It’s October! How about a ghost story?

I’ve always loved history, old buildings, abandoned places.

I also love road tripping with my dogs.

What a happy serendipity that many abandoned asylums, hospitals, prisons, ghost towns, and walking ghost tours welcome dogs!

So here’s a little photo story about road tripping with a friend and my furbaby Romeo.

(Not a fan of old places and ghost stories? Never fear – I’ll have a killer vegan chili recipe for you Monday and a Sober October post for you Friday.)

Everything you’re about to read is absolutely true. Except for the parts that aren’t.

TRANS-ALLEGHENY LUNATIC ASYLUM (Weston, WV)

(The picture above is a promotional one I lifted from the internet. There is no way to photograph a scene like this unless you’re in a helicopter.)

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum opened in 1864 as a place of hope, focused on fresh air, light, healthy food, and actually treating the mentally ill with respect. Designed to house “250 souls”, it eventually housed 24,000. The Asylum provided a place for Walter Freeman to perform his lobotomies. (He performed over 4,000 in his lifetime, most of them here.) The Asylum was finally shut down in 1994 because of horrific living conditions.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is very dog and pet friendly – most of the daytime tours (they have several tours to choose from) accept pets as long as they are on a leash. One of the tour guides said they’d even had a lady with a large lizard. It was on a leash, so they let the lizard take the tour.

Of course, the Asylum is said to be haunted. I picked up only sad, not scary, vibes. My little super-sensitive jack sh*t Romeo also did not seem bothered by the atmosphere – although he had to be carried up and down stairs due to his short little legs.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was a place where men (fathers, husbands, brothers) sent their “troublesome” women. Often these women were just feisty, “too intelligent”, or sexually active. (Or, on the other hand, not sexually active enough with their husband.) Male patients were admitted as well, but it is astounding how many young women were admitted for “dementia” in their late teens or early twenties. I wonder if the yellow wallpaper in this room is a nod to Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

In worst-case scenarios, young women were admitted by their male relatives to have lobotomies. Think Rosemary Kennedy- a vivacious young woman who had a learning disorder (maybe dyslexia) and snuck out of her convent school to meet boys. For these “sins,” her father arranged a lobotomy, but did not bother to consult or even tell her mother until after the botched operation was done. (Her mother would not have legally had a say in the matter, anyway.) Rosemary’s lobotomy was done at the George Washington University Hospital by Dr. Walter Freeman. This same Dr. Freeman maintained a “lobotomy laboratory” at the Trans-Allegheny Asylum. His lobotomy “skills” left Rosemary – and many others – severely mentally disabled and unable to walk or talk.

This is called “Lilly’s room” as it is believed the ghost of a child haunts it. But actually there were many, many children in the Asylum, so if there is one ghostly child, there are at least 50 more. When a woman was committed, her children were often committed with her – especially female children. And since women were also committed for being promiscuous and pregnant, her child would be born and grow up at the Asylum. Some of the children never left. 

I often wonder if Taylor Smith was thinking about children in these old asylums when she wrote the line, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”

Recreation of a surgical room used for lobotomies.

Here, my camera started to weird out on me. It usually only does this in old churches.

Our tour guide, Robbie in the morgue. They did an excellent job. Here you can see my Nikon is still acting up.

The morgue. Body cooler to the left, a sink used for things best not thought about to the right.

And this was the beauty salon, located in the room next to the morgue. What were they thinking??? If someone isn’t crazy, getting their hair done next to bodies being embalmed might make them so. Here you can notice “orbs” starting to appear in my pictures.

The building where they kept the elderly with dementia. It is closed to the public because it is in such disrepair and dangerous. It was dangerous back in 1994 when the Asylum was shut down, and has disintegrated more in the years since. Our tour guide said they were glad when the building was taken off the tour, because so many people were freaking out when they realized their grandmas and grandpas lived there in such conditions.

The apothecary. Everything from “codine” to cannabis to chamomile to whiskey.

This was a popular medication – chocolate coated iron, arsenic, and strychnine tablets. My traveling companion wanted to buy me a souvenir bottle, but I refused. I knew the chocolate coating wasn’t vegan!

And one more picture to show how very beautiful this place is. It was built with the best of intentions. Sadly, it turned into something completely different. 

Guess what? I did spend the night in the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. But not by choice. My traveling companion hit me over the head WITH MY OWN CAMERA and locked me up in solitaire! The staff found me the next morning when they started their tours. It wasn’t too bad, though, and I wasn’t as scared of the dark as I would have thought. There were plenty of people I talked to throughout the night who kept me company. I guess they were the ones doing the night ghost tours. I don’t really understand how they got in the room with me, since I had tried the door and it was locked, but one young woman was actually nice enough to sit beside me and hold my hand, so I wouldn’t be scared. It was so comforting, even though her hand was so very, very cold.

To be continued at the West Virginia Penitentiary …

Dining Notes

Weston is a small town and there are only a few restaurants. Thyme is supposed to be vegetarian friendly with vegan options, but the menu on that particular day did not have any. We wound up eating basic vegetables-and-tofu at Sesame Inn. If you’re not a fan of Chinese food, I recommend taking some snacks to tide you over until you get to a bigger town.

Tour Notes

The Trans-Allegheny Asylum offers a variety of different daytime and nighttime tours – history only, paranormal only, photography tours, nighttime tours, overnight tours. We chose the tour that was a mix of history and the paranormal. Check their website for dates and pricing. Closed from November – March (because there isn’t any heat).