Asylums - Is there a haunted link?

May 4, 2005

"If spirits are actually the personalities of those who once lived and refused to cross over to the other side at the moment of death.... then wouldn’t these spirits reflect the turmoil of that former life? And if hauntings are the residual effects of trauma being imprinted on the atmosphere of a location, then wouldn’t places where terror and insanity were commonplace be especially prone to these hauntings?" (prairieghosts.com)

After researching quite a bit on haunted places, I have begun to realise that a very common place for a haunting is insane asylums! Could this be due to the historic 'torture' which took place in these places, or the unhappiness, or madness which possesed spirits to 'stay on'?

One story which drew me in was 'Bartonville State Asylum'. CLICK HERE for a story on this asylum!

user posted image

The main entrance to Bartonville asylum.

There are others which I have come across (many of them), including the one below;

Investigation of Boyds Sanitarium

Is there a reason or a link that asylums are often said to be haunted? What does everyone else think? Do you know any other stories?

May 4, 2005

Disturbing Facts About Asylums, (could these be something to do with why asylums are haunted?) (source: forgottenphotography.com)

*A woman could be committed to an asylum by her husband, father, or brother for any reason without her consent.

* John F. Kennedy's sister, Rosemary, had a prefrontal lobotomy at St. Elizabeths Hospital in 1942. Her father arranged for her to have the lobotomy without her consent and didn't even bother to tell her family. The lobotomy left her partially paralyzed, incontinent, and unable to speak coherently.

*Suffering from "Political Excitement" could result in you being committed. For other reasons for commital (including asthma, CLICK HERE

* Approximately 50,000 lobotomies were performed in the U.S. between 1936 and the late 1950's. They were even performed on children as young as 13 years of age.

* Most asylums were originally constructed to house 200-250 patients. By the 1950's some housed over 2300 patients.

* Thousands of patients who died were often buried in unmarked graves in the asylum's cemeteries. Those that were marked, were frequently identified by only a number. Not only are these graves difficult to locate, in some cases the actual cemetery's location is unknown.

* Hydrotherapy was a common form of therapy used in asylums. The patient was restrained in a large bathtub with a canvas cover that allowed only the patient's head to remain exposed. When hot water was used it relaxed the patient, similar to taking a hot bath today. Ice water was also used to calm the patients. Although the ice water had a similar calming effect, it has since been determined that this was due to the patient suffering from acute hypothermia.

What about the treatment? (Source: www.forgottenoh.com/Ridges/ridges.html)

1. Water Treatment

Patients were submerged in ice-cold water for extended periods of time. Sometimes they were wrapped in sheets which had been soaked in icewater and restrained.

2. Shock Therapy

Electric shocks were administered to patients submerged in water tanks or, more commonly, directly to the temples by the application of brine-soaked electrodes. A patient held a rubber piece in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue off during the convulsions which followed a treatment. (See One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for a painful example of electroshock therapy.)

3. Lobotomy (Original)

Patients had 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 not to sh** down your leg at dinner time, but with such an abundance of patients the only thing most doctors worried about was how to streamline the process. Open-skull brain surgery is a tricky business no matter how you slice it.

4. Lobotomy (Trans-Orbital)

Developed by Dr. Walter J. Freeman in the early 1950s, this simpler lobotomy became something of a craze in mental health circles up through the 60s. 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, too.

May 4, 2005