05/31/2025
Out of all of the many abandoned“Insane Asylums,” or later known as State Hospitals- this one in particular had to be haunted. I’m a huge skeptic but it’s from what my own personal experience has taught me. Most of the ghosts that haunt me are usually are really just the stories that lurk in my vivid imagination. When you visit a place you begin to get used to the creeks and groans of an older building. However this one was different, what we have experienced and captured in photos and saw with our own eyes cannot be explained away.
2015, we visited and as per usual we drifted apart in different wings of the place until we we were about finished. We back back at the center of the building to head towards the only exit. I was taking the last photos. It was until I got home that i noticed a man’s image at the end of the hallway, almost peeking back at me through the doorway. I checked the next few frames and there he was again, but this time he moved to the left… this was unexplainable because the three of us explorers were together at the time AND- we had locked the one and only way in or out behind us for security purposes.
Of all the abandoned asylums scattered like bones across the American landscape, this one… this one insists on being remembered.
I’ve never been one to chase ghosts. Most apparitions, in my experience, reside within the folds of memory and imagination—phantoms we summon ourselves. Old buildings groan. Shadows stretch. Your mind plays tricks, especially in the dark. I know all of this. And yet, something happened here that refuses to let go.
It was 2015. A few friends and I had made our way inside, the way we always did—cautious, reverent, quiet. The structure had long since surrendered to decay, but its bones were intact. We explored its silent wings separately, photographing graffiti-laced walls and peeling doors until, eventually, we reconvened at the center, near the sole exit.
I took a few last shots before we left. It wasn’t until I got home that I saw him. A man—half-shadowed, half-smiling—peering from the edge of a doorway down the hall I had just captured. In the next frame, he had shifted slightly left, closer. Not translucent. Not blurry. Present. We had locked the only door behind us. We were alone—or so we thought.
Two years later, a friend—someone as skeptical as I am—went alone. He wanted photographs of the dental wing. As always, he locked the entrance behind him. He told me he was focused on framing a shot when he heard footsteps. Then laughter. Not the hollow echo of the mind playing tricks, but clear and tangible. He stepped out, and there they were: children. At least five of them. Running. Galloping. Their faces distant, almost waxen. They didn’t acknowledge him. Just passed by in nightgowns and long johns, laughing as if the walls still remembered joy. He followed them to where the hallway split—and found nothing. No scuff marks. No giggles fading into silence. Just the air, heavy and expectant.
He left early that day. He’s never gone back.
Would you?
Would you step through that door, knowing what waits inside? Would you lock it behind you?
They don’t all leave.
Some remain—unnamed, undocumented, buried beneath the soil in unmarked graves that circle the property like a forgotten halo. Hundreds of former patients. No records. No names. Only whispers.
And sometimes, laughter.
(Ghost photos are at the end)
