, the camera man is taping Nick and Katrina and then he hears something and sees something behind them slithering in the dark along the floor. They played it over and over, Kelly and I watched it, and it is strange. If it wasn't some extra person on the property crawling slowly across the ground, then I don't know what the hell it was. Both Nick and Katrina seemed shocked to see it when the camera man replayed it for them, so I lean towards legit and it gives you chills.

A little girl named Lilly is said to have been born at the asylum and now haunts the hallways and plays with toys left for her. She lived to be nine-years-old and then died. Another version of the story claims that she was dropped off by her parents and abandoned. Her spirit is seen as a full-bodied apparition wearing a white dress. Her disembodied giggling is sweet, but also very unnerving. Lily's Room, which is full of scattered toys, is located on the first floor of Ward Four in the eastern corner. A music box in this room plays on its own and Lily interacts with guides. Usually this manifests with balls rolling across the floor by themselves. She also will turn off and on flashlights when asked.

One story claims a patient named Jane Harvey killed herself in the asylum and is said to haunt it now. On the first floor is the spirit of a patient named Ruth who apparently hated men. It is said that she still hates men and tends to throw things at them during investigations. A Civil War ghost named Jacob hangs out on the 4th floor of the main building. A murderer named Slewfoot was murdered himself and is now apparently haunting the place, particularly in the shower area where he was killed.

Ward F housed the most aggressive male patients and Ward C housed the most dangerous female patients. A patient named Joe was one of those who was violent and he decided to take his fury out on a lobotomized patient named Charlie. A former employee claimed that Joe had been a serial killer before coming to the asylum. The Portals of Hell show referred to the victim as Dean, so we're not sure what his name really was, but what happened to him was horrible. A nurse recalled that Joe got some other patients to help him string Charlie up to an overhead pipe in an attempt to hang him. They lowered Charlie to the floor picked up a metal-framed bed and put the leg against his forehead and then jumped up and down on the bed, driving the bedpost into Charlie's skull. Charlie's spirit is believed to have remained here because of this tragic event. Another employee claimed that two men had been murdered in the same way, but we have only heard that this one time, so not sure about the accuracy of that claim.

knight 1431 on TripAdvisor in March 2020: "I got touched down my face while walking on the first floor heading to the Civil War area of the wing, stopped me dead in my tracks. filmed activity in Lilly's room and got activity on my Mel-Meter while talking to"The Sarge" in the Civil War section of the Asylum. I also picked up anomalies on the fourth floor in the Addiction section of the Wing with my SLS CAmera."

There are so many tales of experiences at the asylum. It would seem most everyone who enters either feels something, sees something or experiences something. Is the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 121 - Athens Lunatic Asylum

Moment in Oddity - The Life of Jeremy Bentham
by: Bob Sherfield

Born in February 1748, Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and social reformer who is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. A child prodigy, Bentham went to Queens College Oxford in 1760, aged 12, completing his bachelor’s degree in 1763 and his masters in 1766 aged only 18. Though called to the bar in 1769, Bentham never practised due to his deep frustration with the complexity of the English legal code. It was these concerns for legal reform that led Bentham to design a prison building he called the Panopticon. Though never built, the concepts he came up with influenced the design of many of the early American prisons, such as Eastern State Penitentiary. His philosophy was centred on the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." He was a leader in the field of Anglo-American philosophy of law and he promoted the politically radical ideas of welfarism, individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce and the decriminalisation of homosexual acts. Ideas that for the 18th century were highly controversial, some of which are only now being accepted and implemented. Bentham’s radical way of looking at things didn’t end when he died in 1832. He left instructions in his will that his body be dissected in front of an invited group of friends and displayed as an auto-icon. The head and skeleton were preserved and placed in a wooden cabinet called an Auto-icon, with the skeleton dressed in Bentham’s clothes and padded out with straw. In 1850, it was moved to University College London, an institution that he had ties to, and placed in the South Cloister of the College where it is displayed to this day. Unfortunately, the mummification process employed on the head was not a success, leaving it dried and darkened with skin stretched taut over the skull. This led to the auto-icon being given a wax head, fitted with some of his actual hair. For many years the skull was kept in a box within the cabinet, and then on a plinth nearby, but after repeated student pranks that involved stealing it and holding it for ransom to get charitable donations and smuggling it to a railway station in Scotland, it is now safely kept locked away. The final straw had been a prank that involved students using the skull to play soccer. As to why Bentham wanted to be displayed this way after his death, no one is sure; it may have been from a sense of self importance, or perhaps as a way of questioning religious sensibilities about life and death. Either way, it certainly is odd.

This Day in History - Joan of Arc Arrives at the Siege of Orleans
by: Jessica Bell

On this day, April 29th, in 1429, Joan of Arc arrives at the siege of Orleans. Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans," was born in 1412 in France. The daughter of a tenant farmer, she was not taught to read or write, but her mother instilled in her a deep love for the Catholic Church and its teachings. At the age of 13, Joan began to hear voices, which she determined had been sent by God to give her a mission of overwhelming importance, which was to save France by expelling its enemies, and to install Charles as its rightful king. She took a vow of chastity and stopped her father from trying to force her into an arranged marriage. In 1428, Joan made her way to a stronghold of those loyal to Charles. Initially rejected by the local magistrate, she attracted a small band of followers who believed her claims to be the virgin who according to a popular prophecy, was destined to save France. When the magistrate relented, Joan cropped her hair and dressed in men’s clothes to make the 11-day journey across enemy territory to the site of the crown prince’s palace. Joan promised Charles she would see to the expelling of the English and would have him installed as the rightful king. Joan asked for an army to lead to Orléans, which was under siege from the English. Against the advice of his advisors, Charles granted her request, and Joan set off for Orléans in March of 1429 dressed in white armor and riding a white horse. By June, the French defeated the English, and in July with Joan at his side, Charles VII was crowned the king of France, But sadly he was not fully convinced of her divine inspiration. In 1430, Joan was captured and ransomed to the English who planned on using her as a propaganda prize. Due to concerns from his advisors that Joan was becoming too powerful, Charles VII distanced himself from Joan and made no attempt to have her released. In the trial that followed, Joan was ordered to answer to some 70 charges against her, including witchcraft, heresy and dressing like a man. In May 1431, after a year in captivity and under threat of death, Joan relented and signed a confession, denying that she had ever received divine guidance. On the morning of May 30, at the age of 19, Joan was burned at the stake. Her fame increased after her death, and 20 years later a new trial ordered by Charles VII cleared her name. Long before Pope Benedict XV canonized her in 1920, Joan of Arc had attained mythic stature, inspiring numerous works of art and literature over the centuries and becoming the patron saint of France.

Athens Lunatic Asylum (Suggested by listener Tracy Martin, Research Assistant Jenni Watt)

The Athens Lunatic Asylum is an institution that operated in Athens, Ohio from 1874 until 1993. This hospital not only has a strange and morbid history, but it has gone through a series of name changes. Today it is known as The Ridges, a name it took on in the 1990s. While it was operational the hospital served thousands including Civil War vets, children and violent convicted criminals. The Ridges are now part of Ohio University and house the Kennedy Museum of Art, an auditorium, offices, classrooms and storage facilities. The facility also houses something else. Spirits of those who have died here have decided to remain. There are legends, tales of seances and unwashable stains that are all part of the paranormal happenings at this location. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Athens Lunatic Asylum!

Mound builders were the original residents of Athens, Ohio. Both the Adena Culture and Ohio Hopewell called this area home. The Shawnee moved in much later and were the primary tribe here by the 18th century. It would not be until 1797 that the first Europeans would arrive. Athens County was established in 1805 and named for Athens, Greece. The town of Athens would incorporate in 1811, but it wouldn't become an official city until 1912. The Hocking River passed through Athens and the Hocking Canal opened in 1843 to enable shipping. The railroad arrived in 1857, bringing more people and commerce.

The Athens Lunatic Asylum was built on farm land owned by Arthur Coates and Eliakim H. Moore Farms on high ground south of town. The property included over 1000 acres. 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. The architect for the original building was Levi T. Scofield of Cleveland. The designs of the buildings and grounds were influenced by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, a 19th-century physician who authored an influential treatise on hospital design called, "On the Construction, Organization and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane." We've discussed Kirkbride buildings in past asylum episodes and these designs are most recognizably characterized by their "bat wing" floor plan and often lavish Victorian-era architecture.  The main building included an administration building and two wings that included three sections. The males were housed in the left wards and females in the right. They each had their own specific dining halls. There was room to house 572 patients in the main building, which was almost double of what Kirkbride had recommended. The building itself was 853 feet long and 60 feet in width. Also built onto the main building in the back were a laundry room and a boiler house. The main building was built from bricks, which were fired on-site from clay dug on-site.

The institution provided its own utilities with electricity coming from plants on the property powered by steam turbo-generators and water came from wells there. Heat was provided by coal-fired boilers. Seven cottages were constructed to house more patients that were grouped together dormitory style. The hospital grounds were designed by Herman Haerlin of Cincinnati, who also designed the grounds for Ohio University. There were ponds, fountains and gardens, which the doctors believed would help patients recover from their mental afflictions. Eventually there would be 78 buildings built on the property and care would go from good to horrible as overcrowding and new forms of treatment were used to experiment on patients.

The asylum started with 200 patients. The first patient at Athens was believed to have been Thomas Armstrong from Belmont County and then there was Daniel Fremau. Fremau apparently thought he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. Reasons why people were considered insane varied and there were weird theories on why people became mentally ill. Many of these are quite laughable to us today and include intemperence (a lack of restraint), dissipation (wasteful spending and activities) and, of course, masturbation for men and postpartum depression, menopause and menstral derangements for women. No joke, in 1876, eighty-one men and one woman were diagnosed as having their insanity caused by masturbation. Also, fifty-six men and one woman were diagnosed as having their insanity caused by intemperance and dissipation. During this same period of time, 51 women were diagnosed with something similar to postpartum depression, 32 women with menopause or change of life issues and 29 women with "menstrual derangements."

Epilepsy was also considered a major cause of insanity and was another reason for admission to the hospital in the early years. Historically, this was not uncommon, a lot of people who suffered from epilepsy were either considered cursed by witchcraft, possessed by the devil and or insane. 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 hospital's operation. Overall, common ailments faced today such as epilepsy, menopause, alcohol addiction and tuberculosis were cause for enrollment in the hospital.

Within two years of its opening, the hospital was renamed The Athens Hospital for the Insane. Through the following years, the hospital would be called the Athens Asylum for the Insane, the Athens State Hospital, the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center, the Athens Mental Health and Developmental Center, and then (again) the Athens Mental Health Center. Obviously, they weren’t very decisive when it came to naming the place.

Treatments at the hospital were considered cutting edge at the time, but we see them as barbaric in our current era. One such treatment was hydrotherapy, in which patients were submerged in ice-cold water for extended periods of time or sometimes they were wrapped in sheets which had been soaked in ice water and restrained. Another treatment was electroshock therapy, which was administered to patients in one of two ways. The first was to submerge the patient in a water tank and apply an electrical current through the water. The other was to place brine-soaked electrodes directly to the temples. A patient held a rubber piece in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue off during the convulsions which followed a treatment.

And then there was the infamous lobotomy for which Athens was famous. There were two types of lobotomies performed: the original and the trans-orbital. An original lobotomy required a patient to have their skulls opened and their neural passages separated midway through the brain. This difficult and arduous procedure killed many people, but those who survived did in fact forget many of their depressive or psychotic tendencies. They also forgot a lot of other things, like how to maintain property bodily functions. It was not uncommon for patients to defecate down their legs. Doctors were more concerned with streamlining the process, than actually providing true treatment.We've discussed the trans-orbital lobotomy before, but as a refresher, it was developed by Dr. Walter J. Freeman in the early 1950s. It was a simpler process and thus became something of a craze in mental health circles up through the 1960s. Dr. Freeman's method involved knocking the patient unconscious with electric shocks, then rolling an eyelid back and inserting a thin metal icepick-like instrument called a leucotome through a tear duct. A mallet was used to tap the instrument the proper depth into the brain. Next it was sawed back and forth to sever the neural receptors. Sometimes this was done in both eyes. There is some evidence that this method actually helped some people with very severe conditions, but much more often, the patient had horrible side effects and in many cases ended up nearly catatonic. It also killed a whole bunch of people.

For many years, the hospital was the biggest employer in the surrounding area, although a large percentage of the work it took to maintain the facility, was carried out by the patients. Doctors and physicians believed this was not only therapeutic for patients, but it was also free to the hospital itself. By the end of the 1950s, most treatment incorporated drugs, which left patients unable to carry out their duties. Most of the non-patient employees at the asylum were not even trained and had little experience working with people who had mental illness. Most were employed because they were burly men who could physically control the patients. Also starting in the 1950s, the asylum became a place where people would leave unwanted relatives claiming they couldn't take care of them or they couldn't afford to have them around. These discarded people included the elderly, the homeless and “rebellious” teenagers. The situation got so bad that soon the asylum's population was at three times the recomended amount, with 2,000 people being housed there.

One of the more famous patients at the Asylum was multiple personality rapist Billy Milligan. He was sent to Athens by a Franklin County judge in 1977 for treatment after his insanity plea was accepted by prosecutors. His case was the first time an insanity plea was accepted in American history. Milligan's crimes included the kidnap and rape of three women on the campus at Ohio State University. Milligan reportedly had suffered from mutliple personality disorder since early childhood. His story was told in the book "The Minds of Billy Milligan" by Daniel Keyes, who was also the author of "Flowers for Algernon."

Many people died at the asylum and they were buried in a cemetery on the property. There are 1,930 people buried at the three cemeteries located on the site. 700 women and 959 men lay under headstones marked only with numbers. In 1943, the State of Ohio began putting names, births, and deaths, on the markers of the patients who died instead of numbers and no one knows why this switch was made. By the 1980s, the state no longer took care of the cemeteries, which made it easy for outsiders to vandalize them. And nature brought damage as well with headstones being uprooted and broken. The stones marking where patients were buried were in desperate need of repair. Beginning in 2000, the Athens, Ohio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) started the reclamation for the cemeteries, taking on the work that was once the responsibility of the Ohio Department of Mental Health. NAMI worked to help restore the cemeteries at the Asylum to their original states. The State of Ohio had always allowed families to erect private markers at the graves of their loved ones, but very few families were made aware that they could do this, so few are personally marked in that way.

Since the takeover, more information has been discovered about the patients that are buried in the three cemeteries. Much of the recovered information is about the veterans that had spent the remaining days of their lives at the Asylum. Many of these veterans did not receive honors and only 19 have had any recognition. There are 80 veterans that are buried at The Ridges. To find these “lost” veterans, a special search was added to the broader research project that had been organized to uncover background information on the over 1,900 patients buried in the Asylum’s three cemeteries. Of these veterans, two fought in the Mexican War, sixty-eight fought in the Civil War, one was a member in the Confederate Army and another two veterans served with the United States Colored infantry. There are three veterans who served in the Spanish–American War and seven fought in World War I. Some of the other veterans that are buried here were active duty in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.

NAMI implemented other practices to honor the dead buried in the cemeteries at The Ridges. Besides helping replace grave stones and keeping the grounds in proper condition, starting in 2005, The Ridges Cemeteries Committee has been organizing Memorial Day Ceremonies for the many veterans buried at the asylum. Prior to 2005, the veterans had never received such honors. NAMI started the Memorial Day Ceremonies to help restore dignity to the patients and recognize the sacrifice of the veterans, many who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as other post war symptoms. With the Help of the Athens County Veterans Service Office and a special appropriation from the Athens county Commissioners, flag stands and flags have been placed at the graves of all the veterans in the three cemeteries.

In 1972, the last patients were buried in the asylum cemetery and by 1981 there were only 300 patients at the location. The hospital was eventually decommissioned and in a land swap between the Department of Mental Health and Ohio University, the hospital's property was deeded to Ohio University. Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare, Athens Campus (as Southeast Psychiatric Hospital was renamed), still serves as a psychiatric hospital in Athens. With the original Athens Lunatic Asylum situated on a hill south of the Hocking River and the newer hospital on the north bank of the river, the two facilities are still within sight of each other. A naming contest was held in 1991 and the name The Ridges won. The asylum officially closed in 1993. The buildings were remodeled and the main hall is now known as Lin Hall and houses the music, geology, and biotechnology offices, as well as the Kennedy Museum of Art. Most of the buildings have been remodeled and are used by the University. There are walking tours of the The Ridges on the third Sunday of every month with extra hours added in October.

Reasons abound for asylums to be breeding grounds for paranormal activity and Athens Lunatic Asylum is no different. Restoring and introducing a new use for a location only seems to feed spectral activity. The asylum is one of the most haunted locations in Ohio, if not in America. There are many weird ghostly stories centered around the cemeteries, particularly on the strange circle of graves that is taking up the corner of a tombstone layout. Perhaps there was a center stone in other times, but all that is distinguishable today is a ring of graves. The local legends claim that witches make use of this circle for holding séances. The official Ohio University explanation is that the circle was created by some pranksters several years ago and this might be the most reasonable explanation, although it is less fun. The place is reportedly visited by ghosts, especially at night. There is a little creek and woods that are part of the cemetery and people have reported seeing strange lights and hearing screams in the cemetery at night.

On December 1, 1979, a patient by the name of Margaret Schilling went missing. The hospital staff made a half-hearted attept to find her, but Margaret was nowhere to be found. Her body would be found forty-two days later. She had been locked into one of the abandoned infectious disease wards. Testing was done on the body to determine why she died. The conclusion was heart failure, but she had been found in a weird state. She was found completely naked with her clothes neatly folded and placed next to her body. Worse yet was the fact that because she had been there for so long, her body had started to decay and the gooey bodily fluids leached on to the floor and left an imprint of her body. Much to their dismay, the stain couldn't be scrubbed out no matter how hard they tried, and to this day the lonely outline of her body can still be seen on the top floor of the asylum. Some say that on clear nights, Margaret can still be seen trying to escape the room where she died. People report seeing her through the windows of the top floor of Ward N20.

Not many investigators have had a chance to explore the buildings. There are no overnights allowed and trespassing became so bad that the abandoned turburculosis ward was finally torn down.  PJ Rogers posted this at the Haunted Athens Ohio website:

"Was in Athens in 1999 with husband checking out campus/ college for oldest son and stopped to eat at restaurant down below front of building. As we left to go to car,we decided to walk closer to building, so strolled around it. As we approached, we thought we saw a disheveled, middle aged woman in a window on the second floor looking out at us. Did not find out until much later, what the building was and its history. Had eerie feel to it."

People report hearing disembodied voices, feelings of being watched, an oppressive feeling in the chest making breathing difficult and the very chilling disembodied screams of those receiving treatment so many years ago. One nurse who had worked in the electro-shock therapy ward claimed that it got to a point where she was never sure if the screams were coming from an actual patient being treated or some kind of paranormal experience. EVPs have been recorded and we have an example of one that I heard while watching a video of some urban explorers on the property.

What would cause a stain to permanently stay within the fibers of wood even when cleaned with acid.? Is this a paranormal event? Do the spirits of dead patients still remain at the asylum? Is the Athens Lunatic Asylum haunted? That is for you to decide!

Show Notes:
For more information you can visit http://athenshistory.org/asylum-walking-tour/

HGB Podcast Ep. 93 - Eloise Asylum

 
Moment in Oddity - A Cleaning Lady Foils Nazi Spies

In January 1941, the Radio Intelligence Division of the Federal Communications Commission picked up the signals from an unauthorized radio inside an apartment building in the Bronx. The FBI was notified and the G-men were on the case. They started investigating stores that sold parts that could be used to build shortwave radios. They found a store in Manhattan whose owner thought that a certain customer had been acting nervous and paranoid. That man was Joseph Klein and he was a German American. He shared his apartment with two other men, one of whom had been a German officer and the other that was a Russian. Both men had become citizens. But their loyalties were not with America. The former officer had been called to Germany and trained as a radio operator and sent back to America as a sleeper. The Russian had been trained in Germany in the sending and receiving of coded messages by radio. The G-men were able to pick up the radio messages sent by the spies, but they could not figure out the code. The Nazis used published books to design their code. In order to crack the code, the G-men would need to find out what book was being used. They had seen one of the spies pick up a book at a Yorkville store, but they did not see the title. The store stamped the inside of its books, so if they could enter the apartment and find the Yorkville book, they would have their code breaker. The G-men's hands were tied. It was illegal for them to enter the apartment without a warrant and a warrant would tip their hands, so they enlisted the services of an unlikely person: a cleaning lady. The woman was very excited to help, but she also was scared because if she was caught, she might be killed. She called the G-men a few days later and told them that she found only one book in the apartment that was stamped by the Yorkville store. It proved to be the key to the code. The G-men continued to collect and decode messages and foiled the Nazi spy ring. The fact that they did it with the help of a cleaning lady is odd!

This Day in History - First Ball Drop For New Year's Eve
by: Jessica Bell

On this day, December 31st, in 1907, the first ball is dropped to welcome in the year 1908 at Times Square in New York City. Times Square had been the site of New Year’s Eve celebrations since 1904. After the city banned the fireworks display in Times Square, the owner of The New York Times, Alfred Ochs, arranged to have a large illuminated seven-hundred-pound iron and wood ball lowered from the tower flagpole precisely at midnight to signal the end of 1907 and the beginning of 1908. The ball descended 141 feet (43 m) in 60 seconds down a specially designed flagpole, beginning at 11:59 p.m. ET, and resting at midnight to signal the start of the new year. In 1942 and 1943, the glowing Ball was temporarily retired due to the wartime "dimout" of lights in New York City. The crowds who still gathered in Times Square in those years greeted the New Year with a minute of silence followed by chimes ringing out from sound trucks parked at the base of the Times Tower. The current version of the ball features a computerized LED lighting system and an outer surface consisting of triangle-shaped crystal panels. Thanks to satellite technology, a worldwide audience estimated at over one billion people watches the ceremony each year. The lowering of the Ball has become the world's symbolic welcome to the New Year. We wish all of the listeners to History Goes Bump a very happy and healthy New Year!

Eloise Asylum

We were joined on the episode today by Bill Clayton. Bill Clayton is a writer from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He's been writing professionally for more than 30 years. He has been the editor for the Michigan Engineer, the magazine published by the University of Michigan College of Engineering. He also writes and edits content for the College of Engineering Web site. He also regularly contributes to a number of magazines and writes about various topics, many dealing with science and he has interviewed celebrities, CEOs and average Joes, but what got our attention is his writing on the ghosts and urban legends of Detroit.

The term asylum brings about many images and most of them are not pleasant. Particularly the asylums of years ago. Today, we know more about mental illness and have better plans for caring for people, but in the past, mentally ill people were treated as cast offs and it was permissable to do horrid things to these people. One of the most notorious asylums in America was Eloise Asylum. Conditions were overcrowded and care was subpar at times. The asylum grew from the origins of a poorhouse to a schoolhouse and post office to a series of buildings built over the years to house the large amount of sick and mentally ill people brought here. Eloise is reputed to be one of the most haunted locations in the Detroit area for good reason. There is also a cemetery nearby named Butler Cemetery that has a reputation for being haunted. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Eloise Asylum.

Here is an account by Nite Wolfe:

"By the time I was in my teenage 'I want to be scared' stage, there were only three dilapidated buildings left standing on the hospital side of Michigan Ave. The piggery, cannery and the train depot were left on the farm side of the avenue. My friends and I were very taken with the buildings and had toured them many a late night. We always contained a sense of well being upon entering and though we had seen many cops patrolling the area, they had never seen us and were never caught. Upon entering the first of the many steel doors in the back area of the Old Hospital building itself you could either go directly downstairs or directly up. We chose to go down first. In the ruined basement our flashlights played upon five-foot tall metal crib-like enclosures and a metal straight-backed chair with leather straps on the armrests and legs. Turning and immediate right you faced the morgue, complete with pull out drawers and metal table with leather padding. One other room in the basement we found disturbing; we were never sure what it would have been called. The room was about 8 by 6 and along the left side there was a cell with a swinging door leaving just enough room to walk. Contained in the cell was a metal cot bolted to the wall and a place where the toilet had once been. When the cell door suddenly slammed behind me as I searched I quickly ran out."

Government employees have seen apparitions. One woman claims to have seen a brown haired woman in a window several times. Lights are turned off and on. Disembodied growls and moans are heard. Channel 4 in Detroit joined the Michigan Ghost Hunters Society on a ghost hunt and before it even got dark, they captured an entity in a window. The elevator was uncooperative as if something else were controlling it. Strange orbs of light were captured. Different colors and different sizes.

This is a poem written on May 29, 1979 by Joseph Micheal Slezak:

"Eloise: The Passing of a Friend

When first we met,
She stood tall and proud;
Her family ten thousand strong.
From "A" to "N"
Each blade of grass
Hand clipped, lest it grow too long.
Unfortunately, it is no longer so;
For that, my friend, was two decades ago.

The bingos, the dances,
The movies, the games,
The carnival, when summer came 'round.
The neat tulip beds,
The walks on the lawn --
Group laughter is such a sweet sound.
Unfortunately, it is no longer so;
For that, my friends, was two decades ago.

There were fresh oven smells
From the bakery
Where the bread was far better than all.
Yes, the shops and the store
And the post office, too,
Were there, if you wanted to call.
Unfortunately, it is no longer so;
For that, my friend, was two decades ago.

Can you tell me why
It all worked so well
Back when we first met?
And now weeds replace lawn,
And from dead buildings we feel
The doom that decay begets.
Unfortunately, it is now so;
For I wrote this my friend, but two days ago."

So perhaps the time spent at Eloise Asylum was not always unpleasant. Maybe some former residents find it hard to leave. Have the bad experiences of some patients led to negative energy and hauntings on the property? Bodies have been disturbed and built over. Has this caused spirits to be at unrest? Is the Eloise Asylum haunted? That is for you to decide!

Show Notes:
Bill Clayton's writer's page:   http://www.writers.net/writers/26232
Urban Legends -- The Spirits of Detroit Are Alive and Just Waiting to Be Scared Up
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxMyTU4sxDI4YmgxR3hldXA0VUU/view
"Do Einstein's Laws Prove Ghosts Exist?"  http://www.livescience.com/16951-einstein-physics-ghosts-proof.html