Paranormal Peeps
Paranormal Peeps
Shadows of the Asylum: The Tragic History of Athens
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The corridors of Athens Lunatic Asylum echo with over a century of troubled history. For 119 years, this imposing Gothic structure in Athens, Ohio served as home to thousands of patients – many of whom never should have been there in the first place.
What began as a forward-thinking facility designed according to Thomas Kirkbride's humane principles eventually devolved into a crowded warehouse of human suffering. The shocking reasons for commitment ranged from legitimate mental illness to simply being a troublesome teenager, experiencing menopause, or even masturbating. Women were particularly vulnerable to unnecessary institutionalization, often admitted for normal biological processes like menstruation or childbirth-related conditions.
Our exploration reveals the asylum's darkest practices, including unsedated lobotomies where doctors inserted ice picks through patients' eye sockets while they were fully conscious. We uncover the mysterious case of Margaret Schilling, who disappeared within the asylum in 1978 only to be discovered 42 days later. Her decomposing body left behind a permanent human-shaped stain on the concrete floor that resists all cleaning attempts – a haunting memorial to her tragic end.
Today, Ohio University owns this massive property, repurposing many buildings while preserving their haunting history. With 1,930 former patients buried in unmarked graves and countless stories of paranormal activity, Athens Asylum stands among America's most haunted locations. Journey with us as we separate urban legends from documented horrors, examining how mental health treatment has evolved from these troubling beginnings.
What would it take for you to be committed to an asylum in the 1800s? Listen to discover how close you might have come – and why these historical practices should never be forgotten.
Thank you for listening to the Paranormal Peeps Podcast. Check us out on Facebook Paranormal Peeps Podcast or Coldspot Paranormal Research and on Instagram coldspot_paranormal_research
Introduction to Athens Lunatic Asylum
Speaker 1Between the realm of the dead and the journeys of the living. Join Josh, jamie and Elisa as they delve into the vast world of the paranormal and breathe life back into the history of the departed.
Speaker 2Hey everybody, Welcome back to the Paranormal Peeps podcast. That's Jamie.
Speaker 1That's Josh and that's Elisa.
Speaker 3Like who's going to say me?
Speaker 2You could have done yourself.
Speaker 1But she always does herself.
Speaker 2Well, I guess Yuki could have said it.
Speaker 3She doesn't speak.
Speaker 2It's true, she's a cat.
Speaker 1Well, I mean, when she opens her mouth, you don't even hear her sound come out, anyways.
Speaker 2No, that's true, but we have a interesting tale tonight to cover. That is the Athens Lunatic Asylum.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2Also known as the Ridges.
Speaker 1Yeah, but we'll get to that later. They changed the name later. It changes a couple different times actually.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1But back when it opened it was called the Athens Lunatic Asylum.
Speaker 2Yeah, because it's located in Athens, but not Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1Ohio, yes, yep.
Speaker 2And not Athens, Greece.
Speaker 1No Ohio, yes, Yep, and not Athens, greece. No Ohio.
Speaker 2So we just want to make sure, you guys understand. So the asylum was in operation from 1874 to 1993. So 119 years, isn't that?
Speaker 1crazy. I was kind of shocked when I saw the whole it closed in 1993. I was like, wow, I'm surprised it lasted that long. But go Athens, yeah, go Athens.
Speaker 2Go the mentally infirm. The building style was known as the Kirkbride plan. As the Kirkbride plan, the design of the building and the surrounding grounds were influenced by Dr Thomas Story Kirkbride, who was a 19th century physician who wrote a book called On the Construction Organization in General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane, with some remarks on the insanity and its treatment.
Speaker 1And that is actually the title of his book.
Speaker 3That's insane itself. I mean yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, it is, he should be committed for that.
Speaker 3He wants you to know exactly what is in that book.
Speaker 2Exactly it's 200,. No, sorry, 394 pages.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And I read part of it this morning.
Speaker 1And it was yeah, no.
Speaker 2Yeah, part of it was like weird Spot on, spot on.
Speaker 1Well, some of it was very accurate.
Speaker 2And how tall you should build it and why you should have a fully dug crawl space and all of this stuff no-transcript. He actually referred to insanity as a treatable disease. So yeah, yeah, and so some people think that this individual institution was he practiced there. This wasn't his practice, he just influenced the design of the building, so he's not truly the monster that ran this place. We'll get to him later. The Kirkbride building designs were recognized by the staggered floor plan of their wards or the batwing style, which another common place that has a batwing style is Waverly Hills.
Speaker 1Does it though.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's got the batwing style and that's designed for airflow.
Speaker 3Okay, describe what the batwing style is. Okay.
Speaker 2So most buildings are flat, perpendicular, 90-degree angles, but with the batwing style what ends up happening is the center part of the building is straight and then, as you go out, it curves out or angles out, curves out or angles out. Now this one, uh, in particular, actually staggers out, almost like you built it with Legos.
Speaker 3Oh, it makes sense.
Speaker 2So like what Waverly is like out of, like a, you know, a 45 degree angle per se, right, this is more like I built uh wings out of Legos. So it does look like bat wings from the, from the aerial photographs, but it looks more like you built it with Legos.
Speaker 3Yeah, okay.
The Kirkbride Plan Architecture
Speaker 2It also had a very interesting Victorian Gothic style architecture, so the front of the building is very Victorian Gothic.
Speaker 3I love that I love that.
Speaker 2It's really nice and that's really on the main 1874 building.
Speaker 3The original. The original really has that gothic style to it. Why don't they build?
Speaker 1things like that anymore, because we've gone from these things that have character and style and uniqueness and we've gone to this minimalistic, plain sterile crap. It's everywhere.
Speaker 2Also called modern it's.
Speaker 1yeah, I don't prefer it, you know. Myself, I think everything looks the same and kind of blends together. I don't like that.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It's terrible.
Speaker 2It is terrible. Yeah, it's terrible, it is terrible. The main building included a central administration and a wing for men on one side and a separate wing for women on the other. Each had their own dining hall, so there's really a segregation of the sexes.
Speaker 1Well, right, and I'm sure that I mean obviously there's reasons you would have to do that anyways.
Speaker 3I mean, they still do that in homes for people who have dementia or Alzheimer's memory care facilities. Yeah, They'll separate the men and the women.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, sometimes you have to do that.
Speaker 3It's amazing how many things happen in those homes. So I had a family member that was in one of those homes and in that home there was a man and a woman that were married to separate people who became boyfriend and girlfriend in the home. Because they didn't realize that they were married.
Speaker 2Oh, that's kind of funny.
Speaker 3So they had to separate them yeah.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2You know what's interesting is Kirk Bridge in his Kirk Bride. Kirk Bride Sorry, kirk Bride, I want to say Bridge, for some reason it's Bride. In his book he actually talked about not having men and women even in the same facility.
Speaker 3Yep, I mean, it's safer that way.
Speaker 2Let's be real Well he also felt that women would cause men to have problems, not the other way around.
Speaker 1Not the other way around. Oh my heavens, it's always one-sided.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was very patriarchal back then. The building was 60 feet wide and 853 feet long. Holy moly. It was built with red bricks that were made from the clay that was dug on site. 18.5 million red bricks were used to make this building. That's a lot. It's a lot of bricks.
Speaker 1It's a big building.
Speaker 2The back of this building held the boiler room and a laundry room. In the main building. They could house roughly 573 patients, which was almost double to that of what Kirkbride had recommended.
Speaker 3That always happens. Do you notice that in places like this? Yeah, it's like people just dump them off and they don't ever put a limit on it. They just dump their relatives off.
Speaker 1When they become troublesome or they just don't want to deal with them anymore.
Speaker 2Yeah, Well, if you figure too like, this was a state run institution right, and so the state's going to pay you, let's say, $15 per person, yeah, and so you're like, let's see um how many people can I get in here?
Speaker 1Yep, did you mention that the bricks that they used to make the buildings were actually sourced from that property?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, they were dug. They were dug on the property.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2That's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. The interesting thing is like these places, just like Waverly right was self-sustaining, so was this institution right off the bat.
Speaker 3Yeah, and I think that's cool if you can have a self-sustaining place and if you're not using the people that are living there as like slaves in a way, but to teach them how to garden and they're and it's used as therapy how to you know. Yeah, do those things. Then that can be so therapeutic, that's right.
Speaker 2Yep. Eventually, the overcrowding led to problems between the patients in the facility.
Speaker 1Why would it not? And it would.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1Overcrowding. You don't have your own space. You're in.
Speaker 2You know everybody's in each other's bubble and and let's face it right, at this time too, like you're there for potentially an actual legitimate reason, right, so you're having some mental issues, and if you're having an issue with your, your, your mental state at the time, having other people like right up in your grill is probably not going to be very good.
Speaker 3No, it's going to trigger you. Well, and if you think about it generally, when you are doubling the amount of people that you have in a space, you have less workers per people.
Speaker 2Yep.
Overcrowding and Patient Treatment
Speaker 3Per people. Per person, and it's so. There's going to be less people taking baths or having hygiene issues. Cleanse like the room is going to be more dirty, yep. Everything is just going to go downhill.
Speaker 2Yeah, everything suffers and your care suffers too, right, because there's not enough people to provide care.
Speaker 3And what do you notice with people who have mental health issues? They don't take care of themselves. They slowly stop taking care of themselves. So how is putting them in a place like that ever going to help? Right?
Speaker 2Exactly, yeah, that was. Another thing Kirk Bride said is that his recommendation was 15 to 1. On patients who were mildly disturbed, so you could have 15 people in in in one like common area type of thing. Yeah, so that's a pretty small group of people compared to the 573 plus that they crammed in this building.
Speaker 3Yeah, I wonder how many workers they actually had.
Speaker 2Uh, it wasn't that many. It was like 25 on the day shift and 25 on the night shift.
Speaker 3That blows my mind.
Speaker 1Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2I have pictures that I'll post, but yeah, it didn't look like a ton of people.
Speaker 1Yeah, but I think it was more than 25.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1But it still wasn't enough. Right Is the point, I guess.
Speaker 2So Athens provided care for the homeless, Civil War veterans, the elderly, criminals, children, unruly teenagers.
Speaker 1Yeah, and so the unruly teenagers? The parents would send them there to teach them a lesson for being unruly. Well, Not because they actually had problems.
Speaker 3Necessarily a mental health issue. I wonder what problems they had back in the day. I don't know what was the unruly issues compared to today.
Speaker 2No, I will not milk that cow.
Speaker 3Mom I just don't want to husk corn anymore. My hands are raw.
Speaker 2Two years after it opened, it was renamed the Athens Hospital for the Insane. That sounds very pleasant.
Speaker 1Well, it's better than lunatic.
Speaker 2Yeah, by 1981, it would be called the Athens Mental Health Center. Ooh, that's a little nicer.
Speaker 3That's a lot nicer yeah.
Speaker 2Got some good name changes in there, yep. The interesting thing is the very first patient to be put in there was a 12-year-old girl, aw, who was suffering from epilepsy. But back then, of course, they didn't understand epilepsy the way we do today. They thought she was possessed by a demon. So if you're possessed by a demon, the best place to go was an insane asylum.
Speaker 3That poor girl yeah.
Speaker 1That's sad.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So sad.
Speaker 2And that made me think of the Bells yeah, so sad. And that made me think of the Bells, yeah. It's like he could have ended up in Athens. The asylum's first report was that 19 women and 31 men were having their insanity caused by epilepsy.
Speaker 1Wow, that's a lot, that is a lot, having their insanity caused by epilepsy Wow that's a lot.
Speaker 2That is a lot. It's interesting because it's like you're insane. Why? Because you have epilepsy.
Speaker 1Because you have seizures.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1But they didn't know anything about epilepsy.
Speaker 2No, they didn't understand the neurological disorder that it is Mm-mm. A wide range of things could land you in this place, like TB.
Speaker 1Yep Really.
Speaker 2Menopause.
Speaker 3Oh crap.
Speaker 1All the women, let's go. This is why we weren't born back then, elisa, I know.
Speaker 2Postpartum.
Speaker 3Okay, well, I screwed.
Speaker 2Alcoholism, depression, women's issues.
Speaker 3You mean having a period Probably Cramping.
Speaker 2Probably Just being like, just well.
Speaker 3Hormones.
Speaker 2Hormonal Talking off to your husband.
Speaker 1Like you've just your PMSing hard and you just snap and oh, she's insane. The husband goes oh, she's insane here. I'm going to drop you off here.
Speaker 3Oh my gosh Yep.
Speaker 2So the leading cause for women to be admitted in the first three years of operation were puerperal condition, which is related to child birth.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I'm not surely, or I'm not sure what it actually is or has to do with childbirth. I didn't look it up.
Speaker 2It's probably close to postpartum, probably somewhere in that line.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm going to guess. That's probably what it is.
Speaker 2Menstrual derangement we call that PMSing today. Menstrual derangement we call that.
Speaker 1PMSing today. Little did they know they could cure it with some chocolate and a coffee.
Speaker 2Right From Starbucks. Change of life which menopause.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm guessing that's what they mean.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So, yeah, anything any of those things. She got a hair on her chin To the asylum. You're insane, she's a witch.
Speaker 1She's possessed.
Speaker 2Approximately 51 patients were admitted for alcoholism in the first three years. 81 women and men were admitted claiming that their insanity was caused by masturbation, and that was a thing.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You know how many people will be thrown in an assailant asylum today for that?
Speaker 3Every man.
Speaker 2And half the women.
Speaker 1Maybe three quarters of the women in today's day and age. Yeah, who knows, maybe three quarters of the women in today's day and age.
Speaker 2Yeah, who knows? But here's the interesting thing why this was a thing was that some doctors went to in the 1700s, right, they went to an insane asylum and they actually saw a whole bunch of the people who are in there doing that, and so, obviously, if they're doing it, therefore, it's going to lead like if you're doing that, it's going to lead to insanity, and so that's why they put you in there.
Speaker 1That's crazy.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's such a weird. Weird thing. Now Women could be institutionalized for fictitious and unnecessary reasons.
Speaker 3Of course, I think if the men just didn't want to deal with them anymore.
Speaker 2Yep.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's exactly right, send them off. Yep. It's the easy way to get rid with them anymore, yep. Yeah, that's exactly right, send them off, yep.
Speaker 2It's the easy way to get rid of them in that avenue. Depending on the patient's condition, they could have almost total freedom at the asylum or no freedom for full-time care. So those who had like total freedom could walk the grounds and move around those that were really mild-mannered and low-maintenance. Non-violent.
Lobotomies and Inhumane Procedures
Speaker 1Non-violent. They pretty much could roam, you know, and others. For others that couldn't, it was like a prison.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3It's like I'm just PMSing. Just give me a week, okay.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3Just give me a week.
Speaker 2Just give me a week, give me some chocolate, and we'll be all right. The asylum was obviously its own closed facility. So they had, you know, walls and everything. And they also had their own livestock, their own orchards, their own fields, gardens, their own dairy and they had their own plant that generated heat from steam. So they had their own steam plant. That's cool, yeah. The interesting thing is I was looking into some of their records and I found that in one year it was like in 1881, one year it was like in 1881,.
Speaker 2They made $1,337 on meat from cows. That's a lot. Back then that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3Did they feed it to any of their patients? I hope so.
Speaker 2No, that's what they sold. That's what they sold. They sold it.
Speaker 1For profit.
Speaker 2For profit.
Speaker 1Gotcha.
Speaker 2From the livestock.
Speaker 3Oh, I'm aware, but what I'm saying is did some of the meat that they raised Did any?
Speaker 1of that meat.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm sure it did Because it was supposed to be self-sustaining, so yeah. It was a self-sustaining community. I would hope so. They just had extras. Essentially, in what it ended up being, a lot of the maintenance work was originally done by the patients. You know that sounds a lot like old Montana State Prison, where a lot of the prison was built by the prisoners.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's what I'm saying, like if they're doing it for slave work versus doing it for therapeutic work, yeah, Well, here it was said that they did it for the therapeutic, like taking care of the animals.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Because they had horses and stuff too.
Speaker 3Which would be so fun.
Speaker 1Right. And then you know, harvesting the garden and picking the fruit in the orchards. Cultivating and all of that stuff, all the things, and it was used as a form of therapy.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, because back in Fresh air. All that, yeah, because back in the 1880s, when they would have been doing this stuff, was still done a lot by hand.
Speaker 3Yes, right.
Speaker 2So there was still a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 1Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2As the years went by, new buildings were added. They added a stable or they added stables a firehouse, amusement hall, laundry building, several more wards, residential buildings for, like the staff, therapy rooms, a power plant.
Speaker 3Wow.
Speaker 2And even, like in then, a dozen more buildings. This place got huge Dozens and dozens more. Actually, it's not just a dozen more buildings.
Speaker 1This place got huge Dozens and dozens more. Actually, it's not just a dozen more, it was actually come to find out. It was dozens multiple dozens more.
Speaker 3Are these buildings still standing?
Speaker 2A lot of them are Nice. Yeah, the hospital was treating roughly 1,800 patients and using 78 buildings, and was the single largest employer in the county.
Speaker 3That is huge, yeah, that's massive.
Speaker 2The asylum kept growing and expanding over the years. They added a dairy barn, a receiving hospital, a beacon school and a TB ward.
Speaker 3A TB ward, tb, tb, tuberculosis.
Speaker 1TB. Had TB back then, which actually had to be a building on its own because TB was contagious. Right so that was off on its own.
Speaker 2How horrible that we just put them in the general population and then everybody got TB.
Speaker 1Yeah Well, people do stupid things. But thankfully they didn't hear Right, Thankfully they made it a separate building.
Speaker 2On top of that, seven cottages were built in order to house those patients the TB patients. These cottages were dormitory style rooms which allowed for constructive the TB patients. These cottages were dormitory-style rooms which allowed for constructive grouping of patients. By the 1960s, the facility had reached a staggering 660,888 square feet and had nearly 2,000 patients, which was over three times its capacity.
Speaker 3That's wild. Yeah. Instead of building all those extra buildings, let's build more rooms to house these people, these poor people that are having to Live there.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3And be squished like that yeah.
Speaker 2In time, the public became aware of medical procedures like electroshock, lobotomies, oh no and eventually these would be seen as inhumane, cruel and very unnecessary.
Speaker 1Thank goodness they came to that conclusion.
Speaker 2Right. The part that I found insane as we're talking about in a sane asylum right Is that when they perform lobotomies and we all know that it's an ice pick through the orbital, through the orbital of the eye, into the brain, the patients were awake and unsedated, which means you felt everything going in.
Speaker 1That is torture, that's.
Speaker 2BS. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2Yeah, and obviously, once you do that, once you scramble the frontal lobe, you've changed the individual permanently, forever. And that's the point, right? I mean, that's the point, just to make them docile and just so.
Speaker 1They just kind of sit there staring at a wall.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And don't do much else.
Speaker 2But they lost memories.
Speaker 3Oh yeah.
Speaker 2All sorts of stuff, because they just broke down the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1Terrible.
Speaker 2Absolutely terrible. The discovery of psychotropic drugs and psychological therapies would allow for most patients to be treated without having to be kept in the asylum.
Speaker 1Thank goodness.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1Progress.
Speaker 2Progress, people Progress, because we just don't want to be doing those horrible things to people.
Speaker 1No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2And you can see like how this was all done differently from what the original doctor's designs were. Like he wanted something humane and healing for the people and not shoving an ice pick into their brains. Like the man who invented lobotomies actually went to Athens and like practiced there and taught there.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So like this stuff was like massively used everywhere else.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was the solution for a lot of these patients.
Speaker 2Yeah, unfortunately, along with electroshock, yep these patients yeah. Unfortunately Along with electroshock Yep. So there were also rumors that patients were chained in the basement.
Speaker 1You know, and I I wouldn't be surprised. I don't doubt it, I really don't.
Speaker 2I mean, they're all un Unstantiated rumors, right?
Speaker 1Right, but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3I would think because of how they treated people back then, with people having anger issues or throwing their fits, whatever it is that if they're going to be a harm to anyone, I mean why wouldn't they go chain them up somewhere to anyone? I mean, why wouldn't they go chain them up somewhere? Because I've seen other asylums have actual rooms in basements where they are chained to the walls yeah, that's sad.
Speaker 3So I don't see that it wouldn't be something that they would do. I mean, if you're putting yourself in the mindset that they were in back then if you're freaking sticking an ice pick in someone's brain and jiggling it around, not letting them be numb by any stretch.
Speaker 1Yeah, then you'd have no problem. Then, what is? What would be the problem?
Speaker 3putting chains on them down in the basement. Yep.
Speaker 2Yeah. The moral ethics is pretty much gone at this point, right.
Speaker 3Oh, exactly, well, because people didn't care about people who had mental issues back in the day.
Speaker 2Well, and if you look at what the mental issues were, too right For all those who couldn't see, there's a lot of big air quotes. But if you couldn't see, you know their mental issues weren't really mental issues either.
Speaker 1Nope, a lot of them, weren't A lot of them weren't.
Speaker 2And so because of that, like you know, you're like yeah, you got a problem with this thing, with doing these things. Then we're just going to shove an ice pick up there and you'll stop doing everything, or we'll chain you to the basement and you'll stop being violent.
Speaker 3I wonder how much control any of them had, like any of the patients had, over whether they got ice picked or not. You know.
Speaker 2Probably none.
Speaker 1That would be my guess.
Speaker 2Because it's everything's up to the providing, the providing physician at the time Right.
Speaker 3Well, I wonder if like family was ever involved, if they were like hey, by the way, we want to do this, do you give us permission? Or is it like they're in your care? You do what you need to do and they just do whatever they want?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's the latter. I mean it wasn't. I mean maybe, I mean obviously not in the 1960s, right, 70s, 80s, 93, when this place closed, right, because HIPAA and all this other stuff comes about, but definitely in the first 50 years. Oh yeah, I'm sure it was just whatever's going to happen is going to happen, especially those first 30 years before 1900.
Speaker 3So what year did they start doing the lobotomies?
Speaker 2Oh my gosh, I think those were started 18 something.
Speaker 3Was it before this place was built or after? I want to say before, but I'm not entirely sure, because I'm thinking of that 12-year-old girl who goes in for seizures If they thought, well, hey, let's scramble her brain and see if it stops her seizures, right.
Speaker 2Yeah, let's just say that actually no lobotomies were done before 1935. What, yeah, 1935? 1935, november 12th, was the very first lobotomy done by Portuguese neurologist Egos Mones.
Speaker 1Wow, or Mones, that's nuts.
Speaker 2So that means this stuff was done early.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Or they were doing other things earlier.
Speaker 1Right, and this came later.
Speaker 2This came later, and then they really probably ramped it up for a good 30-ish years. Ugh, that makes it even worse, honestly.
Speaker 1It does, it really does.
Speaker 2Because you would think that in the 30s, like, we were better, like, but I guess it really shouldn't surprise us, right? I mean, even today we still have issues with mental health in this country about just getting mental health treatment for people. And so back then they just kicked them into a home and, unfortunately, shoved an ice pick up their head. So then what eventually ended up happening and closing the place is a lot of the land and buildings were eventually sold off, until all of them were sold off to the University of Ohio.
Speaker 1I don't think they were sold off.
Speaker 2Well bought. They were acquired. They were all acquired by the University of Ohio. They were signed over.
Speaker 1The deeds were signed over to the university.
Speaker 2I guess I assume that to be sold off. Okay, all right. So in 1988, more buildings and grounds were deeded to Ohio University from the Department of Mental Health. By the early 1990s many of the asylum's original buildings were in disrepair. The large asylums like Athens began to slowly be phased out, shifting to small outpatient centers over to the university in 1993, which added 700 acres and 700,000 square feet of building space to the university's campus. After that, the old Athens Asylum officially closed and any remaining patients were then transferred to a new mental health facility. The vacated property sat vacant for several years before restoration efforts began.
Speaker 3But those people were excited to get out of there.
Speaker 1Right yeah there weren't many left. I did have a number of how many were eventually left.
Speaker 2Yep Today most of the buildings serve as offices and classrooms, so they're actually used by the campus today.
Speaker 1That's good, which is great.
Speaker 2Yeah, the Kennedy Museum of Arts opened in Lynn Hall in 1996. And Lynn Hall was once the Asylum Central Administration Building.
Speaker 1So it's the main building.
Speaker 2So the main center of the building In 2001,. Construction on Lynn Hall was completed administration building so it's the main building, so the main center of the building In 2001,. Construction on Lynn Hall was completed. The old TB ward was demolished in 2013 due to danger and it was separate from the rest of the facility, so it was off on its side and so they ended up tearing it down.
Speaker 1Yeah, because a lot of college students were going in there and exploring which I would have Partying and doing who knows what in there right?
Speaker 2Who knows?
Speaker 1yeah.
Speaker 2The remains of 1,930 former asylum patients are buried in three separate cemeteries around the asylum are buried in three separate cemeteries around the asylum, and when they were originally buried, they were buried without names and just marked by numbers on their headstones.
Speaker 3That's terrible.
Speaker 2So there are 979 men and 700 women that are in the cemeteries.
Speaker 3I'm actually surprised. I with all the reasons why the men could throw their wives in there or whatever, I'm surprised there's not more women than men.
Speaker 2Well, these, so the 1930 that are buried in the cemeteries, are those who died and were unclaimed. So there are even more deaths that happen in the in those buildings. But their families actually claimed their bodies and took them out.
Speaker 3So okay.
Speaker 2So the death toll is over 2000.
Speaker 3Yeah, right.
Speaker 2So maybe I mean, I don't know maybe there was well many more women who died, but their husbands finally claimed them after they died.
Speaker 3So that they wouldn't look bad.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's still terrible. I know In 1943, efforts started to be made to put names and dates on the headstones.
Speaker 3I think I've heard about this Like it's a project that they're doing.
Speaker 2Yeah, they actually have a website.
Speaker 1Yeah, they're actually making efforts to also now restore the cemeteries to what they used to be, so to do better caretaking and to make them nicer. Yeah, that's neat.
Speaker 2And then 80 veterans are also buried in the cemeteries. In 2000, work began restoring the cemeteries, adding headstones, adding nicer headstones, naming them, keeping it up yeah, with their birth date and their death date and their name and so yeah, making it a lot nicer. The ohio museum complex has incorporated the three cemeteries into interactive nature walking trails.
Speaker 3Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2That is really neat yeah they have.
Speaker 1So, on this property that they've acquired, they have like hiking trails and like all sorts of stuff. Well, it was a lot of property, yeah yeah, which is neat because that means you can go actually visit and see a lot of this stuff and it sounds like for the most part, they made good use of the property and the buildings a lot of the buildings but there's still a lot of buildings that are vacant yeah but they have, like I think in one of the buildings is like the county's police department oh that's cool In one of them.
Speaker 1so.
Speaker 2Oh, that's really neat, yeah, so thankfully today, like a lot of these buildings have been renovated, remodeled and are used, but there are still many that are still left abandoned.
Speaker 3Yep and unused. Well, there was a lot of buildings, so yeah, there's a lot of buildings.
Speaker 2so, yeah, there was a lot of buildings. So, of those 1,900 plus people who passed away, there is one death that is the most infamous, I guess, well-known of all of that, of all of the deaths there.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So in 1978, the asylum made a big splash in the papers. A patient by the name of Margaret Schilling went missing on December 1st 1978. On December 1st 1978. Now she wasn't found until January 12th 1979. So like 42 days, 42 days later she was found Six weeks.
Speaker 3Ugh.
Speaker 2A maintenance worker discovered her, discovered her decomposing body in a locked ward once used for patients with infectious illnesses. She was found naked, with her clothes neatly folded next to her body, and then, to this day, there's a stain on the floor where her body was found, and any attempt to remove the stain has failed. So what's interesting about that? There's a couple things. Interesting is there's mixed reports on why she went missing. Some say that they would play hide and seek the patients who had free roam. She was a free roaming patient and she was allowed to roam, and so they say that they were playing hide and seek and she got locked into this room because, obviously, the locks on these rooms were on the outside, not the inside. There's other reports that this building was under reconstruction at the time that this happened, and so that one it wasn't used at all, but there were normally workers there, but the workers were home for the holidays because it was cold, so they weren't working, and so she somehow found her way into this building and got locked in.
Speaker 3Well, she's free roaming, yeah.
Speaker 2Right. There's other reports that this building was searched multiple times during the 42 days that they were looking for her and they still never found her.
Speaker 1See, I didn't come across that. Yeah, and they still never found her, See I didn't come across that.
Speaker 3Yeah, I would actually believe that more than other scenarios, just because it's not uncommon for a killer, if you will, to take someone and keep them for a while and then randomly place their body somewhere. Now, if they're the perfect place would be in a place like that where like, oh look, she could have gotten stuck.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yep, and it was ruled that she died of of a heart attack.
Speaker 1Heart failure.
Speaker 2Yeah, cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1Due to the cold, because obviously there was no heat in the building and she was naked. So one of the things is, when your body goes into hypothermia, you actually, instead of feeling ice cold, you feel like you're burning up.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 1And so a lot of people. When they reach that stage, they will strip off all their clothing.
Speaker 3And that also makes sense too, because a girl will generally fold their clothes. Yeah, and they were neatly folded. I find myself, without even thinking about it, folding my clothes before I put it in the hamper, like yeah, you know. And then I'm like, wait, what am I doing? Why am I bothering? Right, what am I doing?
Speaker 2Yeah, so like it does lend to the natural causes in that, and then because the room where she was at was on the upper floor, there was a bunch of windows up there so her body would have been laying in the sun was where she was found, which is interesting, because I found one report that said she was in the basement, which made no sense. So much misinformation out there at times.
Speaker 1Well, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, but there's a practical reason why her stain, the stain of her body, is still there on the floor and you can see like this is her shoulders and her hips and her hair.
Speaker 1And her torso, like you can see these pieces right, because what ended up happening?
Speaker 2obviously she was decomposing. Well, the chemicals they use to clean up what was left behind actually cause an acid etching into the concrete of her body.
Speaker 3Oh, wow.
Speaker 2And they actually did a test in 2008 of the stain and determined, yeah, it was the chemical compounds they used that actually caused it to be permanent chemical compounds they use that actually caused it to be permanent.
Speaker 3That's wild. Yeah, because I know that stuff is nasty and goes everywhere. Yeah, because when you're decomposing, like when you, when you die, all of your blood goes down like whatever position you're in it's going to go down and it will make that imprint right, mm-hmm. But like I have seen where, when the bodies decompose, their body basically liquefies, yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah, if you left long enough I watched a documentary where there were a few families or a few people killed, like it was the one in idaho with the college murders. Yep, their blood was actually dripping out of the house yeah like you could see it where they had the sighting. It was coming out from the sighting of the house. Wow, wow, so like. But it's not that their bodies were decomposing, but it's just. The liquid goes everywhere.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I actually, in regards to that, read an article where, as her body lay on the concrete, decomposing the fluids and your body lets off, like this waxy substance as well, yeah, right, in the fluids. And because concrete's porous, it got down into the concrete, see, and that's what left the state yep, yeah, and that makes sense.
Speaker 2It's because it's gonna the concrete is going to absorb it and then they're going to try to clean it and it, but it's porous.
Speaker 1So it's because it's going to the concrete is going to absorb it, and then they're going to try to clean it and it, but it's poor.
Speaker 2So it's in the concrete.
Speaker 1Yeah, you'd have to, like take the floor out.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, they just ended up using a really caustic um cleaner.
Speaker 1That helps seal it in, that helps seal it in. Yeah, gross yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So she was there long enough to leave this quite remarkable print without it just being everywhere. But yeah, it's really, it's quite sad, but I actually have a picture of the actual article when they found her and I also have a picture of her gravesite, so, and I have pictures of the athens asylum and patients and it would be that I'll post.
Speaker 3Yeah, it would be cool to ghost hunt and see if we could do like an sc's method or something to find out like, okay, tell us how you really died, right, right, will you talk to us like yeah, and give us that information and the state requires that all those records are sealed for 50 years.
Speaker 2So we won't know how she died for another three years that's not far though that's not far like it's getting close. I was doing the math in my head. I'm like wait, hey, that's like 28.
Speaker 1All right, we're getting closer, we're almost there, we're almost there.
Speaker 2But you know, there are so much death, so much emotion uh poured into the, into these buildings, you would definitely expect them to be haunted.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2And these rooms I mean, some of them are dormitories, some of them are classrooms and, obviously, the museum, and so they have reports of phantom footsteps, phantom voices, doors opening and closing on their own. Imagine and I can being an individual who's a non-believer, highly skeptic, and sitting there in one of these classrooms because you're like a TA or something right, grading papers at night, and all of a sudden your door to your room opens and then closes, and then the door down the hall opens and closes.
Speaker 1And it'll be like nope, I'm out. It's different when you're alone, though it is.
Speaker 2Oh yeah.
Speaker 1Totally different. When you're with somebody, you feel a bit more like you're okay. When you're completely alone and there's nobody else around and you know that it's a lot.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It's very different, but yeah, a lot of the reports are just the basic footsteps, doors, lights, right.
Speaker 3Some voices. Do they allow ghost hunting there.
Speaker 2They do yes.
Speaker 3Ooh.
Speaker 2In the occupied buildings.
Speaker 1Yes, and really around Halloween is what I've heard.
Speaker 2So it's contact the museum because obviously it's a museum.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2Contact the museum and you can get a chance to to get in and do some investigating. Saw a handful of YouTube videos out there of people going in to these abandoned parts of the of the property and it's like I get it. Urban X is a is a thing, but it is also highly legal.
Speaker 1Yeah, if you get caught, look out.
Speaker 2Highly do not recommend doing it. And some of these buildings and the reason why they tore the one down right, it was unsafe. If they're not occupied, there's a reason. There's a potential for very unsafe conditions and you definitely don't want to get hurt, because if you're there and no one knows and you get hurt, you might become the next exhibit.
Speaker 1You might become the next stain on the concrete.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly With that, there is one reported haunting.
Hauntings and Campus Legends
Speaker 1No one can see your air quotes.
Speaker 2I know, but there's one reported haunting slash possession associated to this place and it has to do with the stain. So there was Debbie. Southall went up one Halloween night 1979, to where Miss Margaret died and touched the stain that was left by her body. So this would be the year after she died. Right the next day something came over Debbie. Her personality changed dramatically. She became distant, enraged at the slightest provocation. Her friend, susan Harrington, later claimed to have witnessed items moving around on their own, an inhuman, shadowy figure appearing to her and to Debbie. After this, debbie became even more distanced, locking herself in her room, refusing to come out for days, especially after long sessions locked away. Susan broke into her room only to find Debbie had taken her own life, her body decomposing, leaving its own stain on the floor.
Speaker 3How long did it take until she took her life?
Speaker 2Doesn't say there's a small problem with this story.
Speaker 1I'd say it's a big problem, but okay.
Speaker 2It happened in 1976.
Speaker 3Not 79? Not 79.
Speaker 1No, before Margaret Schilling even died 79? Not no.
Speaker 2Before Margaret Schilling even died. There's been some mix-em-ups.
Speaker 1Some mix-em-ups. I call BS.
Speaker 2Yeah, so what more than likely happened is urban legends. As they go right, the story of her death on campus right, later mixed with the story of the other gal's death, they start to intermingle and the next thing you know, a whole new story is built, because the one thing that isn't mentioned right is that obviously this is a university campus. People still die on campus, so there's a lot of other deaths and other things happening and mixing. In Athens was listed on the most haunted places in America as number 13. So the town itself.
Speaker 3Okay.
Speaker 2So the whole town is considered to be the 13th most haunted place in the entire united states.
Speaker 3I wonder, though, if we had a group of actual ghost hunters create which ones are the most haunted, you know, know, like say, okay, we've all been to these places and let's all vote, and then we'll see which ones, right?
Speaker 2But how would you use criteria? Would you say most haunted or most active?
Speaker 3That's true.
Speaker 2Because they're not the same.
Speaker 3Most people would assume that it would be active. Yeah, if you're talking haunted.
Speaker 1The average person would assume I would associate the two together myself. Yeah, hey, this played like hey. We went to waverly boy. We got a lot of stuff there, we had a lot of active things happening, oh, and then we went to the basilica murder house and it was and I fell asleep in the I fell asleep. Fell asleep, it was so quiet.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1So active to me equals haunted Activity. Activity, whether it's residual or intelligent.
Speaker 2Okay.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1There's, you know, you're getting stuff, you're experiencing things.
Speaker 2Yeah, there is one very interesting phenomena about Athens, and this might be entirely idiomatic in the sense, but there is a lot of cemeteries around Athens for some strange, very reason, and if you start drawing lines, they make a pentagram with the campus being right in the center.
Speaker 1The main building.
Speaker 2The campus is itself. The whole campus is in the middle of this pentagram.
Speaker 3Interesting. I wonder who figured that out. Somebody with a drone?
Speaker 2Yeah, someone with a lot of time.
Speaker 1I know. But when you look at it though, because each cemetery is Expansive in size, yes. Could you not draw a pentagram? Are you lining it up at certain points Like is it calculated?
Speaker 3Yeah, I'd like to see, I'm just going to draw a pentagram.
Speaker 1I'm able to connect them, you know, at this bottom corner of this one and this in the middle of this one, and make that pentagram.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, so from what I saw of the map of the area right, athens is actually built because of the way it's structured by the river. It's actually kind of structured like a wheel itself, so it's already a circle, almost circular in itself, and just how it's designed. And so if you already start with a circle, it's easy to. It's easy to like. Let me just connect some dots. And oh, I drew a star. Oh, in the middle of a circle.
Speaker 1Right, because the cemeteries are going to be on the outlining areas. You're not going to put a cemetery right in the middle generally doesn't campus, right they're always on the outlining areas.
Speaker 2So I mean, technically speaking, there are now in the middle of campus, but they weren't before they weren't before, though right so then you have, you know what was it, five cemeteries, three, three, five.
Speaker 1What is five?
Speaker 2Yeah, there's like 30 in town, like in the whole town, but I'm just saying yeah, there's three just for the, there's three just for the asylum.
Speaker 1So I'm not sure that I really buy that. It was a deliberate thing that they were placed there deliberately so that if you connected them you could make a pentagram. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2I fully you don't think it was like the city planners were like how can I make the city a pentagram?
Speaker 3well right, I mean be like who designed this right, I mean honestly.
Speaker 1You never do know the way the world, the world's crazy, honestly could be complete accident.
Speaker 3It just worked out that way, that's out that way.
Speaker 1That's kind of my thought. That's kind of my thought.
Speaker 2Well, and that's where you start getting into people creating symbols out of something that wasn't intended to be that way.
Speaker 1Right, because I think that you can take certain things and if you really work it, I think you can do just that.
Speaker 2I really do work it. I think you can do just that. I really do?
Speaker 1I wonder what you, what you could draw on top of salt lake. If you, if you looked at it long enough, you know, I'm sure somebody really creative could figure it out.
Speaker 3I actually have the picture, I can see the picture and and they try to like this city, actually the library, try to debunk the pentagram and they they show it with all the cemeteries. Let me see if I can click into it. But they're kind of scattered With all the cemeteries, right, let me see if I can click into it.
Speaker 1But they're kind of scattered.
Speaker 3There are where they show. At the point of each one there is a cemetery, but there's also cemeteries around, so to me it looks like.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3It's like that's not even an even star.
Speaker 2No, it is a star.
Speaker 3It's a star, but it's not an even one.
Speaker 1So somebody is just doing that to make it more than what it really is.
Speaker 2Yes, yeah, they're trying to find.
Speaker 1They're trying to embellish it.
Speaker 2Trying to find a reason.
Speaker 3If you really want to put the lines on there, it would be a scribbled mess. Yeah, yeah, a reason, if you really want to put the lines on there. It would be a scribbled mess. Yeah, yeah, if you try to pick and choose, you know, then, yeah, you can make a star, but I think you can make a cross out of that too, if you tried yeah, you probably could. Yeah, you could go.
Pentagram Myth and Final Thoughts
Speaker 1I don't, I don't like that, though I don't like it. When people do that, they try to put this demonic and this crazy spin on it you know what I mean and turn everything into something very wicked and very evil, and I'm just so sick of people doing that well, and there's a part of sensual centralization right that comes even with the paranormal right everyone, absolutely and so, like it, it does drive people into that realm of looking for those things, because Well, and if you're going to look for it, you're going to find it Eventually
Speaker 1you do.
Speaker 3Well, exactly If that's what you're looking for, I bet you, utah has a lot of temples, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2I bet you, if you pick five temples, the right five, I bet you could draw a pentagram using the temples as points.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Why? Because you have, you know.
Speaker 3If you have enough of them you can make any picture you want, really.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's like 30 temples in Utah in like Northern Utah alone. Right, I might be exaggerating, but it feels like that. These churches, anyway, they're everywhere, oh yeah if you use the churches, you got like 600. I mean, you got points right and so, yeah, if you have enough points to choose from, yeah, you can make it look like anything that you want yeah, but I hate that people want to be deceptive and steer people in a dark direction with it.
Speaker 3Yep.
Speaker 1I hate the intent behind it.
Speaker 3I think To make it more interesting or to make it appealing and I wonder if it could have been just something that they did, for Halloween Could be.
Speaker 2Could be, and it caught on.
Speaker 3Or like a tour or something, and it just caught on.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3Because I could see somebody doing something like that to make it feel a little bit more spooky or a little bit more like ghosty.
Speaker 2This is why Athens is so haunted. See, there's a pentagram and in the center of the pentagram, the Ascene Asylum.
Speaker 3And so, therefore, and the most haunted building, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and therefore this is why. I mean if I just dislike it, I would, yeah, I really.
Speaker 1It is why I mean, if I just dislike it.
Speaker 2It bothers me.
Speaker 1It really kind of does.
Speaker 2I can understand, because you're spreading more. Misinformation.
Speaker 1Yeah, bs is what you're doing, but that's what lore is all about.
Speaker 3That's how lore starts People creating these stories.
Speaker 1But the problem is that a lot of people today blindly buy into every single thing they hear Yep, and that's the problem. It's not so much that the lore is out there, it's that people just they, they just see it once and then it's like oh, in their mind it's a hundred percent true, but do you think though?
Speaker 2I mean we obviously see it now. Right, because we have all ways, all manner of ways, of disseminating information. Right, but I don't know if it was any different back in the 1800s in that avenue. Right, because we look at things and we've covered it on this podcast. We covered the bear lake monster.
Speaker 3Monster.
Speaker 2Yeah and right and it's like okay, one person starts, it starts with one person, and then someone else sees something and oh, it's got to be the Bear Lake Monster. There's no like discernment, right, and it just takes enough people to snowball this thing and the next thing you know, you've got a parade and Lake Monster days.
Speaker 1The Lake Monster children's book.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, and lake monster days, the lake monster children's book. Yeah, I think you have all of this stuff right, yep, and it's just kind of how it snowballs, yeah, and so I don't, I don't. I think the reason why, in a sense, that we want that this stuff happens is we want it to be true. Not that it is true, right, but we want some of this stuff to be true we like the mysterious and that's and that's fair.
Speaker 1But you should have a little bit of discernment and realizing when it's bs or hey, I'm gonna buy, I'm just gonna play along because it's fun. Well, but I understand it's not real.
Speaker 3See, and that's where I think a lot of it starts, is if they're doing, say, a tour, right, and somebody needs to write the script for the tour, I could see somebody coming up with something like that to make the tour more interesting, yeah, and make it more intriguing and add another splash of mysteriousness to the tour. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I think in my mind something like that. I can see where that would come from, right?
Speaker 1And.
Speaker 3I'm not necessarily opposed to that, right. I'm not, because mysterious things are fun, sure, and it kind of creates something interesting, but also not super factual. You know what I mean, is it? You know what?
Speaker 2I mean, is it entertainment? Right or is it facts or? People like or is it modified for your enjoyment?
Speaker 3yeah, and I wonder based on a true story I and I doubt loosely or wonder if people actually take that so seriously, where they perform rituals or you know whatever in the center of that pentagram, you know and I will bet you that that does happen.
Speaker 1I don't doubt it, because I don't doubt it.
Speaker 2I don't know if I've shared the story on here or not, but it was after the blur, which movie came out, and I used to work at an amusement park and we were waiting for everyone to lock up to wait outside, and this gal had seen the movie the night before and we're just, you know, sitting outside and waiting. The amusement park is closed and there's, you know, critters and stuff moving around behind us and whatnot, and everything that moved was it's the Blair Witch, it's the Blair Witch, it's the Blair Witch, it's the Blair Witch.
Speaker 1It's the Blair Witch, oh jeez, it's like oh my goodness. You know it's a movie, right.
Speaker 2You know it's not real right.
Speaker 1So, yes, I do believe that some people will take anything and make it way more than it should be, and then start allowing that to make their decisions yeah which but that can lead to problems too yes, it can because some people, especially ones that blindly believe it, even if it is made up for the purpose of like entertainment and the mysterious part, they believe it. And then they go out and they try to do it. And what if they ended up getting hurt or something happens because of it?
Speaker 1right, yeah this is where it becomes a problem, like you know. Oh, I saw my favorite youtube people go on a ghost hunt and this happened and that happened, and you know. So I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna find a place and I'm gonna do this, and you know, it could lead down some bad roads yep it can.
Speaker 2That's where the responsibility of things that's why I hope they they're not being done yes, well and see, but they're a stupid beater, let's, let's not have that be on let's not peg it natural selection here we come yeah all right, everybody, if you enjoyed uh, this, uh, this wonderful tale of of uh, I would say murder and mayhem, but uh no it's definitely not that it's a lot of sadness in this one it is, it was.
Speaker 1It was less of the of the paranormal. Unfortunately, when we got to the the haunting stuff, stuff, there just was not much out there. That is that you can find anyways.
Speaker 2I do believe the place is, more than likely, very haunted and very active at times.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I'm sure students and stuff and faculty have had experiences there, but there's none out there that we could.
Speaker 2Well, we could substantiate yeah. Yeah, so um, have a great night everybody. Ghost hunt responsibly and, as always, stay ghosty my peeps.
Speaker 1Thanks for watching.
