What happened
Construction of the hospital for the mentally ill, authorized by the Virginia legislature in the early 1850s, began in late 1858 on the West Fork River across from Weston. The building, on the Kirkbride Plan with long wings meant to give patients light and air, was designed by Baltimore architect Richard Snowden Andrews. The Civil War halted the work – in 1861 Union troops seized the gold set aside for construction from a local bank – and soldiers were quartered in the unfinished building. The first patients were admitted on 22 October 1864, by then in the new state of West Virginia, and construction was completed in 1881. Designed for about 250 people, the institution kept growing: by the 1950s more than 2,400 were crammed into it in inhumane conditions. The hospital, later known as Weston State Hospital, closed in 1994. Today a private owner runs historical tours and night-time ghost tours, during which visitors describe voices on empty wards, slamming doors, footsteps and figures at the windows.
Witnesses
Participants in night tours and paranormal investigations held in the building since it became a tourist attraction; it has featured in many television ghost-hunting programmes.
Explanations and hypotheses
The history of the asylum is well documented and grim: overcrowding, understaffing and the treatments used in the mid-20th century have become a symbol of the crisis in American psychiatry. The ghost stories, however, are anecdotal and come mainly from commercial tours and television shows that have an interest in keeping up the building’s reputation. A huge, empty stone building with long corridors is ideal for echoes, draughts and suggestion. Historians urge visitors not to forget, in the hunt for thrills, the thousands of real patients who lived and died here.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia – Weston State Hospital
- Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum – Explore Our History
- National Park Service – National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Weston Hospital
More: Wikipedia (en)