Insane Asylums

An art installation commemorates journalist Nellie Bly's undercover reporting inside a New York asylum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once known as the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane.

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