38 Items Tagged

Insane Asylums

A New Monument Celebrates Nellie Bly's Undercover Reporting, Right Where It Happened

The Roosevelt Island artwork pays homage to her reporting, especially her inside look at a city asylum.

Jessica Leigh Hester March 23, 2022

Traverse City, Michigan

Tunnels of Traverse City State Hospital

A subterranean world of tunnels links several buildings of this rare 19th-century asylum.

Batavia, Illinois

Batavia Depot Museum

An exhibit of items from the mental institution where Mary Todd Lincoln lived after her son conspired to have her committed.

Permanently Closed

London, Ontario

London Psychiatric Hospital

Clusters of abandoned buildings hint at the facility's 144-year history with psychiatric health.

Säter Museum of Mental Health

A museum dedicated to the history of psychiatric treatment featuring a gallery of art made by patients.

Washington, D.C.

St. Elizabeths Hospital

Government testing at the asylum briefly explored using marijuana as a "truth serum" on Nazi prisoners of war.

Permanently Closed

Crownsville, Maryland

Crownsville Hospital Center

This former asylum for Black Americans is haunted by its history of violence and racism.

Maidstone, England

Kent County Lunatic Asylum (Oakwood Hospital)

This former abandoned hospital, a complex of stunning 19th century buildings, once housed 2,000 psychiatric patients.

Permanently Closed

Staunton, Virginia

Abandoned DeJarnette Sanitarium

A former mental hospital founded in the 1930s by a eugenicist who advocated for the forced sterilization of patients.

Wingdale, New York

Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center

An abandoned asylum once on the cutting edge of lobotomies may be reborn as a Christian college.

Permanently Closed

Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane

An abandoned asylum where patients have been forgotten but their possessions remain.

Permanently Closed

Prague, Czechia

Bohnický Hřbitov Cemetery (Cemetery of Fools)

An old asylum graveyard that's been abandoned for half a century attracts those seeking a dark thrill.

Ostermundigen, Switzerland

Psychiatrie-Museum Bern

This small museum displays a collection of outsider art and scale models of past "treatments" for mental illness.

Permanently Closed

Bartonville, Illinois

Peoria State Hospital

Once known as the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane.

Medfield, Massachusetts

Medfield State Hospital

Unlike other abandoned asylums this empty institution welcomes visitors, just don't go in the buildings.

A Lost Collection of Abnormal Brains Finally Gets a History

Allison Meier December 2, 2014

Permanently Closed

Waltham, Massachusetts

Fernald State School

Run by a eugenics advocate, this aging institution conducted secret radiation experiments sponsored by Quaker Oats.

Permanently Closed

Danvers, Massachusetts

Danvers State Hospital

The inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories and Batman's Arkham Asylum is now a condominium complex.