Haunted Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, North America’s largest hand-cut stone masonry building, stands as a Gothic monument to both healing and horror in West Virginia.

Built in 1858 following Thomas Kirkbride’s revolutionary design principles, which emphasized therapeutic sunlight and fresh air through its 900 windows, the asylum initially provided excellent care, complete with its own farm and dairy to ensure quality food for patients.

The early period was so positive that one patient described it as “heaven,” not a “nut house.” However, the Civil War marked a dramatic turning point, as the asylum was converted into Camp Tyler and its construction funds were seized by Union soldiers.

What followed was a descent into overcrowding and controversy, with the facility housing 2,500 patients despite being designed for just 250. The situation worsened with Dr. Walter Freeman’s infamous $25 lobotomies, performed as theatrical presentations, along with other controversial treatments like electroshock therapy.

By 1994, the asylum closed its doors, but its legacy lives on through reported paranormal activity, including famous spirits like Lily, a young girl who died of pneumonia, Ruth, a man-hating female patient, and various Civil War soldiers who still supposedly roam its halls.

Before places like Trans-Allegheny, aka the Weston State Hospital, mental illness treatment was barely treated.

Actually, “treated” is too kind a word.

Early colonists thought people with mental illness were possessed by demons or witches.

Naturally, you may be thinking about the Salem Witch Trials.

If you were lucky enough to avoid being accused of witchcraft, you might end up chained to a wall in a prison, stripped naked, and left to wallow in your own filth.

If you were quote “lucky enough” unquote to have family, they might hide you in an attic or a hole in the ground.

But then came the 19th Century. The century of compassion and understanding, right?

That’s a joke. But that’s also the introduction of Dorothea Dix.

Despite having an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, Dorothea becomes a teacher at 15 and dedicates her life to changing how America treats its mentally ill.

In 1841, she visits a jail in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and what she sees there – mentally ill people chained naked to walls – lights a fire in her that would change everything.

Thanks to Dix’s crusade, states started funding better care facilities.

And that’s where the story really begins because, in the early 1850s, West Virginia allocated $125,000 to build what would become the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

Now, let’s talk about Thomas Kirkbride – a Quaker farmer’s son who would revolutionize mental health care architecture.

Kirkbride was dedicated to designing a building that would encourage healing.

In fact, he designed the asylum in a shallow V-shape to ensure that every patient got therapeutic sunlight and fresh air.

The asylum was intended to have over 900 windows to help flood the halls with light.

The early days of the asylum were regarded as wonderful.

The asylum actually had its own farm and dairy, so the patients were treated to nutritious and high-quality food.

Here is a quote from a patient around that time:

“The Thanksgiving thing was great. We had great turkeys. And the Christmas thing was wonderful… it was like a fairy tale atmosphere. It’s like, I must be in heaven. I’m not in a nut house; I’m in heaven.”

But, as expected, a pivot is coming. Right around a very, very dark time in our country’s history.

The Civil War.

Suddenly, this peaceful asylum becomes Camp Tyler, a military post.

Union soldiers marched in at dawn on June 30th, 1861, and made a beeline for the local bank, seizing $27,000 in gold meant for the asylum’s construction – which supposedly would be over half a million in today’s money.

Everything became very chaotic during the war, and by the time it was over, everything was left a mess.

For one thing, overcrowding was a major problem.

The asylum, which was constructed for about 250 patients, now holds over 2,500 patients.

They implemented bed-sharing rules, so basically, you’d have 8 hours of rest before your bed was quickly given to someone else.

So, why did the asylum become overcrowded?

A big contributing factor to this increase in patients is you no longer needed to be considered mentally ill to be sent there.

From asthma to tuberculosis, hundreds of folks were sent here. Even for simple things like arguing with your husband – which I’m sure is far from what Dorothea envisioned.

Then came the treatments. Now we are getting into stereotypical asylum horror story stuff.

So, enter Dr. Walter Freeman.

Here is a quote from Road Unraveled:

“Of the medical treatments used at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, lobotomies intrigued our group the most.

Lobotomies were regularly used to treat mental disorders because they interrupted the neural connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which ultimately stole the patient’s personality and left them without effect.

Patients at the asylum underwent transorbital lobotomies, crudely known as icepick lobotomies, which involved the insertion of an icepick-like instrument into the eye socket until it connected with brain tissue.

Dr. Walter Freeman popularized the procedure and brought it to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, where he conducted lobotomies for 25 USD per patient and encouraged crowds to watch as if it were a theatrical presentation.

Almost all patients who underwent the procedure were completely altered, often unable to provide even basic self-care, and many died during the lobotomy.”

And that isn’t all.

There was insulin shock therapy, electroshock treatment, and more. It was a lot of pain, suffering, and malpractice.

Not to mention, like I said, absolutely over-crowded with tensions running high.

By 1994, the asylum couldn’t keep going. The hospital building was crumbling, and the practices were clearly outdated.

Naturally, it is a breeding ground for trauma and negative energy and experiences.

Today, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum stands as a testament to how far we’ve come in mental health care and maybe a warning about how far we still have to go.

Famous Ghosts and Locations At The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

The Back Room – Dean

Not to be confused with the back rooms. We are actually talking about something real here.

Allegedly, in a room toward the back end of one wing of the insane asylum, a patient named Dean was brutally murdered by two other patients.

Initially, they tried to hang him, but when that failed, they instead placed his head under a bed frame and jumped on it over and over, repeatedly, until the bed frame touched the floor.

Pretty graphic and tragic.

So, now they say that room is haunted by that individual. It’s known for cold spots and quiet cries.

Isolation Cells – The Boxer

The staff at the asylum were given pretty much free rein to send any patient that they thought was being unruly and chaotic to an isolation cell.

The discretion was completely up to the staff, who were often overworked and stressed.

Apparently, patients would do just about anything to avoid the isolation cells or to get out of them.

In on instance, a former boxer who had severe head injuries, leaving him aggressive, probably a form of CTE I imagine, actually ripped one of the metal doors of the hinges.

It is said that these rooms carry a very dark, violent energy. Visitors report being pushed and scratched, along with voices saying, ‘Get me out of here.’

The Kitchen

There is no specific ghost or background story associated with the kitchen, but folks claim to feel like they are constantly being watched in the kitchen.

Others report feeling dread.

Slewfoot

Here is a quote from Spartan Shield:

No one knows how the man known as “Slewfoot” got his nickname. Supposedly, he roamed the upper floors and killed and tortured people in the upstairs bathroom. To this day, he haunts the bathroom and the upstairs floor.

Frank and Larry

In the “alcoholic ward,” there were two buddies, Frank and Larry, who loved playing cards. They are known to snap and turn flashlights on and off in the asylum.

The Creeper

A shadowy torso, without legs, that sort of slithers around like a snake on the ground of the asylum. It doesn’t really bother anyone, but it is creepy.

Lily

There are two main origin stories for Lily, one of the most well-known ghosts at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum: either she was a former patient who spent her entire short life there, or she was born to Gladys, a patient who died during childbirth after being assaulted by Civil War soldiers.

According to the stories, Lily was cared for by the nursing staff until she died of pneumonia at age nine. Today, her room in Ward Four has been transformed into a shrine, painted a cheery yellow and filled with toys, including a distinctive pink-and-white music box.

Visitors and staff regularly report paranormal activity in Lily’s room, including toys moving on their own, giggling sounds echoing through the halls, and Lily engaging in games of catch with guests.

Paranormal investigator Aaron Sulser claims Lily has a particular fondness for playing with the music box and flashlights, creating a consistent pattern where the flashlights dim as the music slows and brightens when the box is wound again.

The staff has developed a protective bond with Lily’s spirit, insisting that visitors treat her with respect and kindness.

Lily is known to remember and favor regular visitors, interacting with them in specific ways that suggest she maintains connections with those who return to visit her.

Ruth

On the first floor, there was a female patient named Ruth.

She resided in the Civil War wing with the veterans. According to her legend, she hated men with an unbelievable rage.

To this day, some people say that she will throw things at men if given the chance.

James

James was a patient who allegedly died from a heart attack while upstairs in the bathtub.

He is a spirit that is sometimes seen and heard in the bathroom and various other areas of the asylum.

Nurse Elizabeth

Apparently, there is not a lot known about Nurse Elizabeth.

It is said that she went from floor to floor, taking care of the patients in need.

No one knows what happened to her, but she roams the halls with the other ex-residents of the hospital ward.

Those are the main ghosts and areas that haunt the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

Civil War Soldiers

Just in general, without any really specific experiences, people report seeing Civil War soldiers roam the mental hospital halls of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

Encounters At The Mental Hospital

Fiddlerton – Reddit Fiddleron the roof

My little brother and I did one of the overnight lockdowns a couple of summers ago.

I definitely recommend taking the “history” tour during the day, as it will help you get your bearing if you’re there at night.

The history behind the place is pretty amazing. The guides will explain why architects included so many windows, what rooms were used for what, etc.

We had a lot of luck with dowsing rods as well as pretty basic voice recorders. We got a couple of EVPs on the second floor, including a series of heavy breaths when the recorder was left in one of the lockdown cells unattended while we roamed the rest of the hall.

The Civil War area has a very negative energy, and we believe that one particular spirit we encountered was causing us to feel physically ill. We left the area, rounded a corner into one of the main hallways, and stopped behind a remaining nurses station.

We instantly felt the sickness in our stomachs leave us. We used our dowsing rods to communicate with what we thought was the spirit of a doctor who worked at the facility.

We indicated to us through asking questions that he protected people from the angry, negative spirit that liked to harm people.

Probably the most profound experience we had was in a room on either the third or fourth floor, I can’t remember. It was one of the rooms that had two open doorways on either end of it but no solid doors.

Using dowsing rods, we believe we contacted the spirit of a 17-year-old boy named Kristian (we were saying the name as “Christian”).

We spent about 40 minutes asking a series of yes or no questions to determine his name (we went through the alphabet, determined the first letter, and then just started guessing names until they started to cross).

We thought the spelling was odd, but given the time period the facility was active and the number of immigrants that lived in the area, there’s really no telling. This spirit was SO responsive.

We would ask him to point the rods at the person in the room named “x,” and the rods would point right at person x; we would ask him to point the rods at the person wearing glasses, and the rods snapped in their direction. It’s really incredible stuff. We have the night vision video footage of it somewhere at my mom’s house somewhere…

Word of warning – before you leave, tell the spirits that they are NOT welcome to come home with you.

My brother and I were exhausted and freaked out, so we left as soon as they unlocked the doors, neglecting this step.

We experienced weird things at the house for the rest of the summer, and my brother had nightmares for two weeks.

It might sound cheesy, but if it saves you what we went through, it’s worth it.”

Nora Fussner – Crime Reads

When we made the reservation, I expected there would be eight or nine people, newbies like me, ghost-curious.

In fact, there are closer to fifty in attendance, some profoundly professional-looking.

After we check in, we watch other groups enter bearing hard equipment cases, stacks of them bungee together on a dolly, including a group of three that appears to be mother, father, and pubescent kid in matching t-shirts featuring a variation on the Ghostbusters logo.

In a meeting room where we wait to get started, these groups begin unpacking and testing their equipment, laser-focused. While I am hardly expecting a transparent figure roaming the halls ahead of us, I realize, watching the other investigators around me, that I don’t want an experience solely explained via meter readings, temperature fluctuations, the bright red light, and alarmed beeping my new EMF reader gave out when I walked too close to the TV.

Just—a ghost, whatever that may look like.

After everyone has checked in, we are divided into four groups of ten to twelve, plus a tour guide.

Each group will start on one of the Asylum’s four floors, spend two hours investigating, and then move to another floor.

Our tour guide’s name is Ryan, an EMT from Tennessee who treks out to volunteer on the weekends.

We start with a tour of the top floor.

The mood is perfect—the sky outside crackles with a coming storm, and at various points in the evening, we will hear thunder. It is also very hot.

On the upper floors, most of the windows are painted shut. The hallways and the individual rooms are stagnant, and the only cool air is in a lobby-ish area in the middle of each floor, decorated with old furniture and featuring, crucially, a balcony to the outside.

Three older women in our group, whom I dub the Smokin’ Grannies, take advantage of these balconies for cigarette breaks.

As the orientation comes to an end, Ryan can perhaps sense a little hesitancy in our group. We are less weighed down with the heavy equipment of more practiced investigators.

In addition to the Smokin’ Grannies, there is another couple, similar in age to my husband and I, a few teenage-looking girls and two teenage-looking boys who move as a unit and make me feel, as all teenage boys do, deeply uncool.

Ryan suggests we take a little time to explore on our own and then meet together in one of the hallways for a group session.

My husband and I walk away from the others. I am not sure what I want to do exactly, but I don’t want to do it in front of any of these strangers.

We find a room with an old chalkboard that has been scrawled over, but it’s clear that the markings are recent, probably from prior ghost hunts.

I try a Q&A with my voice recorder, but I feel so awkward sitting on the floor asking questions in an empty room.

Most of the rooms are empty even of furniture, though some retain bed frames, the odd chair.

Later, I will understand the secondary purpose of Ryan’s tour: not only does it give us a history of the asylum and some of its more tragic residents, but the rooms he draws our attention to are a shortcut: here is where you might detect some activity.

Instead, I go into whatever room looks creepiest, stand in the middle for a while, think, yup, pretty creepy, and move on.

At one point, we are in a hallway, and I hear a loud beeping from somewhere else on the floor, a beeping I’ve never heard in person.

“Is that a REM-POD?” I ask aloud.

A REM-POD is a small cylindrical device with an antenna sticking up from the top, surrounded by a ring of lights. It detects ambient temperature changes and electromagnetism. I’ve seen them on reality TV, but never in person.

When it’s time for all of us to get together, Ryan has set it up near the doorway of a room previously belonging to two men, Frank and Larry.

The floor of the room has offerings to the residents—playing cards, cigarettes, poker chips.

Ryan turns the REM-POD on, and the twelve of us sit a good twenty or thirty feet away, facing each other across the hallway.

Ryan puts the flashlight in the middle of the floor: a ghost may be able to move it, causing it to flicker.

He begins to ask questions. At first, one of the Smokin’ Grannies answers, but then she is shushed by a companion.

The thing about having the gear is that you do get results.

While the entire building is perfect for feeling spooked, for interpreting any movement of air as a hand on the back of the neck, it’s another thing entirely to hear a man ask questions and get a response from out of the darkness, an invisible intelligence yards away.

When Ryan asks Frank and Larry to come out of their room, the REM-POD beeps loudly and continuously until Ryan politely asks them to step away.

At another point, as the flashlight flickers, untouched, we all feel a cool breeze move down the hallway.

When our two hours on the fourth floor are up, we move down to the first,

The Smokin’ Grannies have teamed up with the teenage girls from our group to conduct a spirit box session in the room of a young girl who died in the asylum.

A spirit box is a handheld device that scans radio frequencies, looking for static between stations in the hopes that discarnate can drop words into that static response to questions.

One of the (living) girls listens to the spirit box through headphones, so she cannot hear the Grannies’ questions and provide biased answers.

The pauses between question and answer are long, the white noise hypnotizing.

Some words pop out seemingly at random, but a couple of times, we receive coherent answers, such as a brief interview that amounts to: please leave me alone.

Nevertheless, one of the grannies continues to ask if the spirit wants to play, if she wants to talk, if she likes us and wants to be our friend.

Ryan takes us past the room of another young girl, someone nine or ten years old, when she died.

As in other children’s rooms, there are a number of toys and offerings to her spirit. There are two balloons, a pink and a blue, inflated but resting on the floor.

Ryan shines his flashlight into the room and asks the spirit if she wants to play with her balloons. The pink rocks in response.

“The pink one today?” Ryan asks. “Usually, it’s the blue one.” The pink balloon bobs a little more.

Later, my husband will walk past the room, sure that our movements must have disturbed the air and the balloons will rock again.

But they are still too far from the doorway to be affected by activity outside.

This is our least mediated encounter—less flashy than the REM-POD, the spirit box.

A lot of ghost hunting, I’ve learned, is like this: hundreds of empty rooms, one in which you get a little something you can’t explain, a word or movement, and over time these events construct a narrative.

Audrey’s Experience

I’ve been to Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum twice. The first time was in June of 2021.

We made the decision to drive there, which is… a fifty-hour round trip from Colorado.

Driving that long is definitely not something I recommend, but it was absolutely worth it in the end. (side note: we drove through Kentucky during the cicada brood thing, and it was scarier than any ghost I’ve ever met).

We made it to Weston, West Virginia, late in the evening, the two days of our investigation (technically one day…we got there at 1 am, lol).

Even though our Airbnb was the next town over, we wanted to stop and get our first view of TALA immediately.

This was a bucket list spot for all of us there (eight in total), who had all been paranormal investigators for some time now.

This was like getting into the Olympics and lining up for your first event. You could feel the anticipation in the air, just like electricity before a lightning strike.

Picture being out in the middle of West Virginia, in the Appalachian Mountains after a 25-hour drive where you’ve been listening to Missing 411 and thinking about the creatures and cryptids that might be out in those dense trees…and then Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is what you roll up to next.

It’s tall, four stories tall, with the main spire going even higher and sprawling over the wide lawn. It’s beautiful, and you can see the history etched into each brick placed into each window. We couldn’t wait to get inside.

We spent the next day taking history and paranormal tours, which was honestly super cool.

The building is incredibly well-preserved, and every tour guide and employee I talked to gushed about how much they loved it. And most had their own paranormal stories to share.

Day three was the big day.

We were going to investigate. Driving up to the building at 8 pm, it was just as beautiful as the first moment we saw it.

Our guide let us set up in a breakout room, put out equipment, and make our game plans, but really, we just wanted to get out there.

It also should be said that the town of Weston, WV, used to have what I can only describe as a Silent Hill siren that would go off at 10 pm every night to signal curfew….when you’re walking through the halls of an abandoned Asylum in the pitch black and that starts going off…that’s a new level of “what the hell is going on” and also “get me the hell out of here.”

It was still in action the first year I went but has since been turned off.

The craziest experience that I had was on the first floor, in what I think is Ward Four, if I remember correctly, just past the historically preserved section but before the Civil War section.

I was with two other investigators, sitting in Lily’s Room.

Lily is allegedly a child spirit that resides in the Asylum.

We didn’t interact much with her, but what happened out in the hallway is something that sticks with me to this day.

We started hearing tapping in the hallway, so one of the investigators stepped into the hallways to see if we could do a ‘call and response’ test.

This method allows you to knock and ask the spirit to mirror it or make a request verbally and see if the entity can complete that request.

Regardless of the number of knocks, if she asked for them, whatever was out there communicated back.

If she asked for two, we got two. If she asked for four, we got four. If she asked for closer, the knocks gradually became closer…you get the picture.

And it was crazy! This was the first hallway we had gone to, and we were already getting to this level of activity.

So the two of us left Lily’s room, stepped out, and left our bags of equipment in the room. We made our way into the dark hallway.

It seemed to stretch out forever before us, full of promising evidence. You could feel the energy out there.

I’ve always been pretty sensitive to the paranormal – and you could feel the weight shift between Lily’s room and that random hallway.

Sometimes, when you change the environment of an experiment in the paranormal, you lose that energy you had before.

Something as small as inserting one more person or one more piece of equipment can make those amazing results you were getting disappear.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen for us. We kept hearing the knocking sounds.

Now, to explain what happened next, I have to explain the layout of TALA a little more.

At the end of most halls, like the one we were in, is a nurses’ station. It’s got a counter that’s over hip height, and the nurses would be behind it during their shifts.

We were standing right in front of that, with the door to Lily’s room to our right.

And we started hearing rustling coming from in the nurses’ station.

Now, I’ll be honest. My gut instinct was to be more worried about an animal inside the station than anything paranormal.

If you ever go on an investigation with me, I always say I’m way more worried about the living than I am about the dead.

This was the same case here — I had no interest in coming face to face with some badger or raccoon that had snuck their way into the building.

We all turned around to face the station, and I lifted my flashlight, shining it inside to see…nothing…and then, something small came…flying out. It arched, tiny and red, through the air, landing at our feet.

I might have screamed; I’m honestly not sure. We all immediately looked down to find a tiny, red piece of plastic. A familiar piece of plastic…

Something had just thrown the cap from one of our investigator’s emergency lights out of that nurses’ station.

Her emergency lights were still zipped safely inside her bag, inside Lily’s room. We had all seen it come flying out.

Even if she had happened to have her light with her at the time, there was physically no way it could have come from within that nurse’s station.

It was the shock of a lifetime. It was probably one of the best pieces of evidence I’ve ever seen. And unfortunately, we didn’t have it on camera.

Because, of course, we didn’t have it on camera. It always seems the best evidence is seen only with the eyes and never on footage.

When I went back earlier this year, I had an experience in this same hallway.

I was sitting at the opposite end, with my friend and podcast co-host Bex, staring down at that nurses’ station and telling her the story of what I experienced last time I was in that hallway.

I was interested to see if we could replicate any of the same experiences or if anything there remembered me from the last time I had visited.

Out of nowhere, while we were the only ones in this wing of the hospital, a door slammed, loud and metallic; it rattled the space around us.

Whatever I had been asking about, wondering if it had recognized me from the last time I had visited…appeared to give a resounding yes in response.

While those were definitely my biggest experiences while there, I also got whistled at by a ghost on the fourth floor, had my name whispered over several EVPs, saw shadow figures walk across hallways, and was divebombed by more than one bat throughout my time there.

Guides have whispered tales of being grabbed, seeing Not-Deer on the property, and even a large ghost dog.

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is a special place. While I’ve only been there twice, I’m dying to go back again.

Every time, it’s something unique, something different. There are stories out there that are calling and hoping for some lucky investigator to answer.

That’s a short version of my TALA experiences. I feel like I could talk about it…forever, maybe? It’s incredible there. I’d go back in a heartbeat.”

Is The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum Haunted?

What do you think, Bizarros?

Is this Asylum haunted?

Did the poor conditions and severe overcrowding cause these hospital grounds to become the home to ghosts?

Is the West Virginia Hospital one of the haunted spots in America?

Would you take one of the ghost tours or one of the nighttime tours?

Let us know in the comments!