Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

With over 50,00 deaths throughout its history, it’s no wonder that the Trans-Allegheny Asylum is haunted.

I would like to say now that any derogatory words used in this post are what were used at the time and only used for historical significance. They are in no way what I would use. Anyway… on with the post. :) :)

Construction began in 1858 and it was completed in 1881 but during this time patients were still admitted. The main building is the largest hand-cut stone masonry in the US and the second in the world, with the Kremlin coming in first. Originally construction was done by prison inmates – a local newspaper in the November that construction started noted “seven convict negroes” as the first to start working on the Asylum.

In June 1861, the 7^th Ohio Infantry came to the town on behalf of the government and ‘stole’ $27,000 worth of gold coins (which is roughly $500,000 today). This money was to be used to build Trans-Allegheny but because of the Civil War the government needed it to build defences. However, the men that came to take the money left $2,371.23 so the bank could pay the creditors what they were owed so far for the building of Trans-Allegheny. Which is nice of them when you think about how they could have taken the lot and left the bank in debt. Once the money was gone, the Infantry men stayed in town and used what was standing of Trans-Allegheny as a military barracks – using the foundations as stables and the built section as the main barracks for the men to stay in.

Now as you know from history – the Civil War was a big and bloody mess and Trans-Allegheny saw its fair share of violence as well. With the main building becoming a make-shift field hospital it’s no surprise as to the amount of activity here.

Once the asylum began taking in patients, there was a number of reasons why you would end up in Trans-Allegheny. Here’s a list of just some of the bizarre reasons why you could end up here:

• If your husband wanted an affair – drop your wifey off and go about your business
• Laziness
• Masturbation
• Menstrual derangement
• Bad whiskey

The asylum was extremely understaffed – to the point that many of the patients were left in beds soaked with urine and faeces, and a lot of them walked around naked the entire time due to lack of funding.

So during its time open as an asylum there was a lot of weird and f****d up stuff happened. A nurse that worked at the asylum mysteriously disappeared and was later found dead underneath the back staircase months later. MONTHS! Like how bad did this place smell for them not to notice a dead body?! One patient was stabbed to death 17 times and bled out while trying to get to the nurses station – they never found his killer but they know it was another patient.

In 1987, 2 patients brutally beat a third to death. They grabbed him and beat him until he was unconscious, then tried to hang him with bed sheets. When that didn’t work they crushed his head repeatedly under a leg of one of the metal beds in one of the wards. When one of the two murderers was questioned about why they killed the other, he turned around and said that he was taking up his oxygen. There was also a fair few suicides at Trans-Allegheny, which really doesn’t surprise me.

So with any asylum there is bound to have a graveyard, but Trans-Allegheny – it has three graveyards. Within the graveyards there are a lot of unmarked graves, which is a recipe for unhappy spirits if there ever was one.

So now onto the supernatural stuff. Finally.

So, like every other haunted place, you get the normal disembodied voices, footsteps when nobody is in the corridor, screams, black shapes, moans and groans, and E.V.Ps of a voice saying “get out” (fun times!).

So I want to get to the main ghost so I’m just going to list the other supernatural stuff. So we have:

• An apparition of a nurse seen near the old nurse’s station
• Shadow figures roaming the geriatric halls
• Banging on pipes, black blobs and a spirit box answer of demon have been seen/heard on the 4th floor
• In the civil war wing there have been moans and groans heard and a ghost named Ruth roams the halls and is violent towards men and throws things at them or pushes them into walls.

Now the main ghost is called Lily. Lily is the spirit of a 9 year-old girl who has been seen by a lot of the staff and visitors. Whenever there is a tour of the building, staff ask that they are respectful of Lily and her belongings and go out of there to make her feel welcome. Her room is in the corner of the 4th floor ward and is full of toys that she plays with visitors. She’s been known to pass the ball back and forth and people have heard her giggling. She tugs on peoples’ clothes and hold their hands to let them know she’s there and she remembers frequent visitors.

There was one incident with Lily and a group of investigators that is well known in the ghost hunting world. Lily has been known to enjoy sweets, so this group was doing an EVP session and left a box of crackerjacks on the sink in the bathroom (they were in the main room). While they were sat they could hear the box rattling around in the sink and then the sound of the crackers being eaten. When listening back the their recordings they heard a little voice say “thanks for the snacks” but when they went to check the box - it was still unopened.