Kind of place · 13 hauntings
Haunted Hospitals & Asylums
Sanatoriums, asylums and old hospitals — and the real history of the patients who lived there.
- 13 places
- 5 in the USA
- 8 you can visit
Abandoned hospitals and asylums are staples of ghost hunting, from Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, built for tuberculosis patients, to the vast Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, and Beechworth Asylum in Victoria, Australia. Italy’s Poveglia island and its old hospital have become notorious, though much of the story told about it online is legend. Some of these buildings now run tours and overnight investigations; others are derelict and closed to the public.
Behind every one of these places are real patients – people with tuberculosis, mental illness, disabilities or simply nowhere else to go – and their families. Their treatment ranged from devoted care to neglect and abuse, and death tolls quoted on ghost tours have often been inflated far beyond what hospital records support. We describe patients as people, not as monsters, and tell the real history of the institutions.
Explanations for the experiences reported range from the eeriness of decaying buildings, echoes and drafts to suggestion on organised ghost hunts. Never enter an abandoned hospital without permission: derelict buildings are dangerous, often contaminated with asbestos, and trespassing is illegal.
Haunted Hospitals & Asylums in the USA
Waverly Hills Sanatorium
Louisville’s vast 1926 tuberculosis hospital is one of America’s most famous haunted buildings – and its real history is more moving than the myths. Widely reported
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (Weston State Hospital)
A vast stone Kirkbride hospital built for 250 patients that held over 2,000 at its peak. It closed in 1994 and now sells history tours and ghost hunts. Widely reported
Exorcism of Roland Doe
In 1949 Jesuit priests performed an exorcism on a Maryland teenager in St. Louis. The case inspired The Exorcist; researchers suspect a troubled boy. Widely reported
Eloise
Once home to up to 10,000 poor, sick and mentally ill people near Detroit, Eloise left 7,000 numbered graves and Michigan’s best-known asylum legends. Regional legend
The Ridges (Athens Lunatic Asylum)
A Kirkbride asylum that cared for patients from 1874 to 1993, now part of Ohio University – known for a patient’s sad death and the stain she left. Regional legendAround the world
Poveglia
A small Venetian lagoon island with a real quarantine and nursing-home past – and a ‘plague island’ ghost legend largely invented for TV and the web. Hoax / debunkedLa Planchada
Mexico’s ghost nurse: a woman in a perfectly pressed uniform said to care for patients at Hospital Juárez and other hospitals when no staff are near. Regional legend
Old Changi Hospital
A hilltop British military hospital in Changi, empty since 1997 and called Singapore’s most haunted building – though its wartime torture legend is shaky. Widely reported
Sanatorio Durán
A tuberculosis sanatorium on the slopes of Irazú volcano, abandoned in the 1970s, where visitors look for the ghost of a nun who nursed the sick. Regional legend
Aradale Asylum and J Ward
A hilltop asylum town and the goldfields gaol that held Victoria’s “criminally insane” – Ararat’s Aradale and J Ward are Victoria’s best-known ghost tours. Widely reportedGonjiam Psychiatric Hospital
An abandoned rural psychiatric hospital that CNN named one of the world’s freakiest places – built on rumours that the real record does not support. Hoax / debunked
Q Station (North Head Quarantine Station)
Sydney’s harbourside quarantine station, where some 16,000 people were held and 572 burials are recorded – now a hotel running nightly ghost tours. Widely reported