“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within… silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
-Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House .
Like Hill House, Pennhurst Asylum is anything but sane. The inspiration behind American Horror Story: Asylum and long-rumored to be haunted, Pennhurst now stands as a lone sentinel in memorial of the abuses and hardships endured upon its expansive, gloomy grounds. In its near eighty years of operation since it was first established in the heart of Delaware Valley, Pennhurst State School and Hospital housed thousands of patients. Though, for far too long, its hallowed halls held onto a dark secret; it had not just a skeleton in its closet, but a verifiable mass grave of skulls and bones. Figuratively speaking, of course.
Ripleys.com sent a correspondent on location to Pennhurst Asylum, with a crew of paranormal experts, to see if the rumors were true. But, before we find out whether or not our foolhardy adventurers were “scared of no ghosts,” let’s delve into the history of Pennhurst and discover how its past led it to its current state of ruin and disgrace.
First opened in 1908 alongside the Schuylkill River in the wooded, farmland region outside of Philadelphia, the facility was originally known as the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic. Hidden by a dense coat of forest in the blue-collar village of Spring City lay the desolate grounds of Pennhurst Asylum.
Set on a mostly deforested 1,400-acre lot, the sprawling campus exhibited 32, three-to-five-floor buildings in the plain, uniformly-angular style of Jacobean Revival architecture and, at one point, its own railroad. The outside is faced with red brick and terracotta, while the inside is comprised of drab plaster and concrete. The harsh, stoic aesthetic leaves an impression of entering 19th century London, as opposed to rural Pennsylvania. Many of the buildings are connected via elevated catwalks surrounding a grassy courtyard, which once played host to a traveling circus for the benefit of Pennhurst’s residents—as if the place wasn’t creepy enough. Under these catwalks are a series of winding tunnels that act as quick routes of egress between all major dormitories and facilities.
It was in this sanitarium the mentally and physically disabled—and otherwise socially verboten—were stored away, filthy and malnourished, segregated from and largely forgotten by society. There, the forgotten remained for sixty years until this real-life American horror story was unveiled to a horrified public.
“Many of these children have always been without the benefit of parental love or guidance… They have been abandoned and placed at the mercy of the state. In the case of Pennhurst, the state has failed to do its moral duty.”
-Bill Baldini, Suffer the Little Children.
Pennhurst Asylum made its debut on the world’s stage when Philadelphia’s NBC10 News aired an intense five-part investigative report conducted by Bill Baldini in 1968. Titled Suffer the Little Children , Baldini exposed the deplorable conditions within, presenting the “sights and sounds of Pennhurst… in their most brutal and constructive forms.”
Despite the best efforts of the many compassionate administrators, attendants, nurses, physicians, and teachers employed at Pennhurst, they were understaffed and stretched thin, making their role as caregivers impossible to fulfill. By the time of the groundbreaking news production, the facilities were in excess of forty percent over their 1,984 rent capacity, housing a total of 2,791 souls. Pennhurst faced not just a paucity of funds, but of compassion. This was particularly evidenced by the alarming series of abuses orchestrated by Dr. Fear.
Pennhurst held a long history of misconduct . For instance, one seldom-used punishment saw the removal of a patient’s teeth if they were labeled a biter. However, no employee’s cruelty has been as well-documented as that of Dr. Jesse G. Fear.
“The ones that speak detest the inhumane conditions and hunger for the slightest sign of affection. However, some of them have become so callous to their plight, they’ve all but given up. They are alone; alone in a world that seems to lack all compassion.”
-Bill Baldini, Suffer the Little Children.
Two years after being narrowly acquitted for “dispensing a dangerous drug,” Dr. Fear showcased the human propensity toward corruption when he casually admitted to Bill Baldini his abominable methods of behavioral correction. Resident Head Physician of Pennhurst during the production of Suffer the Little Children , Dr. Fear nonchalantly detailed his disturbing practice of “downgrading.”
According to Dr. Fear, this punishment was construed to “offend [the] dignity” of patients with behavioral issues by placing patients with normal or marginally subnormal IQs in wards designated for the profoundly mentally challenged. Dr. Fear’s aim was for this to cause a sense of isolation and ridicule from the patient’s peers, humbling them into submission. Speaking to a child who was seen as a troublemaker and forced to endure these cruel exploits, Baldini learned that, aside from mental anguish, it also led to developmental regression.
Another device employed by Dr. Fear toward a misbehaving patient was administering “the most painful injection” available that “wouldn’t do any harm to the patient.” Callously indifferent to the torture, Dr. Fear finished recounting his methodology with a grin, “he really hit the ceiling over that.”
For this act, Dr. Fear faced a thirty-day unpaid suspension from Pennhurst. Any further repercussions or acts of abuse conducted by Dr. Fear have since been lost to time.
“Many others rot in silence in their stench-filled, overcrowded cottages. While some children are afforded the opportunity to go on a picnic and bask in the sun, others lie awake in their beds, shackled like prisoners, punished because they cannot control themselves and their illness.”
-Bill Baldini, Suffer the Little Children.
The fallout from Bill Baldini’s study was immense. Public outcry led to more than just the suspension of Dr. Fear—originally asking for four million dollars for desperately needed infrastructure improvements, additional staff, and amenities as simple as toilet paper. Subsequent studies led to the institute receiving a staggering sixteen million dollars.
This reform not only affected Pennhurst, but the entire system: the resulting studies conducted in the documentary’s wake led to not only the release of 130,000 institutionalized individuals in the United States alone, but heightened awareness and sensitivity to the plight of the mentally challenged.
While conditions improved enormously, a series of reported abuses and subsequent lawsuits found that the conditions at Pennhurst were “unsanitary, inhumane and dangerous,” resulting in the facility inevitably shutting its doors in 1987. Regardless of improvements, the way of life facilitated by the system was simply not the optimal way to achieve the best care possible of the individual wards kept there.
In a 34 year retrospective on Pennhurst’s unusual and absurd conditions, Bill Baldini proudly reminisced, “there are a lot of people alive today that are a lot happier now than they would have ever been if no one ever took a look at Pennhurst in 1968.”
It was the witching hour as Ripleys.com correspondent Kris Levin , an open-minded skeptic, joins true believers Flip Searles , daughter Jayme Rodriguez, graphic artist and videographe r Shahin Shayegan , and photographer Johnny Gee , alongside hosts Ashley McIvor and Michele Zajac, to spend an evening together at Pennhurst Asylum.
Past the quaint village landscape revealing the area’s colonial roots, urban decay quickly turns over to ruin. Dense canopies of hanging vines thickly weave their way across eroding stone dwellings. Crumbling asphalt soon gives way to an unpaved dirt pathway as the road wound deeper and deeper into the rolling hills of the Pennsylvania wilderness. The moody rain clouds were nearly indistinguishable from the plumes of grey exhaust which billowed out of the nearby nuclear power plant, dominating the skyline above the sea of green treetops.
Ashley and Michele are part of a community that has since been built around the history held within its walls. The current owners of Pennhurst host a haunted house every Halloween season, a year-round museum, tours, and paranormal investigations ; there also exists an independent preservation society dedicated to keeping the lessons learned from the asylum’s past alive.
It was raining outside as the effervescent Ashley showed the team around the grounds, much of which has long-since been reclaimed by nature. Rundown even in its heyday, today, many of the buildings are falling apart or outright condemned: faded red brick, broken windows, and collapsing rooftops as far as the eye can see. Several of the buildings have been outright demolished.
Walking past the now caved-in hospital, bricks inexplicably tumble, cascading in avalanche down the aged walls and landing in a heap at our feet. Startled, Ashley speculates that perhaps it is a good omen for what we would encounter later in the night. The crew had no idea how right she’d be.
Strolling down the age-battered catwalks that overlook the barren field now overgrown with weeds, Kris asks, “How many people died on the grounds over the years?” Ashley could not even hazard a guess: “People lived here,” she responds, leaving the logical implication that they died here, as well, to hang heavily in the air.
Beneath the catwalks, the labyrinthine, underground system of tunnels still remains. Like all things at Pennhurst, they are long abandoned, adorned with hanging wires and various debris. Multiple layers of graffiti are found in abundance covering the inner, paint-chipped walls of seemingly all Pennhurst buildings: repeated Eyes of Horus (the Egyptian symbol of arcane magical protection), the ubiquitous, floppy-nosed Kilroy Was Here doodle, and a litany of demons and pentagrams—though expected, the sheer volume of Satanic ritual imagery left the party stunned.
Taking a look around at the foreboding artwork and seeing a piece that reads Welcome to Hell , Shahin quips: “Talk about going to Hell, this is Hell.”
A local, Shahin, tells us that it was a rite of passage for the area’s high school students to break into Pennhurst, leaving behind broken windows, murals, and tags in their wake. Now, Pennhurst has round-the-clock security to protect its physical and spiritual integrity. But, for over twenty years, it was between operations and artistic vandals had nearly free rein until reopening as a haunted attraction in 2008.
Ashley ominously cautions us: “A lot of people like to break in and summon things that they don’t know what they’re summoning. So there’s always the chance that you’ll see some of these symbols on the walls. I’m not a fan of it, but a lot of kids are into the occult. People like to have their fun with paranormal things, but don’t necessarily know what they’re getting themselves into.”
“Look at all of the lost hope here. This is where dreams come to die.”
-Shahin Shayegan
Our tour guide halts at the Mayflower building: the most renowned haunt in the entire colony, a real-life Arkham Asylum. In a way, the outside could be described as hauntingly beautiful. Once inside, however, the derelict building felt monstrous and indescribably inhuman. Mayflower felt like it had just sprouted from the earth of its own accord—it was so devoid of the human touch in any fashion. Walking around knowing that people built, lived, and died there was both surreal and difficult to comprehend. This structure did not feel man-made.
The most highly functioning components of Pennhurst are, themselves, in disrepair. The floors are covered in the detritus of long-gone trespassers and patients alike. Looking in any direction leads to views of a window with a bullet hole, partially-filled mail receptacles abdicated of their occupier decades ago, old laundry bins sagging with moldy clothing, rotting books, splintered chairs, rusted wheelchairs, dilapidated toiletries, forgotten toys, and, of course, layers upon layers of dirty and graffiti. It was noticeably colder inside than out and, in several locations, the outside rain had discovered its own pathway in.
The Mayflower building itself consists of three stories and a basement. The basement was largely a recreational area—complete with plexiglass window views for nurses—but also housed maintenance, including the boiler room. The first floor contains a series of residential areas with recreational day rooms, dorms, and a nurse’s station. The second level is largely the same, but with an open space layout fitted with cubicle-like partitions and filled to the brim with stained mattresses—Ashley assures us it was merely rust and not blood, as we originally suspected. The third floor is host to a series of more private, closet-sized bedrooms that were previously reserved for staff and higher functioning patients.
Looking at the beds, Shahin ruminates, “imagine the amount of tears each of these mattresses soaked up.”
Ashley points to a front window of a recreational area, telling us that patients would cluster around here, hopefully looking out as they waited for a visitor that was never coming. A sad reality for many, if not most, here.
November 13, 2024
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