The Horrors Of Pennhurst Asylum

Written By Kaelyn Moore

Pennhurst is often referred to as one of the most haunted places in America. It's not surprising, considering it was a mental asylum that opened in 1908 and was known for torturing, experimenting on, and holding captive it's patients. Today, we're going to dive into that dark history and the stories of the ghosts that still linger inside.

TW: Brief mentions of suicide and child abuse

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SOURCES

Pennhurst Weird NJ: https://weirdnj.com/stories/pennhurst-asylum/

TRANSCRIPT

On a gloomy afternoon, George Muro pulled up in front of an imposing brick building. He got out of his car as construction workers passed by him carrying bricks and cement, and he took the whole view in. 


This massive, french inspired building was now under his control, he was the new property manager, and the first order of business was to get this nearly 100 year old building back in tip top shape.


His eyes scanned from the workers patching up the brickwork, to the gardeners shaping the landscaping. Within the next few weeks, they’d all be joined by movers who would be tasked with pulling old, rusted medical equipment out through the front door.


Yep, through the building’s beautiful entrance would roll squeaky gurneys, IV bags full of dark unknown liquid, and mattresses that looked like they had the shape of a person forever imprinted into them.


This building, beautiful as it may seem, has an incredibly dark past. Before George took over, it was known as Pennhurst State School and Hospital, a softer way to say that it was an asylum. And when  Pennhurst officially closed its doors in 1987, it’s believed its past is still trapped inside.


As George’s eyes moved from the front of the building up to the giant windows of the second story, he noticed someone standing inside, peering out past the curtains.


That was odd, he thought. No one should be inside the building just yet, movers weren’t supposed to be here. He pulled one of the construction workers aside and pointed. Is that one of your guys? He asked.


The construction worker looked up at the window, clocking the strange figure standing there, looking back at them. No, shouldn't be. 


Shoot. George called his partner, and asked him to come check out the property with him. Someone may have been squatting and he was going to have to deal with it.


Together, the two men searched the  the foreclosed building. Dripping could be heard  echoing in the distance coming from an unknown source . Paint peeled on the walls, including the brightly colored murals from former patients.


The two climbed the old staircase to the second floor and got to the room where the person was seen. The knob was basically rusted in place and covered in spiderwebs. they pushed open the door, half expecting to find someone living inside the room, but what they found was nothing. The room was full of furniture covered in sheets and cobwebs, but no people. 


George couldn’t believe it, but it’s what he saw over by the window that made his heart drop.


There was a giant safety barrier that had been placed around the window, most likely from its days as a hospital. It would have been impossible for someone to even touch the window, let alone stand right up against the glass as the figure had been doing.


The men turned and ran, and little did they know, stories like this were common here. Scores of people who visited the property before those men and since, have all reported similar occurrences. Figures in the windows, footsteps and disembodied screams coming from nowhere. Unexplainable cold spots. And echoey laughter from children. 


And it’s no wonder Pennhurst is often called one of the most haunted places in the country. It’s time as an asylum was one full of horrors, death and torture.


Today, we’re going to get into it, both the dark history and the ghost sightings of Pennhurst.  Ok, more after a quick break.

Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore


Today’s episode is heavy, I know a lot of our episodes here are heavy, and I also know that a lot of you listeners use Heart STarts pounding as a comfort podcast. So everyone has their own tolerance, but today we’re talking about a place that embodies the dark history of mental health and disability treatment in this country. But, I promise, we’ll end on a light note.


Also, you’re all very darkly curious people and dark history enthusiasts, so I don’t really need to say this to you, but this episode reflects the opinions and practices of people at Pennhurst between 1908 and 1984, it does not reflect the feelings of myself or anyone at heart starts pounding. You will hear references to words that were common medical terms in 1908-1970 that are no longer used today in quotes from doctors, journalists, and laws being passed at the time.


After you listen to this episode, be sure to join me in an episode of Footnotes on Patreon where I’ll be going over the case file for Pennhurst, including photos and videos of supposed hauntings with Leo. There is one video that captured something I still have nightmares about, so don’t miss it.  


Before we dive in let me say thank you to everyone listening, the loyal members of our Rogue Detecting Society.  I don’t always know how people find the show and listener Anna Chandler doesn’t either. She says ‘I don’t remember how i found this podcast but it just kind of showed up in my life one day and i haven’t stopped listening since. I love the variety of topics discussed and i haven’t been able to find a podcast that captures my attention this way anywhere. I strongly recommend listening.” Thanks, Anna. I don’t know how you found it either, but I’m glad you did. Now I do know how some of you found it, and that’s because Apple Podcasts was kind enough to feature us here in the US recently and it’s always fun to move up and be high on the charts beside the huge podcasts like Morbid and Smartless and Crime Junkie, but also the Kelce brothers because I kept thinking, if Taylor Swift is looking for Travis Kelce’s podcast she’ll see Heart Starts Pounding and I’m sure she’d be a fan. We are a growing community of the darkly curious, and I love that no matter when or where you’re listening–in the car, on the treadmill, in a haunted hotel room–there is probably someone else or a lot of someone else’s doing the exact same thing. So, let’s jump in.   


Pennhurst Asylum was never intended to be a dark stain in American history. In fact, it was believed to be ushering in a new enlightened phase of American society.


And if you were to pull up to the original Pennhurst when it opened 1908, you may have been tricked into believing it. 


Then, You would have found brick buildings sitting on a manicured lawn that looked like an esteemed university. You would have found a dentist’s office, a barber shop, a greenhouse, social workers and psychologists. It may have looked like its own community positioned to care for people with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities. 


One family that was excited to take advantage of this facility were the Hight’s. Their 9 year old son Robert sat silently in the backseat as they approached Pennhurst . We don’t know what Robert was struggling with, they probably didn’t have the language at the time to define it, but it seemed Robert wasn’t progressing as quickly as the children around him. Though he was 9 years old, he hadn’t reached a lot of the milestones other kids his age had. And schools at the time didn’t know what to do with children like Robert. There weren’t many options for his parents, who wanted him to live an enriched life. Pennhurst promised they could help him. 


Robert’s parents like so many other parents were charmed by the vision of the asylum’s founder, Dr. Charles Frazier. 


Dr. Frazier was the head of Penn Medical school in 1908 when he opened Penhurst, originally called Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic He felt that “feeble mindedness” was on the rise in Pennsylvania. Feeble minded was a term popular at the turn of the century, and was defined in the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 as a condition in adults “so pronounced that they require care, supervision, and control for their own protection or the protection of others.” and If they were children of school age, it was a  condition “so pronounced that they by reason of such defectiveness appear to be personally incapable of receiving proper benefit from instruction in ordinary schools.”


Obviously that is so vague. People could have anything from ADHD, epileptic seizures, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, etc. All very different conditions that require very different things. But, would you believe, in 1908, they lumped them all together under one offensive term. 


So Pennhurst opened as a place to provide long-term services. It offered meals and clothes, activities counseling, haircuts to those who resided there, jobs to those willing to work. And it seemed like a godsend for people who didn’t know what else to do with their loved ones.


Take, for instance, Polly Spare. Polly gave birth to her daughter at a time when nurses were not allowed to deliver babies without a male doctor present. This was the 40’s by the way, not that long ago. When Polly went into labor, the doctor wasn’t available so the nurses pushed her legs together to keep the baby inside until he could get there.


As a result, Polly’s daughter was deprived of oxygen and suffered a brain injury from the pressure on her head. As she got older her motor skills weren’t developed and she had trouble speaking. She wasn’t succeeding in school, so Polly made the difficult choice to bring her to Pennhurst. 


And so you can imagine, as 9 year old Robert Hight’s parents were driving away from Pennhurst, watching him in their rearview mirror be led inside , they felt like they were doing the absolute right thing for him.


But all of that changed the first time they went to visit their son. 


Two and half weeks after they dropped Robert off, his parents drove up to the Asylum again, excited to hear about how it was going for him


Instead, they were met with a little boy who looked like he had gone through hell. 


Robert had scrapes and bruises all over his body, it looked like he had tumbled down a mountain. There was dried blood on the side of his mouth. And most disturbing of all, He didn’t recognize his mother, which it was later discovered was because he was given such heavy medication. 


It also became quickly apparent that Robert’s language and motor skills had regressed.


The Hight’s packed up their son immediately and brought him home. Mrs. Hight said she wouldn’t even leave a dog in conditions like that. 


Robert’s parents got a rare peek behind the curtain of the horrors that residents at Pennhurst faced. Operating as a safe haven was just a facade, in reality, Dr. Frazier had something much darker in mind for the Asylum


See, he believed that because there were more and more “feeble minded” people cropping up in Pennsylvania, he needed to create a space for them so they would be out of the Gene pool. Frazier was a eugenicist. And Pennhurst existed as a holding cell. He didn’t actually care about the quality of life of anyone inside of the asylum.


Frazier incorrectly believed that these disabilities, be it blindness, hyperactivity, or even promiscuity in women, were passed down from parents. So as long as his patients weren’t having children, his job was done. 


But  he tricked a lot of people into believing that he was helping.  From the moment Pennhurst opened it was overcrowded. there were beds in hallways, outside of rooms that didn’t have space for them. Children were often restrained to their beds so they didn’t wander off. Bathrooms had no privacy. Dining halls were infested with rats.


The facility per Frazier’s request had no connection to the outside world, with its own power supply, food sources, and a rail station to directly import anything it needed in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Parents could commit children against their will. Patients with extremely different needs were forced together. For instance, violent patients roomed with non verbal autistic patients, you can imagine the issues that arose there. patients on suicide watch were with hyperactive minors. Shockingly, or not shockingly depending on how you look at it, most of the people committed there were women of childbearing age who were thought to be promiscuous.


Promiscuity wouldn’t be a problem at Pennhurst though because relationships were banned. Men and women were held in separate units to ensure that everyone's gene pools died in the building. 


And as an added layer of protection, forced sterilization was used. Pennsylvania was the first place in the US to sterilize using a procedure called the oophorectomy, which is ovary removal. 


Maybe you’re thinking, but Kaelyn, how could they do this, surely that was illegal. Well guys in 1927 our supreme court decided in the case Buck V. Bell that forced sterilization of the “unfit” which included the disabled, was not against our US constitution. One Justice even went on record saying “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” 


The overcrowding led to rampant patient neglect. At times it was estimated that 2 or 3 staff were overseeing 80 patients.  And for a population that needed to be cared for, neglect could be deadly. One patient died after eating a state issued sock they had received. Another dove headfirst down the laundry shoot


Worse than the neglect, As you maybe can imagine, was the abuse. the staff were not well trained, at all, and often resorted to force and cruel punishments.


One Dr, ironically named Dr. Jesse Fear, said that he had a tactic for children who were misbehaving. There was a building called the Q building, and the second floor, called Q2, was where children who were determined to have the lowest IQs were kept. To punish other children not on the Q2  floor, they would lock them in a room with the Q2 kids and just leave everyone to their own devices.


Dr. Fear thought that this would “downgrade” the higher IQ kids, aka lower their intelligence which would make them less hyperactive. And if they were still hyperactive after this, he would just drug them to calm them down.


One child, Johnny, who faced this punishment, suffered the effects. He was bullied by the kids in Q2, which Dr. Fear actually said was good for the kids, but he also started losing his language skills and confidence.


It’s true that the Q building has some of the darkest history on the grounds, and perhaps that’s why it’s also considered to be one of the most haunted. A Q building ghost sighting, after the break.


A woman named Briana slowly approached the Q building one night with a group of friends. It was after Pennhurst had officially shut its doors as an asylum, but before it had gone through any restoration. So the building sat abandoned, waiting for someone to come in and remember what had happened there. 


This is where all the children had been held. This is where Johnny had been punished, where kids were left to their own devices, where Dr. Fear would inject any child who got out of hand. 


The group held candles as they passed through the crumbling column entrance to the three story brick building. Weeds and brush climbed towards the shattered windows on the second floor. 


Once the group made it inside, they saw what years of neglect had done. Chipped paint from the walls littered the floors, windows were boarded up or were covered in spiderweb cracks. And old rusted hospital beds still sat in the hallway. Ones that had once held the kids that didn’t fit into rooms. 


Perhaps if the group had looked closely enough they would have seen the restraints on the bed frames.


But they didn’t have the chance. because out of nowhere, a breeze blew out their candles. 


Silence enveloped them, they could hear their heart beats in their ears. Then, down the hall Brianna heard something else. A sound that definitely was not coming from one of her group it was child’s laughter.


And her group heard it too, because the other girls stood frozen in place. What happened next, Brianna could only describe as an intense sense of sadness and desperation that washed over her, unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was as if years of abuse and neglect that had taken place in the building were washing over her, as if she was in the head of someone who lived there.


The group quickly ran out


Later on, once they had made it home and were going over their experience, trying to figure out what happened. That’s when her friends admitted that they too had felt the overwhelming sense of sadness. It was the feeling of wanting to leave but knowing they couldn’t. Like they’d be there forever.


In 1968, a special aired on NBC 10 called Suffer The Little Children. It was a 4 part expose aimed at showing the world what had been occurring at Pennhurst, because remember, Pennhurst was intentionally set away where no one would be privy to the abuse. Most people, aside from a few loved ones, didn’t know what the conditions were like


But in the 60’s, americans were fighting for the rights of people that had been denied them. The civil rights movement, stonewall. It felt like it was time to expose Pennhurst.


The footage from this expose is hard to watch. It starts with a spiteful and sarcastic quote from the journalist at the center of it, Bill Baldini


As he speaks, people on screen rock back in forth in agony, barely dressed. Fly paper is shown hanging from the windows completely caked in flies. Hands tied to beds form aggravated fists. 


In this expose, it was revealed that Pennhurst only had 8 doctors and 2 psychiatrists on staff full time. That was for 2,781 high need patients. It was also revealed that the facility was only equipped to hold 1,984 patients. Pennhurst was at 140% capacity. 


They also discovered that only 7% of children were in the asylum's Rehabilitation programs, meaning only 7% had any chance of ever getting out of Pennhurst. 93% were expected to stay there for their entire lives.


And in 1968,  the broadcast interviewed adults in Pennhurst that had been there since the building had opened 60 years prior. 


They interviewed Abe, who was dropped off at the facility in 1909 at just 5 years old. Abe’s parents were russian immigrants and once they filled out his intake forms, they never came back to see him.


Abe spent the entirety of his life residing, but also building and sustaining Pennhurst as a worker. He had a number of essential jobs during his six-decade stay in Pennhurst and was known for his positivity. He was famous for saying “Hello, my friend”. 


Pennhurst tried to use Abe as an example of someone who loved living there when under criticism and stated he would not want to leave. Instead, Abe surprised them by telling the documentarians that he would love to live somewhere else. He had always dreamed of leaving Pennhurst. 


The Documentary also interviewed Dr. Fear who went a bit more in depth about his torture practices. Here’s him talking about how he chose to punish a patient he felt was being unruly.


The documentary shocked and appalled viewers, like i said, it was the first time most people were made aware of what was really going on. This did lead to some changes at the facility, but not all of them were for the best.


Unpaid labor was outlawed in Pennsylvania in 1973, so Pennhurst shut down their farms and took away jobs from patients. They were using patients for a TON of free labor, for instance, it’s estimated that in 1953 patients did 5 million pounds of laundry. And they could have paid, the farms were providing pork, eggs, and dairy that were making money for the facility, they just chose not to.


And taking away this work from patients took away their sense of purpose, and left them with little to do each day. 


The mistreatment continued, however. One story that came out of Pennhurst at this time was the story of a woman who was physically restrained for 2,692 hours across four months in 1976 there are 2,920 total hours in four months. 


Eventually, in the late 70’s, a cop named Cliff Shaw went undercover at Pennhurst. That way doctors wouldn’t give PR statements, and patients wouldn’t be afraid to say how they really felt. And this seemed to be the final nail in the asylum’s coffin.


Investigators found that at night, older patients would prowl around floors looking for weaker patients to brutalize. A lot of the violence was encouraged by staff. One journalist even heard from one patient that staff would pit patients against one another and make them fight for their entertainment. 


Children were experimented on with mercury and some died from the exposure.


The undercover investigation led to seven indictments of Pennhurst employees, with six convictions for criminal assault.


The 70’s and 80’s also saw an onslaught of lawsuits brought against Pennhurst. One of them being from Terri Lee Halderman’s family. She was admitted at age 12 and stayed eleven years2. She lost teeth, suffered multiple fractures from her jaw, to fingers, to toes, and was covered in lacerations, scratches, and bruises regularly


Her lawyer argued that Pennhurst not only didn’t help patients get better but subjected them to an environment so poor and abusive that “it contribute[d] to losing skills already learned”


Nicholas Romeo’s family also filed charges against Pennhurst. He was admitted in 1974 at 26 years old. Nicholas had severe cognitive disabilities and after his father died, his mother could not manage his care alone. When he was discharged, he came with fifty welts on his stomach and had a documented 200 wounds or injuries caused by himself or others during his stay. Other aides who witnessed his beatings testified that many of these injuries came directly from staff. 


Eventually Pennhurst closed its doors for good, and discharged all of the residents inside. Today, it remains dilapidated, and some areas look like they haven’t been kept up since the day the doors closed. 


It now has private owners who are renovating the estate and have converted some of the property into a haunted house amusement attraction, which many find controversial given the real suffering that happened there


And the people who worked at Pennhurst since part of it was converted have all experienced paranormal things. 


Take Lizzie, who worked at the attraction in 2020. Her “most terrifying ghost experience happened when she was working in the Containment wing full of gurneys and wheelchairs. 


She was covering someone on their break, waiting for a new batch of haunted riders to come. While she was alone she decided to lean on a gurney. Meanwhile, fog was being pumped into the room so she couldn’t see. Out of nowhere, she felt a big bear hug from behind. She turned around hoping to see her coworker but no one was there. When her coworker returned she told her there was a little girl who had lived in this ward, who was tied to that gurney, and loved playing. For the spirits of mournful children staff would try to comfort them and provide them with toys but they never were fully at rest.

Lizzie also said There was a dark spirit in the dayroom of the administration building who scratched her. This entity was also known to lock people in lockers.

She said The Philadelphia Building was the most haunted. It was eventually closed from touring because people kept getting hit, pushed, and shoved down stairs by spirits

The history of Pennhurst is dark and the trauma of what happened, spirits and all may still be locked inside, but this is not where our story ends.  I told you, we’re going to end on a bit of a lighter note, after the break

Remember Abe from Suffer the Little Children? He had been at Pennhurst since 1909. Pennhurst was essentially the only home he ever knew and he yearned to leave. Well, after he was discharged from Pennhurst, he got that opportunity. 


at 75 years old he experienced unincarcerated freedom for the first time and lived independently in a community-based group home until he died in his 90s (3)


And then, there’s the story of Violet and Leonard. The two met at Pennhurst in the blind ward in 1967, the only portion of the campus where Men and women were placed next to each other and were able to communicate. The two became friends, and eventually were discharged. 


But Violet became ill, and it was suggested that she return to Pennhurst to recover. Not willing to lose Violet to that place, Nelson became her care taker. The two eventually got married.


Despite the years of being in an institution that championed the elimination of people like them, Leonard and Violet found love, and lived the rest of their 35 years of life together. 


But for hundreds, maybe thousands of others, that opportunity never came, and some say that their spirits are still trapped inside. 


If you’re ever able to visit pennhurst, and take a ghost tour, remember the history of what happened there, and honor those that couldn’t leave. And if you do catch something in the corner of your eye, or hear a scream from down the hallway, you’ll know that that person was a real person, with value, and wasn’t treated as such. But maybe they’re still in there, letting people know they lived, that they mattered. 


And speaking of people whose stories matter–next week is one of my favorite kinds of episodes. The kind that comes directly from you, heart starts pounding listeners and members of our rogue detecting society. And I think these are some of the best stories yet

Kaelyn Moore
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