September 22, 2025 • 64 mins
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 Twitter @CPRParanormal on Facebook Paranormal Peeps Podcast or Coldspot Paranormal Research and on Instagram coldspot_paranormal_research
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Between the realm of the dead and the journeys of the
living.
Join Josh, jamie and Elisa asthey delve into the vast world
of the paranormal and breathelife back into the history of
the departed.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey everybody, Welcome back to the Paranormal
Peeps podcast.
That's Jamie.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's Josh and that's Elisa.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Like who's going to say me?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You could have done yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
But she always does herself.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, I guess Yuki could have said it.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
She doesn't speak.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's true, she's a cat.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, I mean, when she opens her mouth, you don't
even hear her sound come out,anyways.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, that's true, but we have a interesting tale
tonight to cover.
That is the Athens LunaticAsylum.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Also known as the Ridges.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, but we'll get to that later.
They changed the name later.
It changes a couple differenttimes actually.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But back when it opened it was called the Athens
Lunatic Asylum.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, because it's located in Athens, but not
Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Ohio, yes, yep.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And not Athens, Greece.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
No Ohio, yes, Yep, and not Athens, greece.
No Ohio.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So we just want to make sure, you guys understand.
So the asylum was in operationfrom 1874 to 1993.
So 119 years, isn't that?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
crazy.
I was kind of shocked when Isaw the whole it closed in 1993.
I was like, wow, I'm surprisedit lasted that long.
But go Athens, yeah, go Athens.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Go the mentally infirm.
The building style was known asthe Kirkbride plan.
As the Kirkbride plan, thedesign of the building and the
surrounding grounds wereinfluenced by Dr Thomas Story
Kirkbride, who was a 19thcentury physician who wrote a
book called On the ConstructionOrganization in General
(02:19):
Arrangements of Hospitals forthe Insane, with some remarks on
the insanity and its treatment.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
And that is actually the title of his book.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
That's insane itself.
I mean yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, it is, he should be committed for that.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
He wants you to know exactly what is in that book.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Exactly it's 200,.
No, sorry, 394 pages.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And I read part of it this morning.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
And it was yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, part of it was like weird Spot on, spot on.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Well, some of it was very accurate.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And how tall you should build it and why you
should have a fully dug crawlspace and all of this stuff
(03:30):
no-transcript.
He actually referred toinsanity as a treatable disease.
So yeah, yeah, and so somepeople think that this
individual institution was hepracticed there.
(03:50):
This wasn't his practice, hejust influenced the design of
the building, so he's not trulythe monster that ran this place.
We'll get to him later.
The Kirkbride building designswere recognized by the staggered
floor plan of their wards orthe batwing style, which another
(04:12):
common place that has a batwingstyle is Waverly Hills.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Does it though.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, it's got the batwing style and that's
designed for airflow.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Okay, describe what the batwing style is.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So most buildings are flat, perpendicular, 90-degree
angles, but with the batwingstyle what ends up happening is
the center part of the buildingis 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
(04:49):
like you built it with Legos.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Oh, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So 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 wingsfrom the, from the aerial
photographs, but it looks morelike you built it with Legos.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
It also had a very interesting Victorian Gothic
style architecture, so the frontof the building is very
Victorian Gothic.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I love that I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It's really nice and that's really on the main 1874
building.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
The original.
The original really has thatgothic style to it.
Why don't they build?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
things like that anymore, because we've gone from
these things that havecharacter and style and
uniqueness and we've gone tothis minimalistic, plain sterile
crap.
It's everywhere.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Also called modern it's.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
yeah, I don't prefer it, you know.
Myself, I think everythinglooks the same and kind of
blends together.
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
It's terrible.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It is terrible.
Yeah, it's terrible, it isterrible.
The main building included acentral administration and a
wing for men on one side and aseparate wing for women on the
other.
Each had their own dining hall,so there's really a segregation
of the sexes.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, right, and I'm sure that I mean obviously
there's reasons you would haveto do that anyways.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I mean, they still do that in homes for people who
have dementia or Alzheimer'smemory care facilities.
Yeah, They'll separate the menand the women.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes you have to do that.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It's amazing how many things happen in those homes.
So I had a family member thatwas in one of those homes and in
that home there was a man and awoman that were married to
separate people who becameboyfriend and girlfriend in the
home.
(07:02):
Because they didn't realizethat they were married.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Oh, that's kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
So they had to separate them yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
You know what's interesting is Kirk Bridge in
his Kirk Bride.
Kirk Bride Sorry, kirk Bride, Iwant to say Bridge, for some
reason it's Bride.
In his book he actually talkedabout not having men and women
even in the same facility.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yep, I mean, it's safer that way.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Let's be real Well he also felt that women would
cause men to have problems, notthe other way around.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Not the other way around.
Oh my heavens, it's alwaysone-sided.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, it was very patriarchal back then.
The building was 60 feet wideand 853 feet long.
Holy moly.
It was built with red bricksthat were made from the clay
that was dug on site.
18.5 million red bricks wereused to make this building.
(08:09):
That's a lot.
It's a lot of bricks.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
It's a big building.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The back of this building held the boiler room
and a laundry room.
In the main building.
They could house roughly 573patients, which was almost
double to that of what Kirkbridehad recommended.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
That always happens.
Do you notice that in placeslike this?
Yeah, it's like people justdump them off and they don't
ever put a limit on it.
They just dump their relativesoff.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
When they become troublesome or they just don't
want to deal with them anymore.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, Well, if you figure too like, this was a
state run institution right, andso 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 getin here?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yep, did you mention that the bricks that they used
to make the buildings wereactually sourced from that
property?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, yeah, they were dug.
They were dug on the property.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
That's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
The interesting thing is likethese places, just like Waverly
right was self-sustaining, sowas this institution right off
the bat.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, and I think that's cool if you can have a
self-sustaining place and ifyou're not using the people that
are living there as like slavesin a way, but to teach them how
to garden and they're and it'sused as therapy how to you know.
(09:44):
Yeah, do those things.
Then that can be so therapeutic, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yep.
Eventually, the overcrowdingled to problems between the
patients in the facility.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Why would it not?
And it would.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Overcrowding.
You don't have your own space.
You're in.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
You know everybody's in each other's bubble and and
let's face it right, at thistime too, like you're there for
potentially an actual legitimatereason, right, so you're having
some mental issues, and ifyou're having an issue with your
, your, your mental state at thetime, having other people like
right up in your grill isprobably not going to be very
(10:24):
good.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
No, it's going to trigger you.
Well, and if you think about itgenerally, when you are
doubling the amount of peoplethat you have in a space, you
have less workers per people.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Per people.
Per person, and it's so.
There's going to be less peopletaking baths or having hygiene
issues.
Cleanse like the room is goingto be more dirty, yep.
Everything is just going to godownhill.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, everything suffers and your care suffers
too, right, because there's notenough people to provide care.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
And what do you notice with people who have
mental health issues?
They don't take care ofthemselves.
They slowly stop taking care ofthemselves.
So how is putting them in aplace like that ever going to
help?
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Exactly, yeah, that was.
Another thing Kirk Bride saidis that his recommendation was
15 to 1.
On patients who were mildlydisturbed, so you could have 15
people in in in one like commonarea type of thing.
Yeah, so that's a pretty smallgroup of people compared to the
(11:38):
573 plus that they crammed inthis building.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, I wonder how many workers they actually had.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Uh, it wasn't that many.
It was like 25 on the day shiftand 25 on the night shift.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
That blows my mind.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I have pictures that I'll post, but yeah, it didn't
look like a ton of people.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, but I think it was more than 25.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
But it still wasn't enough.
Right Is the point, I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So Athens provided care for the homeless, Civil War
veterans, the elderly,criminals, children, unruly
teenagers.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, and so the unruly teenagers?
The parents would send themthere to teach them a lesson for
being unruly.
Well, Not because they actuallyhad problems.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Necessarily a mental health issue.
I wonder what problems they hadback in the day.
I don't know what was theunruly issues compared to today.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
No, I will not milk that cow.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Mom I just don't want to husk corn anymore.
My hands are raw.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Two years after it opened, it was renamed the
Athens Hospital for the Insane.
That sounds very pleasant.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Well, it's better than lunatic.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, by 1981, it would be called the Athens
Mental Health Center.
Ooh, that's a little nicer.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's a lot nicer yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Got some good name changes in there, yep.
The interesting thing is thevery first patient to be put in
there was a 12-year-old girl, aw, who was suffering from
epilepsy.
But back then, of course, theydidn't understand epilepsy the
way we do today.
They thought she was possessedby a demon.
(13:31):
So if you're possessed by ademon, the best place to go was
an insane asylum.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
That poor girl yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
That's sad.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So sad.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And that made me think of the Bells yeah, so sad.
And that made me think of theBells, yeah.
It's like he could have endedup in Athens.
The asylum's first report wasthat 19 women and 31 men were
having their insanity caused byepilepsy.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Wow, that's a lot, that is a lot, having their
insanity caused by epilepsy Wowthat's a lot.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That is a lot.
It's interesting because it'slike you're insane.
Why?
Because you have epilepsy.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Because you have seizures.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
But they didn't know anything about epilepsy.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
No, they didn't understand the neurological
disorder that it is Mm-mm.
A wide range of things couldland you in this place, like TB.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yep Really.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Menopause.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Oh crap.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
All the women, let's go.
This is why we weren't bornback then, elisa, I know.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Postpartum.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Okay, well, I screwed .
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Alcoholism, depression, women's issues.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
You mean having a period Probably Cramping.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Probably Just being like, just well.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Hormones.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Hormonal Talking off to your husband.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Like you've just your PMSing hard and you just snap
and oh, she's insane.
The husband goes oh, she'sinsane here.
I'm going to drop you off here.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Oh my gosh Yep.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So the leading cause for women to be admitted in the
first three years of operationwere puerperal condition, which
is related to child birth.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, and I'm not surely, or I'm not sure what it
actually is or has to do withchildbirth.
I didn't look it up.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's probably close to postpartum, probably
somewhere in that line.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, I'm going to guess.
That's probably what it is.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Menstrual derangement we call that PMSing today.
Menstrual derangement we callthat.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
PMSing today.
Little did they know they couldcure it with some chocolate and
a coffee.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Right From Starbucks.
Change of life which menopause.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, I'm guessing that's what they mean.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So, yeah, anything any of those things.
She got a hair on her chin Tothe asylum.
You're insane, she's a witch.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
She's possessed.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Approximately 51 patients were admitted for
alcoholism in the first threeyears.
81 women and men were admittedclaiming that their insanity was
caused by masturbation, andthat was a thing.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
You know how many people will be thrown in an
assailant asylum today for that?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Every man.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And half the women.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Maybe three quarters of the women in today's day and
age.
Yeah, who knows, maybe threequarters of the women in today's
day and age.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, who knows?
But here's the interestingthing why this was a thing was
that some doctors went to in the1700s, right, they went to an
insane asylum and they actuallysaw a whole bunch of the people
(17:06):
who are in there doing that, andso, obviously, if they're doing
it, therefore, it's going tolead like if you're doing that,
it's going to lead to insanity,and so that's why they put you
in there.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, it's such a weird.
Weird thing.
Now Women could beinstitutionalized for fictitious
and unnecessary reasons.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Of course, I think if the men just didn't want to
deal with them anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, that's exactly right, send them off.
Yep.
It's the easy way to get ridwith them anymore, yep.
Yeah, that's exactly right,send them off, yep.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It's the easy way to get rid of them in that avenue.
Depending on the patient'scondition, they could have
almost total freedom at theasylum or no freedom for
full-time care.
So those who had like totalfreedom could walk the grounds
and move around those that werereally mild-mannered and
low-maintenance.
Non-violent.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Non-violent.
They pretty much could roam,you know, and others.
For others that couldn't, itwas like a prison.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
It's like I'm just PMSing.
Just give me a week, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Just give me a week.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Just give me a week, give me some chocolate, and
we'll be all right.
The asylum was obviously itsown closed facility.
So they had, you know, wallsand everything.
And they also had their ownlivestock, their own orchards,
their own fields, gardens, theirown dairy and they had their
(18:46):
own plant that generated heatfrom steam.
So they had their own steamplant.
That's cool, yeah.
The interesting thing is I waslooking into some of their
records and I found that in oneyear it was like in 1881, one
(19:11):
year it was like in 1881,.
They made $1,337 on meat fromcows.
That's a lot.
Back then that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Did they feed it to any of their patients?
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
No, that's what they sold.
That's what they sold.
They sold it.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
For profit.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
For profit.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
From the livestock.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Oh, I'm aware, but what I'm saying is did some of
the meat that they raised Didany?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
of that meat.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, I'm sure it did Because it was supposed to be
self-sustaining, so yeah.
It was a self-sustainingcommunity.
I would hope so.
They just had extras.
Essentially, in what it endedup being, a lot of the
maintenance work was originallydone by the patients.
You know that sounds a lot likeold Montana State Prison, where
(19:55):
a lot of the prison was builtby the prisoners.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, like if they're doing
it for slave work versus doingit for therapeutic work, yeah,
Well, here it was said that theydid it for the therapeutic,
like taking care of the animals.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Because they had horses and stuff too.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Which would be so fun .
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Right.
And then you know, harvestingthe garden and picking the fruit
in the orchards.
Cultivating and all of thatstuff, all the things, and it
was used as a form of therapy.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Well, yeah, because back in Fresh air.
All that, yeah, because back inthe 1880s, when they would have
been doing this stuff, wasstill done a lot by hand.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yes, right.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So there was still a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
As the years went by, new buildings were added.
They added a stable or theyadded stables a firehouse,
amusement hall, laundry building, several more wards,
residential buildings for, likethe staff, therapy rooms, a
power plant.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And even, like in then, a dozen more buildings.
This place got huge Dozens anddozens more.
Actually, it's not just a dozenmore buildings.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
This place got huge Dozens and dozens more.
Actually, it's not just a dozenmore, it was actually come to
find out.
It was dozens multiple dozensmore.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Are these buildings still standing?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
A lot of them are Nice.
Yeah, the hospital was treatingroughly 1,800 patients and
using 78 buildings, and was thesingle largest employer in the
county.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
That is huge, yeah, that's massive.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The asylum kept growing and expanding over the
years.
They added a dairy barn, areceiving hospital, a beacon
school and a TB ward.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
A TB ward, tb, tb, tuberculosis.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
TB.
Had TB back then, whichactually had to be a building on
its own because TB wascontagious.
Right so that was off on itsown.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
How horrible that we just put them in the general
population and then everybodygot TB.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah Well, people do stupid things.
But thankfully they didn't hearRight, Thankfully they made it
a separate building.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
On top of that, seven cottages were built in order to
house those patients the TBpatients.
These cottages were dormitorystyle rooms which allowed for
constructive the TB patients.
These cottages weredormitory-style rooms which
allowed for constructivegrouping of patients.
By the 1960s, the facility hadreached a staggering 660,888
(22:39):
square feet and had nearly 2,000patients, which was over three
times its capacity.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
That's wild.
Yeah.
Instead of building all thoseextra buildings, let's build
more rooms to house these people, these poor people that are
having to Live there.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
And be squished like that yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
In 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 1 (23:20):
Thank goodness they came to that conclusion.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Right.
The part that I found insane aswe're talking about in a sane
asylum right Is that when theyperform lobotomies and we all
know that it's an ice pickthrough the orbital, through the
orbital of the eye, into thebrain, the patients were awake
and unsedated, which means youfelt everything going in.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That is torture, that's.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
BS.
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, 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, justto make them docile and just so.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
They just kind of sit there staring at a wall.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
And don't do much else.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But they lost memories.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All sorts of stuff, because they just broke down the
prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Terrible.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Absolutely terrible.
The discovery of psychotropicdrugs and psychological
therapies would allow for mostpatients to be treated without
having to be kept in the asylum.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Thank goodness.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Progress.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Progress, people Progress, because we just don't
want to be doing those horriblethings to people.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
And you can see like how this was all done
differently from what theoriginal doctor's designs were.
Like he wanted something humaneand healing for the people and
not shoving an ice pick intotheir brains.
Like the man who inventedlobotomies actually went to
(25:11):
Athens and like practiced thereand taught there.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
So like this stuff was like massively used
everywhere else.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, that was the solution for a lot of these
patients.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, unfortunately, along with electroshock, yep
these patients yeah.
Unfortunately Along withelectroshock Yep.
So there were also rumors thatpatients were chained in the
basement.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
You know, and I I wouldn't be surprised.
I don't doubt it, I reallydon't.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I mean, they're all un Unstantiated rumors, right?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right, but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I would think because of how they treated people back
then, with people having angerissues or throwing their fits,
whatever it is that if they'regoing to be a harm to anyone, I
mean why wouldn't they go chainthem up somewhere to anyone?
(26:13):
I mean, why wouldn't they gochain them up somewhere?
Because I've seen other asylumshave actual rooms in basements
where they are chained to thewalls yeah, that's sad.
So I don't see that it wouldn'tbe something that they would do.
I mean, if you're puttingyourself in the mindset that
they were in back then if you'refreaking sticking an ice pick
in someone's brain and jigglingit around, not letting them be
numb by any stretch.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, then you'd have no problem.
Then, what is?
What would be the problem?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
putting chains on them down in the basement.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah.
The moral ethics is pretty muchgone at this point, right.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh, exactly, well, because people didn't care about
people who had mental issuesback in the day.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Well, and if you look at what the mental issues were,
too right For all those whocouldn't see, there's a lot of
big air quotes.
But if you couldn't see, youknow their mental issues weren't
really mental issues either.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Nope, a lot of them, weren't A lot of them weren't.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And so because of that, like you know, you're like
yeah, you got a problem withthis thing, with doing these
things.
Then we're just going to shovean ice pick up there and you'll
stop doing everything, or we'llchain you to the basement and
you'll stop being violent.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I wonder how much control any of them had, like
any of the patients had, overwhether they got ice picked or
not.
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Probably none.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
That would be my guess.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Because it's everything's up to the providing
, the providing physician at thetime Right.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Well, I wonder if like family was ever involved,
if they were like hey, by theway, we want to do this, do you
give us permission?
Or is it like they're in yourcare?
You do what you need to do andthey just do whatever they want?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, I think it's the latter.
I mean it wasn't.
I mean maybe, I mean obviouslynot 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 justwhatever's going to happen is
(28:11):
going to happen, especiallythose first 30 years before 1900
.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
So what year did they start doing the lobotomies?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh my gosh, I think those were started 18 something.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Was it before this place was built or after?
I want to say before, but I'mnot entirely sure, because I'm
thinking of that 12-year-oldgirl who goes in for seizures If
they thought, well, hey, let'sscramble her brain and see if it
(28:50):
stops her seizures, right.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, let's just say that actually no lobotomies were
done before 1935.
What, yeah, 1935?
1935, november 12th, was thevery first lobotomy done by
Portuguese neurologist EgosMones.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Wow, or Mones, that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
So that means this stuff was done early.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Or they were doing other things earlier.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Right, and this came later.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
This came later, and then they really probably ramped
it up for a good 30-ish years.
Ugh, that makes it even worse,honestly.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It does, it really does.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Because you would think that in the 30s, like, we
were better, like, but I guessit really shouldn't surprise us,
right?
I mean, even today we stillhave issues with mental health
in this country about justgetting mental health treatment
for people.
And so back then they justkicked them into a home and,
(30:01):
unfortunately, shoved an icepick up their head.
So then what eventually endedup happening and closing the
place is a lot of the land andbuildings were eventually sold
off, until all of them were soldoff to the University of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I don't think they were sold off.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Well bought.
They were acquired.
They were all acquired by theUniversity of Ohio.
They were signed over.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
The deeds were signed over to the university.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I guess I assume that to be sold off.
Okay, all right.
So in 1988, more buildings andgrounds were deeded to Ohio
University from the Departmentof Mental Health.
By the early 1990s many of theasylum's original buildings were
in disrepair.
The large asylums like Athensbegan to slowly be phased out,
(30:57):
shifting to small outpatientcenters over to the university
in 1993, which added 700 acresand 700,000 square feet of
(31:19):
building space to theuniversity's campus.
After that, the old AthensAsylum officially closed and any
remaining patients were thentransferred to a new mental
health facility.
The vacated property sat vacantfor several years before
restoration efforts began.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
But those people were excited to get out of there.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Right yeah there weren't many left.
I did have a number of how manywere eventually left.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yep Today most of the buildings serve as offices and
classrooms, so they're actuallyused by the campus today.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
That's good, which is great.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, the Kennedy Museum of Arts opened in Lynn
Hall in 1996.
And Lynn Hall was once theAsylum Central Administration
Building.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
So it's the main building.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So the main center of the building In 2001,.
Construction on Lynn Hall wascompleted administration
building so it's the mainbuilding, so the main center of
the building In 2001,.
Construction on Lynn Hall wascompleted.
The old TB ward was demolishedin 2013 due to danger and it was
separate from the rest of thefacility, so it was off on its
side and so they ended uptearing it down.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, because a lot of college students were going
in there and exploring which Iwould have Partying and doing
who knows what in there right?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Who knows?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
The remains of 1,930 former asylum patients are
buried in three separatecemeteries around the asylum are
buried in three separatecemeteries around the asylum,
and when they were originallyburied, they were buried without
names and just marked bynumbers on their headstones.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
That's terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
So there are 979 men and 700 women that are in the
cemeteries.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
I'm actually surprised.
I with all the reasons why themen could throw their wives in
there or whatever, I'm surprisedthere's not more women than men
.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Well, these, so the 1930 that are buried in the
cemeteries, are those who diedand were unclaimed.
So there are even more deathsthat happen in the in those
buildings.
But their families actuallyclaimed their bodies and took
them out.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
So okay.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
So the death toll is over 2000.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So maybe I mean, I don't know maybe there was well
many more women who died, buttheir husbands finally claimed
them after they died.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
So that they wouldn't look bad.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah, that's still terrible.
I know In 1943, efforts startedto be made to put names and
dates on the headstones.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I think I've heard about this Like it's a project
that they're doing.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, they actually have a website.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, they're actually making efforts to also
now restore the cemeteries towhat they used to be, so to do
better caretaking and to makethem nicer.
Yeah, that's neat.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And then 80 veterans are also buried in the
cemeteries.
In 2000, work began restoringthe cemeteries, adding
headstones, adding nicerheadstones, naming them, keeping
it up yeah, with their birthdate and their death date and
their name and so yeah, makingit a lot nicer.
(34:44):
The ohio museum complex hasincorporated the three
cemeteries into interactivenature walking trails.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
That is really neat yeah they have.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
So, on this property that they've acquired, they have
like hiking trails and like allsorts of stuff.
Well, it was a lot of property,yeah yeah, which is neat
because that means you can goactually visit and see a lot of
this stuff and it sounds likefor the most part, they made
good use of the property and thebuildings a lot of the
(35:19):
buildings but there's still alot of buildings that are vacant
yeah but they have, like Ithink in one of the buildings is
like the county's policedepartment oh that's cool In one
of them.
so.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Oh, that's really neat, yeah, so thankfully today,
like a lot of these buildingshave been renovated, remodeled
and are used, but there arestill many that are still left
abandoned.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yep and unused.
Well, there was a lot ofbuildings, so yeah, there's a
lot of buildings.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
so, yeah, there was a lot of buildings.
So, of those 1,900 plus peoplewho passed away, there is one
death that is the most infamous,I guess, well-known of all of
(36:09):
that, of all of the deaths there.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
So in 1978, the asylum made a big splash in the
papers.
A patient by the name ofMargaret Schilling went missing
on December 1st 1978.
On December 1st 1978.
Now she wasn't found untilJanuary 12th 1979.
(36:37):
So like 42 days, 42 days latershe was found Six weeks.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Ugh.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
A maintenance worker discovered her, discovered her
decomposing body in a lockedward once used for patients with
infectious illnesses.
She was found naked, with herclothes neatly folded next to
her body, and then, to this day,there's a stain on the floor
(37:06):
where her body was found, andany attempt to remove the stain
has failed.
So what's interesting aboutthat?
There's a couple things.
Interesting is there's mixedreports on why she went missing.
Some say that they would playhide and seek the patients who
(37:30):
had free roam.
She was a free roaming patientand she was allowed to roam, and
so they say that they wereplaying hide and seek and she
got locked into this roombecause, obviously, the locks on
these rooms were on the outside, not the inside.
There's other reports that thisbuilding was under
(37:51):
reconstruction at the time thatthis happened, and so that one
it wasn't used at all, but therewere normally workers there,
but the workers were home forthe holidays because it was cold
, so they weren't working, andso she somehow found her way
into this building and gotlocked in.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Well, she's free roaming, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Right.
There's other reports that thisbuilding was searched multiple
times during the 42 days thatthey were looking for her and
they still never found her.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
See, I didn't come across that.
Yeah, and they still neverfound her, See I didn't come
across that.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, I would actually believe that more than
other scenarios, just becauseit's not uncommon for a killer,
if you will, to take someone andkeep them for a while and then
(38:50):
randomly place their bodysomewhere.
Now, if they're the perfectplace would be in a place like
that where like, oh look, shecould have gotten stuck.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yep, and it was ruled that she died of of a heart
attack.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Heart failure.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Due to the cold, because obviously there was no
heat in the building and she wasnaked.
So one of the things is, whenyour body goes into hypothermia,
you actually, instead offeeling ice cold, you feel like
you're burning up.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And so a lot of people.
When they reach that stage,they will strip off all their
clothing.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
And that also makes sense too, because a girl will
generally fold their clothes.
Yeah, and they were neatlyfolded.
I find myself, without eventhinking about it, folding my
clothes before I put it in thehamper, like yeah, you know.
And then I'm like, wait, whatam I doing?
Why am I bothering?
Right, what am I doing?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, so like it does lend to the natural causes in
that, and then because the roomwhere she was at was on the
upper floor, there was a bunchof windows up there so her body
would have been laying in thesun was where she was found,
(40:11):
which is interesting, because Ifound one report that said she
was in the basement, which madeno sense.
So much misinformation outthere at times.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, but there's a practical reason why her stain,
the stain of her body, is stillthere on the floor and you can
see like this is her shouldersand her hips and her hair.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
And her torso, like you can see these pieces right,
because what ended up happening?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
obviously she was decomposing.
Well, the chemicals they use toclean up what was left behind
actually cause an acid etchinginto the concrete of her body.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And they actually did a test in 2008 of the stain and
determined, yeah, it was thechemical compounds they used
that actually caused it to bepermanent chemical compounds
they use that actually caused itto be permanent.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
That's wild.
Yeah, because I know that stuffis nasty and goes everywhere.
Yeah, because when you'redecomposing, like when you, when
you die, all of your blood goesdown like whatever position
you're in it's going to go downand it will make that imprint
right, mm-hmm.
But like I have seen where,when the bodies decompose, their
(41:42):
body basically liquefies, yeah.
Yeah, if you left long enough Iwatched a documentary where
there were a few families or afew people killed, like it was
the one in idaho with thecollege murders.
Yep, their blood was actuallydripping out of the house yeah
(42:04):
like you could see it where theyhad the sighting.
It was coming out from thesighting of the house.
Wow, wow, so like.
But it's not that their bodieswere decomposing, but it's just.
The liquid goes everywhere.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, so I actually, in regards to that, read an
article where, as her body layon 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 thestate yep, yeah, and that makes
(42:44):
sense.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
It's because it's gonna the concrete is going to
absorb it and then they're goingto try to clean it and it, but
it's porous.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
So it's because it's going to the concrete is going
to absorb it, and then they'regoing to try to clean it and it,
but it's poor.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
So it's in the concrete.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, you'd have to, like take the floor out.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, yeah, they just ended up using a really caustic
um cleaner.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
That helps seal it in , that helps seal it in.
Yeah, gross yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
So she was there long enough to leave this quite
remarkable print without it justbeing everywhere.
But yeah, it's really, it'squite sad, but I actually have a
picture of the actual articlewhen they found her and I also
have a picture of her gravesite,so, and I have pictures of the
(43:30):
athens asylum and patients andit would be that I'll post.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, it would be cool to ghost hunt and see if we
could do like an sc's method orsomething to find out like,
okay, tell us how you reallydied, right, right, will you
talk to us like yeah, and giveus that information and the
state requires that all thoserecords are sealed for 50 years.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
So we won't know how she died for another three years
that's not far though that'snot far like it's getting close.
I was doing the math in my head.
I'm like wait, hey, that's like28.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
All right, we're getting closer, we're almost
there, we're almost there.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
But you know, there are so much death, so much
emotion uh poured into the, intothese buildings, you would
definitely expect them to behaunted.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
And these rooms I mean, some of them are
dormitories, some of them areclassrooms and, obviously, the
museum, and so they have reportsof phantom footsteps, phantom
voices, doors opening andclosing on their own.
Imagine and I can being anindividual who's a non-believer,
(44:59):
highly skeptic, and sittingthere in one of these classrooms
because you're like a TA orsomething right, grading papers
at night, and all of a suddenyour door to your room opens and
then closes, and then the doordown the hall opens and closes.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
And it'll be like nope, I'm out.
It's different when you'realone, though it is.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Totally different.
When you're with somebody, youfeel a bit more like you're okay
.
When you're completely aloneand there's nobody else around
and you know that it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
It's very different, but yeah, a lot of the reports
are just the basic footsteps,doors, lights, right.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Some voices.
Do they allow ghost huntingthere.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
They do yes.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Ooh.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
In the occupied buildings.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yes, and really around Halloween is what I've
heard.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
So it's contact the museum because obviously it's a
museum.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Contact the museum and you can get a chance to to
get in and do some investigating.
Saw a handful of YouTube videosout there of people going in to
these abandoned parts of the ofthe property and it's like I
get it.
Urban X is a is a thing, but itis also highly legal.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Yeah, if you get caught, look out.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Highly do not recommend doing it.
And some of these buildings andthe 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 veryunsafe conditions and you
definitely don't want to gethurt, because if you're there
and no one knows and you gethurt, you might become the next
(46:54):
exhibit.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
You might become the next stain on the concrete.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Yeah, exactly With that, there is one reported
haunting.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
No one can see your air quotes.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I know, but there's one reported haunting slash
possession associated to thisplace and it has to do with the
stain.
So there was Debbie.
Southall went up one Halloweennight 1979, to where Miss
(47:31):
Margaret died and touched thestain that was left by her body.
So this would be the year aftershe died.
Right the next day somethingcame over Debbie.
Her personality changeddramatically.
She became distant, enraged atthe slightest provocation.
Her friend, susan Harrington,later claimed to have witnessed
items moving around on their own, an inhuman, shadowy figure
(47:55):
appearing to her and to Debbie.
After this, debbie became evenmore distanced, locking herself
in her room, refusing to comeout for days, especially after
long sessions locked away.
Susan broke into her room onlyto find Debbie had taken her own
life, her body decomposing,leaving its own stain on the
(48:16):
floor.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
How long did it take until she took her life?
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Doesn't say there's a small problem with this story.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
I'd say it's a big problem, but okay.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
It happened in 1976.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Not 79?
Not 79.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
No, before Margaret Schilling even died 79?
Not no.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Before Margaret Schilling even died.
There's been some mix-em-ups.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Some mix-em-ups.
I call BS.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, so what more than likely happened is urban
legends.
As they go right, the story ofher death on campus right, later
mixed with the story of theother gal's death, they start to
intermingle and the next thingyou know, a whole new story is
(49:15):
built, because the one thingthat isn't mentioned right is
that obviously this is auniversity campus.
People still die on campus, sothere's a lot of other deaths
and other things happening andmixing.
In Athens was listed on themost haunted places in America
(49:39):
as number 13.
So the town itself.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
So the whole town is considered to be the 13th most
haunted place in the entireunited states.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
I wonder, though, if we had a group of actual ghost
hunters create which ones arethe most haunted, you know, know
, like say, okay, we've all beento these places and let's all
vote, and then we'll see whichones, right?
Speaker 2 (50:11):
But how would you use criteria?
Would you say most haunted ormost active?
Speaker 3 (50:15):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Because they're not the same.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Most people would assume that it would be active.
Yeah, if you're talking haunted.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
The 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, wehad a lot of active things
happening, oh, and then we wentto the basilica murder house and
it was and I fell asleep in theI fell asleep.
Fell asleep, it was so quiet.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
So active to me equals haunted Activity.
Activity, whether it's residualor intelligent.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
There's, you know, you're getting stuff, you're
experiencing things.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, there is one very interesting phenomena about
Athens, and this might beentirely idiomatic in the sense,
but there is a lot ofcemeteries around Athens for
some strange, very reason, andif you start drawing lines, they
(51:20):
make a pentagram with thecampus being right in the center
.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
The main building.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
The campus is itself.
The whole campus is in themiddle of this pentagram.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
Interesting.
I wonder who figured that out.
Somebody with a drone?
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Yeah, someone with a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
I 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 certainpoints Like is it calculated?
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah, I'd like to see , I'm just going to draw a
pentagram.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
I'm able to connect them, you know, at this bottom
corner of this one and this inthe middle of this one, and make
that pentagram.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Well, yeah, so from what I saw of the map of the
area right, athens is actuallybuilt because of the way it's
structured by the river.
It's actually kind ofstructured like a wheel itself,
so it's already a circle, almostcircular in itself, and just
how it's designed.
And so if you already startwith a circle, it's easy to.
(52:35):
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 1 (52:43):
Right, because the cemeteries are going to be on
the outlining areas.
You're not going to put acemetery right in the middle
generally doesn't campus, rightthey're always on the outlining
areas.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
So I mean, technically speaking, there are
now in the middle of campus, butthey weren't before they
weren't before, though right sothen you have, you know what was
it, five cemeteries, three,three, five.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
What is five?
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah, 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 theasylum.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
So I'm not sure that I really buy that.
It was a deliberate thing thatthey were placed there
deliberately so that if youconnected them you could make a
pentagram.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I fully you don't think it was like the city
planners were like how can Imake the city a pentagram?
Speaker 3 (53:32):
well right, I mean be like who designed this right, I
mean honestly.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
You never do know the way the world, the world's
crazy, honestly could becomplete accident.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
It just worked out that way, that's out that way.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
That's kind of my thought.
That's kind of my thought.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
Well, and that's where you start getting into
people creating symbols out ofsomething that wasn't intended
to be that way.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Right, because I think that you can take certain
things and if you really work it, I think you can do just that.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
I really do work it.
I think you can do just that.
I really do?
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I wonder what you, what you could draw on top of
salt lake.
If you, if you looked at itlong enough, you know, I'm sure
somebody really creative couldfigure it out.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
I actually have the picture, I can see the picture
and and they try to like thiscity, actually the library, try
to debunk the pentagram and theythey show it with all the
(54:40):
cemeteries.
Let me see if I can click intoit.
But they're kind of scatteredWith all the cemeteries, right,
let me see if I can click intoit.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
But they're kind of scattered.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
There are where they show.
At the point of each one thereis a cemetery, but there's also
cemeteries around, so to me itlooks like.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
It's like that's not even an even star.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
No, it is a star.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
It's a star, but it's not an even one.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
So somebody is just doing that to make it more than
what it really is.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yes, yeah, they're trying to find.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
They're trying to embellish it.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Trying to find a reason.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
If you really want to put the lines on there, it
would be a scribbled mess.
Yeah, yeah, a reason, if youreally want to put the lines on
there.
It would be a scribbled mess.
Yeah, yeah, if you try to pickand choose, you know, then, yeah
, you can make a star, but Ithink you can make a cross out
of that too, if you tried yeah,you probably could.
Yeah, you could go.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
I don't, I don't like that, though I don't like it.
When people do that, they tryto put this demonic and this
crazy spin on it you know what Imean and turn everything into
something very wicked and veryevil, and I'm just so sick of
people doing that well, andthere's a part of sensual
centralization right that comeseven with the paranormal right
(55:59):
everyone, absolutely and so,like it, it does drive people
into that realm of looking forthose things, because Well, and
if you're going to look for it,you're going to find it
Eventuallyyou do.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Well, exactly If that's what you're looking for,
I bet you, utah has a lot oftemples, right.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
I bet you, if you pick five temples, the right
five, I bet you could draw apentagram using the temples as
points.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Why?
Because you have, you know.
Speaker 3 (56:34):
If you have enough of them you can make any picture
you want, really.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Yeah, 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'reeverywhere, oh yeah if you use
the churches, you got like 600.
I mean, you got points rightand so, yeah, if you have enough
points to choose from, yeah,you can make it look like
anything that you want yeah, butI hate that people want to be
(57:00):
deceptive and steer people in adark direction with it.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
I hate the intent behind it.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
I think To make it more interesting or to make it
appealing and I wonder if itcould have been just something
that they did, for HalloweenCould be.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
Could be, and it caught on.
Speaker 3 (57:16):
Or like a tour or something, and it just caught on
.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (57:20):
Because I could see somebody doing something like
that to make it feel a littlebit more spooky or a little bit
more like ghosty.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
This is why Athens is so haunted.
See, there's a pentagram and inthe center of the pentagram,
the Ascene Asylum.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
And so, therefore, and the most haunted building,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Yeah, yeah, and therefore this is why.
I mean if I just dislike it, Iwould, yeah, I really.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
It is why I mean, if I just dislike it.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
It bothers me.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
It really kind of does.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
I can understand, because you're spreading more.
Misinformation.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, bs is what you're doing, but that's what
lore is all about.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
That's how lore starts People creating these
stories.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
But the problem is that a lot of people today
blindly buy into every singlething they hear Yep, and that's
the problem.
It's not so much that the loreis out there, it's that people
just they, they just see it onceand then it's like oh, in their
mind it's a hundred percenttrue, but do you think though?
Speaker 2 (58:22):
I 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 itwas any different back in the
1800s in that avenue.
Right, because we look atthings and we've covered it on
this podcast.
We covered the bear lakemonster.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Monster.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah and right and it's like okay, one person
starts, it starts with oneperson, and then someone else
sees something and oh, it's gotto be the Bear Lake Monster.
There's no like discernment,right, and it just takes enough
people to snowball this thingand the next thing you know,
you've got a parade and LakeMonster days.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
The Lake Monster children's book.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Yeah, I mean, and lake monster days, the lake
monster children's book.
Yeah, I think you have all ofthis 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 asense, that we want that this
stuff happens is we want it tobe true.
Not that it is true, right, butwe want some of this stuff to
be true we like the mysteriousand that's and that's fair.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
But 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 notreal.
Speaker 3 (59:39):
See, 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, Icould see somebody coming up
with something like that to makethe tour more interesting, yeah
, and make it more intriguingand add another splash of
mysteriousness to the tour.
(01:00:01):
You know what I mean?
Yeah, and I think in my mindsomething like that.
I can see where that would comefrom, right?
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
And.
Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
I'm not necessarily opposed to that, right.
I'm not, because mysteriousthings are fun, sure, and it
kind of creates somethinginteresting, but also not super
factual.
You know what I mean, is it?
You know what?
Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I mean, is it entertainment?
Right or is it facts or?
People like or is it modifiedfor your enjoyment?
Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
yeah, and I wonder based on a true story I and I
doubt loosely or wonder ifpeople actually take that so
seriously, where they performrituals or you know whatever in
the center of that pentagram,you know and I will bet you that
that does happen.
Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
I don't doubt it, because I don't doubt it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I 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 parkand we were waiting for everyone
to lock up to wait outside, andthis gal had seen the movie the
night before and we're just,you know, sitting outside and
waiting.
The amusement park is closedand there's, you know, critters
and stuff moving around behindus and whatnot, and everything
(01:01:21):
that moved was it's the BlairWitch, it's the Blair Witch,
it's the Blair Witch, it's theBlair Witch.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
It's the Blair Witch, oh jeez, it's like oh my
goodness.
You know it's a movie, right.
Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
You know it's not real right.
Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
So, yes, I do believe that some people will take
anything and make it way morethan it should be, and then
start allowing that to maketheir decisions yeah which but
that can lead to problems tooyes, it can because some people,
especially ones that blindlybelieve it, even if it is made
(01:01:57):
up for the purpose of likeentertainment and the mysterious
part, they believe it.
And then they go out and theytry to do it.
And what if they ended upgetting hurt or something
happens because of it?
right, yeah this is where itbecomes a problem, like you know
.
Oh, I saw my favorite youtubepeople go on a ghost hunt and
(01:02:19):
this happened and that happened,and you know.
So I'm gonna go out and I'mgonna find a place and I'm gonna
do this, and you know, it couldlead down some bad roads yep it
can.
Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
That's where the responsibility of things that's
why I hope they they're notbeing 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 naturalselection here we come yeah all
right, everybody, if you enjoyeduh, this, uh, this wonderful
tale of of uh, I would saymurder and mayhem, but uh no
(01:02:57):
it's definitely not that it's alot of sadness in this one it is
, it was.
Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
It was less of the of the paranormal.
Unfortunately, when we got tothe the haunting stuff, stuff,
there just was not much outthere.
That is that you can findanyways.
Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
I do believe the place is, more than likely, very
haunted and very active attimes.
Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Yeah, and I'm sure students and stuff and faculty
have had experiences there, butthere's none out there that we
could.
Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Well, we could substantiate yeah.
Yeah, so um, have a great nighteverybody.
Ghost hunt responsibly and, asalways, stay ghosty my peeps.
Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Thanks for watching.
Between the realm of the dead and the journeys of the
living.
Join Josh, jamie and Elisa asthey delve into the vast world
of the paranormal and breathelife back into the history of
the departed.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey everybody, Welcome back to the Paranormal
Peeps podcast.
That's Jamie.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's Josh and that's Elisa.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Like who's going to say me?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You could have done yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
But she always does herself.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, I guess Yuki could have said it.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
She doesn't speak.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's true, she's a cat.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, I mean, when she opens her mouth, you don't
even hear her sound come out,anyways.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, that's true, but we have a interesting tale
tonight to cover.
That is the Athens LunaticAsylum.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Also known as the Ridges.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, but we'll get to that later.
They changed the name later.
It changes a couple differenttimes actually.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But back when it opened it was called the Athens
Lunatic Asylum.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, because it's located in Athens, but not
Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Ohio, yes, yep.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And not Athens, Greece.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
No Ohio, yes, Yep, and not Athens, greece.
No Ohio.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So we just want to make sure, you guys understand.
So the asylum was in operationfrom 1874 to 1993.
So 119 years, isn't that?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
crazy.
I was kind of shocked when Isaw the whole it closed in 1993.
I was like, wow, I'm surprisedit lasted that long.
But go Athens, yeah, go Athens.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Go the mentally infirm.
The building style was known asthe Kirkbride plan.
As the Kirkbride plan, thedesign of the building and the
surrounding grounds wereinfluenced by Dr Thomas Story
Kirkbride, who was a 19thcentury physician who wrote a
book called On the ConstructionOrganization in General
(02:19):
Arrangements of Hospitals forthe Insane, with some remarks on
the insanity and its treatment.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
And that is actually the title of his book.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
That's insane itself.
I mean yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, it is, he should be committed for that.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
He wants you to know exactly what is in that book.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Exactly it's 200,.
No, sorry, 394 pages.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And I read part of it this morning.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
And it was yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, part of it was like weird Spot on, spot on.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Well, some of it was very accurate.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And how tall you should build it and why you
should have a fully dug crawlspace and all of this stuff
(03:30):
no-transcript.
He actually referred toinsanity as a treatable disease.
So yeah, yeah, and so somepeople think that this
individual institution was hepracticed there.
(03:50):
This wasn't his practice, hejust influenced the design of
the building, so he's not trulythe monster that ran this place.
We'll get to him later.
The Kirkbride building designswere recognized by the staggered
floor plan of their wards orthe batwing style, which another
(04:12):
common place that has a batwingstyle is Waverly Hills.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Does it though.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, it's got the batwing style and that's
designed for airflow.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Okay, describe what the batwing style is.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So most buildings are flat, perpendicular, 90-degree
angles, but with the batwingstyle what ends up happening is
the center part of the buildingis 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
(04:49):
like you built it with Legos.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Oh, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So 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 wingsfrom the, from the aerial
photographs, but it looks morelike you built it with Legos.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
It also had a very interesting Victorian Gothic
style architecture, so the frontof the building is very
Victorian Gothic.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I love that I love that.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
It's really nice and that's really on the main 1874
building.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
The original.
The original really has thatgothic style to it.
Why don't they build?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
things like that anymore, because we've gone from
these things that havecharacter and style and
uniqueness and we've gone tothis minimalistic, plain sterile
crap.
It's everywhere.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Also called modern it's.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
yeah, I don't prefer it, you know.
Myself, I think everythinglooks the same and kind of
blends together.
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
It's terrible.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It is terrible.
Yeah, it's terrible, it isterrible.
The main building included acentral administration and a
wing for men on one side and aseparate wing for women on the
other.
Each had their own dining hall,so there's really a segregation
of the sexes.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, right, and I'm sure that I mean obviously
there's reasons you would haveto do that anyways.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I mean, they still do that in homes for people who
have dementia or Alzheimer'smemory care facilities.
Yeah, They'll separate the menand the women.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes you have to do that.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It's amazing how many things happen in those homes.
So I had a family member thatwas in one of those homes and in
that home there was a man and awoman that were married to
separate people who becameboyfriend and girlfriend in the
home.
(07:02):
Because they didn't realizethat they were married.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Oh, that's kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
So they had to separate them yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
You know what's interesting is Kirk Bridge in
his Kirk Bride.
Kirk Bride Sorry, kirk Bride, Iwant to say Bridge, for some
reason it's Bride.
In his book he actually talkedabout not having men and women
even in the same facility.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yep, I mean, it's safer that way.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Let's be real Well he also felt that women would
cause men to have problems, notthe other way around.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Not the other way around.
Oh my heavens, it's alwaysone-sided.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, it was very patriarchal back then.
The building was 60 feet wideand 853 feet long.
Holy moly.
It was built with red bricksthat were made from the clay
that was dug on site.
18.5 million red bricks wereused to make this building.
(08:09):
That's a lot.
It's a lot of bricks.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
It's a big building.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The back of this building held the boiler room
and a laundry room.
In the main building.
They could house roughly 573patients, which was almost
double to that of what Kirkbridehad recommended.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
That always happens.
Do you notice that in placeslike this?
Yeah, it's like people justdump them off and they don't
ever put a limit on it.
They just dump their relativesoff.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
When they become troublesome or they just don't
want to deal with them anymore.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, Well, if you figure too like, this was a
state run institution right, andso 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 getin here?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yep, did you mention that the bricks that they used
to make the buildings wereactually sourced from that
property?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, yeah, they were dug.
They were dug on the property.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
That's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
The interesting thing is likethese places, just like Waverly
right was self-sustaining, sowas this institution right off
the bat.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Yeah, and I think that's cool if you can have a
self-sustaining place and ifyou're not using the people that
are living there as like slavesin a way, but to teach them how
to garden and they're and it'sused as therapy how to you know.
(09:44):
Yeah, do those things.
Then that can be so therapeutic, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yep.
Eventually, the overcrowdingled to problems between the
patients in the facility.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Why would it not?
And it would.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Overcrowding.
You don't have your own space.
You're in.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
You know everybody's in each other's bubble and and
let's face it right, at thistime too, like you're there for
potentially an actual legitimatereason, right, so you're having
some mental issues, and ifyou're having an issue with your
, your, your mental state at thetime, having other people like
right up in your grill isprobably not going to be very
(10:24):
good.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
No, it's going to trigger you.
Well, and if you think about itgenerally, when you are
doubling the amount of peoplethat you have in a space, you
have less workers per people.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Per people.
Per person, and it's so.
There's going to be less peopletaking baths or having hygiene
issues.
Cleanse like the room is goingto be more dirty, yep.
Everything is just going to godownhill.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, everything suffers and your care suffers
too, right, because there's notenough people to provide care.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
And what do you notice with people who have
mental health issues?
They don't take care ofthemselves.
They slowly stop taking care ofthemselves.
So how is putting them in aplace like that ever going to
help?
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Exactly, yeah, that was.
Another thing Kirk Bride saidis that his recommendation was
15 to 1.
On patients who were mildlydisturbed, so you could have 15
people in in in one like commonarea type of thing.
Yeah, so that's a pretty smallgroup of people compared to the
(11:38):
573 plus that they crammed inthis building.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, I wonder how many workers they actually had.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Uh, it wasn't that many.
It was like 25 on the day shiftand 25 on the night shift.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
That blows my mind.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
I have pictures that I'll post, but yeah, it didn't
look like a ton of people.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, but I think it was more than 25.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
But it still wasn't enough.
Right Is the point, I guess.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So Athens provided care for the homeless, Civil War
veterans, the elderly,criminals, children, unruly
teenagers.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, and so the unruly teenagers?
The parents would send themthere to teach them a lesson for
being unruly.
Well, Not because they actuallyhad problems.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Necessarily a mental health issue.
I wonder what problems they hadback in the day.
I don't know what was theunruly issues compared to today.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
No, I will not milk that cow.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Mom I just don't want to husk corn anymore.
My hands are raw.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Two years after it opened, it was renamed the
Athens Hospital for the Insane.
That sounds very pleasant.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Well, it's better than lunatic.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, by 1981, it would be called the Athens
Mental Health Center.
Ooh, that's a little nicer.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's a lot nicer yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Got some good name changes in there, yep.
The interesting thing is thevery first patient to be put in
there was a 12-year-old girl, aw, who was suffering from
epilepsy.
But back then, of course, theydidn't understand epilepsy the
way we do today.
They thought she was possessedby a demon.
(13:31):
So if you're possessed by ademon, the best place to go was
an insane asylum.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
That poor girl yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
That's sad.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So sad.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And that made me think of the Bells yeah, so sad.
And that made me think of theBells, yeah.
It's like he could have endedup in Athens.
The asylum's first report wasthat 19 women and 31 men were
having their insanity caused byepilepsy.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Wow, that's a lot, that is a lot, having their
insanity caused by epilepsy Wowthat's a lot.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That is a lot.
It's interesting because it'slike you're insane.
Why?
Because you have epilepsy.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Because you have seizures.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
But they didn't know anything about epilepsy.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
No, they didn't understand the neurological
disorder that it is Mm-mm.
A wide range of things couldland you in this place, like TB.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yep Really.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Menopause.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Oh crap.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
All the women, let's go.
This is why we weren't bornback then, elisa, I know.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Postpartum.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Okay, well, I screwed .
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Alcoholism, depression, women's issues.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
You mean having a period Probably Cramping.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Probably Just being like, just well.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Hormones.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Hormonal Talking off to your husband.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Like you've just your PMSing hard and you just snap
and oh, she's insane.
The husband goes oh, she'sinsane here.
I'm going to drop you off here.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Oh my gosh Yep.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
So the leading cause for women to be admitted in the
first three years of operationwere puerperal condition, which
is related to child birth.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, and I'm not surely, or I'm not sure what it
actually is or has to do withchildbirth.
I didn't look it up.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's probably close to postpartum, probably
somewhere in that line.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, I'm going to guess.
That's probably what it is.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Menstrual derangement we call that PMSing today.
Menstrual derangement we callthat.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
PMSing today.
Little did they know they couldcure it with some chocolate and
a coffee.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Right From Starbucks.
Change of life which menopause.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, I'm guessing that's what they mean.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So, yeah, anything any of those things.
She got a hair on her chin Tothe asylum.
You're insane, she's a witch.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
She's possessed.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Approximately 51 patients were admitted for
alcoholism in the first threeyears.
81 women and men were admittedclaiming that their insanity was
caused by masturbation, andthat was a thing.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
You know how many people will be thrown in an
assailant asylum today for that?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Every man.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And half the women.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Maybe three quarters of the women in today's day and
age.
Yeah, who knows, maybe threequarters of the women in today's
day and age.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, who knows?
But here's the interestingthing why this was a thing was
that some doctors went to in the1700s, right, they went to an
insane asylum and they actuallysaw a whole bunch of the people
(17:06):
who are in there doing that, andso, obviously, if they're doing
it, therefore, it's going tolead like if you're doing that,
it's going to lead to insanity,and so that's why they put you
in there.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, it's such a weird.
Weird thing.
Now Women could beinstitutionalized for fictitious
and unnecessary reasons.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Of course, I think if the men just didn't want to
deal with them anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, that's exactly right, send them off.
Yep.
It's the easy way to get ridwith them anymore, yep.
Yeah, that's exactly right,send them off, yep.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
It's the easy way to get rid of them in that avenue.
Depending on the patient'scondition, they could have
almost total freedom at theasylum or no freedom for
full-time care.
So those who had like totalfreedom could walk the grounds
and move around those that werereally mild-mannered and
low-maintenance.
Non-violent.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Non-violent.
They pretty much could roam,you know, and others.
For others that couldn't, itwas like a prison.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
It's like I'm just PMSing.
Just give me a week, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Just give me a week.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Just give me a week, give me some chocolate, and
we'll be all right.
The asylum was obviously itsown closed facility.
So they had, you know, wallsand everything.
And they also had their ownlivestock, their own orchards,
their own fields, gardens, theirown dairy and they had their
(18:46):
own plant that generated heatfrom steam.
So they had their own steamplant.
That's cool, yeah.
The interesting thing is I waslooking into some of their
records and I found that in oneyear it was like in 1881, one
(19:11):
year it was like in 1881,.
They made $1,337 on meat fromcows.
That's a lot.
Back then that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Did they feed it to any of their patients?
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
No, that's what they sold.
That's what they sold.
They sold it.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
For profit.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
For profit.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
From the livestock.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Oh, I'm aware, but what I'm saying is did some of
the meat that they raised Didany?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
of that meat.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, I'm sure it did Because it was supposed to be
self-sustaining, so yeah.
It was a self-sustainingcommunity.
I would hope so.
They just had extras.
Essentially, in what it endedup being, a lot of the
maintenance work was originallydone by the patients.
You know that sounds a lot likeold Montana State Prison, where
(19:55):
a lot of the prison was builtby the prisoners.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, like if they're doing
it for slave work versus doingit for therapeutic work, yeah,
Well, here it was said that theydid it for the therapeutic,
like taking care of the animals.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Because they had horses and stuff too.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Which would be so fun .
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Right.
And then you know, harvestingthe garden and picking the fruit
in the orchards.
Cultivating and all of thatstuff, all the things, and it
was used as a form of therapy.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Well, yeah, because back in Fresh air.
All that, yeah, because back inthe 1880s, when they would have
been doing this stuff, wasstill done a lot by hand.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Yes, right.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
So there was still a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
As the years went by, new buildings were added.
They added a stable or theyadded stables a firehouse,
amusement hall, laundry building, several more wards,
residential buildings for, likethe staff, therapy rooms, a
power plant.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And even, like in then, a dozen more buildings.
This place got huge Dozens anddozens more.
Actually, it's not just a dozenmore buildings.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
This place got huge Dozens and dozens more.
Actually, it's not just a dozenmore, it was actually come to
find out.
It was dozens multiple dozensmore.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Are these buildings still standing?
Speaker 2 (21:15):
A lot of them are Nice.
Yeah, the hospital was treatingroughly 1,800 patients and
using 78 buildings, and was thesingle largest employer in the
county.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
That is huge, yeah, that's massive.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The asylum kept growing and expanding over the
years.
They added a dairy barn, areceiving hospital, a beacon
school and a TB ward.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
A TB ward, tb, tb, tuberculosis.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
TB.
Had TB back then, whichactually had to be a building on
its own because TB wascontagious.
Right so that was off on itsown.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
How horrible that we just put them in the general
population and then everybodygot TB.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah Well, people do stupid things.
But thankfully they didn't hearRight, Thankfully they made it
a separate building.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
On top of that, seven cottages were built in order to
house those patients the TBpatients.
These cottages were dormitorystyle rooms which allowed for
constructive the TB patients.
These cottages weredormitory-style rooms which
allowed for constructivegrouping of patients.
By the 1960s, the facility hadreached a staggering 660,888
(22:39):
square feet and had nearly 2,000patients, which was over three
times its capacity.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
That's wild.
Yeah.
Instead of building all thoseextra buildings, let's build
more rooms to house these people, these poor people that are
having to Live there.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
And be squished like that yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
In 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 1 (23:20):
Thank goodness they came to that conclusion.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Right.
The part that I found insane aswe're talking about in a sane
asylum right Is that when theyperform lobotomies and we all
know that it's an ice pickthrough the orbital, through the
orbital of the eye, into thebrain, the patients were awake
and unsedated, which means youfelt everything going in.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That is torture, that's.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
BS.
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, 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, justto make them docile and just so.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
They just kind of sit there staring at a wall.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
And don't do much else.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But they lost memories.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
All sorts of stuff, because they just broke down the
prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Terrible.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Absolutely terrible.
The discovery of psychotropicdrugs and psychological
therapies would allow for mostpatients to be treated without
having to be kept in the asylum.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Thank goodness.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Progress.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Progress, people Progress, because we just don't
want to be doing those horriblethings to people.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
And you can see like how this was all done
differently from what theoriginal doctor's designs were.
Like he wanted something humaneand healing for the people and
not shoving an ice pick intotheir brains.
Like the man who inventedlobotomies actually went to
(25:11):
Athens and like practiced thereand taught there.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
So like this stuff was like massively used
everywhere else.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, that was the solution for a lot of these
patients.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, unfortunately, along with electroshock, yep
these patients yeah.
Unfortunately Along withelectroshock Yep.
So there were also rumors thatpatients were chained in the
basement.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
You know, and I I wouldn't be surprised.
I don't doubt it, I reallydon't.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I mean, they're all un Unstantiated rumors, right?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right, but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I would think because of how they treated people back
then, with people having angerissues or throwing their fits,
whatever it is that if they'regoing to be a harm to anyone, I
mean why wouldn't they go chainthem up somewhere to anyone?
(26:13):
I mean, why wouldn't they gochain them up somewhere?
Because I've seen other asylumshave actual rooms in basements
where they are chained to thewalls yeah, that's sad.
So I don't see that it wouldn'tbe something that they would do.
I mean, if you're puttingyourself in the mindset that
they were in back then if you'refreaking sticking an ice pick
in someone's brain and jigglingit around, not letting them be
numb by any stretch.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, then you'd have no problem.
Then, what is?
What would be the problem?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
putting chains on them down in the basement.
Yep.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah.
The moral ethics is pretty muchgone at this point, right.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Oh, exactly, well, because people didn't care about
people who had mental issuesback in the day.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Well, and if you look at what the mental issues were,
too right For all those whocouldn't see, there's a lot of
big air quotes.
But if you couldn't see, youknow their mental issues weren't
really mental issues either.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Nope, a lot of them, weren't A lot of them weren't.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
And so because of that, like you know, you're like
yeah, you got a problem withthis thing, with doing these
things.
Then we're just going to shovean ice pick up there and you'll
stop doing everything, or we'llchain you to the basement and
you'll stop being violent.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I wonder how much control any of them had, like
any of the patients had, overwhether they got ice picked or
not.
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Probably none.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
That would be my guess.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Because it's everything's up to the providing
, the providing physician at thetime Right.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
Well, I wonder if like family was ever involved,
if they were like hey, by theway, we want to do this, do you
give us permission?
Or is it like they're in yourcare?
You do what you need to do andthey just do whatever they want?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, I think it's the latter.
I mean it wasn't.
I mean maybe, I mean obviouslynot 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 justwhatever's going to happen is
(28:11):
going to happen, especiallythose first 30 years before 1900
.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
So what year did they start doing the lobotomies?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh my gosh, I think those were started 18 something.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Was it before this place was built or after?
I want to say before, but I'mnot entirely sure, because I'm
thinking of that 12-year-oldgirl who goes in for seizures If
they thought, well, hey, let'sscramble her brain and see if it
(28:50):
stops her seizures, right.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, let's just say that actually no lobotomies were
done before 1935.
What, yeah, 1935?
1935, november 12th, was thevery first lobotomy done by
Portuguese neurologist EgosMones.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Wow, or Mones, that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
So that means this stuff was done early.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Or they were doing other things earlier.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Right, and this came later.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
This came later, and then they really probably ramped
it up for a good 30-ish years.
Ugh, that makes it even worse,honestly.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It does, it really does.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Because you would think that in the 30s, like, we
were better, like, but I guessit really shouldn't surprise us,
right?
I mean, even today we stillhave issues with mental health
in this country about justgetting mental health treatment
for people.
And so back then they justkicked them into a home and,
(30:01):
unfortunately, shoved an icepick up their head.
So then what eventually endedup happening and closing the
place is a lot of the land andbuildings were eventually sold
off, until all of them were soldoff to the University of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I don't think they were sold off.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Well bought.
They were acquired.
They were all acquired by theUniversity of Ohio.
They were signed over.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
The deeds were signed over to the university.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
I guess I assume that to be sold off.
Okay, all right.
So in 1988, more buildings andgrounds were deeded to Ohio
University from the Departmentof Mental Health.
By the early 1990s many of theasylum's original buildings were
in disrepair.
The large asylums like Athensbegan to slowly be phased out,
(30:57):
shifting to small outpatientcenters over to the university
in 1993, which added 700 acresand 700,000 square feet of
(31:19):
building space to theuniversity's campus.
After that, the old AthensAsylum officially closed and any
remaining patients were thentransferred to a new mental
health facility.
The vacated property sat vacantfor several years before
restoration efforts began.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
But those people were excited to get out of there.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Right yeah there weren't many left.
I did have a number of how manywere eventually left.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yep Today most of the buildings serve as offices and
classrooms, so they're actuallyused by the campus today.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
That's good, which is great.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, the Kennedy Museum of Arts opened in Lynn
Hall in 1996.
And Lynn Hall was once theAsylum Central Administration
Building.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
So it's the main building.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
So the main center of the building In 2001,.
Construction on Lynn Hall wascompleted administration
building so it's the mainbuilding, so the main center of
the building In 2001,.
Construction on Lynn Hall wascompleted.
The old TB ward was demolishedin 2013 due to danger and it was
separate from the rest of thefacility, so it was off on its
side and so they ended uptearing it down.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, because a lot of college students were going
in there and exploring which Iwould have Partying and doing
who knows what in there right?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Who knows?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
The remains of 1,930 former asylum patients are
buried in three separatecemeteries around the asylum are
buried in three separatecemeteries around the asylum,
and when they were originallyburied, they were buried without
names and just marked bynumbers on their headstones.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
That's terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
So there are 979 men and 700 women that are in the
cemeteries.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
I'm actually surprised.
I with all the reasons why themen could throw their wives in
there or whatever, I'm surprisedthere's not more women than men
.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Well, these, so the 1930 that are buried in the
cemeteries, are those who diedand were unclaimed.
So there are even more deathsthat happen in the in those
buildings.
But their families actuallyclaimed their bodies and took
them out.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
So okay.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
So the death toll is over 2000.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So maybe I mean, I don't know maybe there was well
many more women who died, buttheir husbands finally claimed
them after they died.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
So that they wouldn't look bad.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Yeah, that's still terrible.
I know In 1943, efforts startedto be made to put names and
dates on the headstones.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
I think I've heard about this Like it's a project
that they're doing.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, they actually have a website.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, they're actually making efforts to also
now restore the cemeteries towhat they used to be, so to do
better caretaking and to makethem nicer.
Yeah, that's neat.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
And then 80 veterans are also buried in the
cemeteries.
In 2000, work began restoringthe cemeteries, adding
headstones, adding nicerheadstones, naming them, keeping
it up yeah, with their birthdate and their death date and
their name and so yeah, makingit a lot nicer.
(34:44):
The ohio museum complex hasincorporated the three
cemeteries into interactivenature walking trails.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
That is really neat yeah they have.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
So, on this property that they've acquired, they have
like hiking trails and like allsorts of stuff.
Well, it was a lot of property,yeah yeah, which is neat
because that means you can goactually visit and see a lot of
this stuff and it sounds likefor the most part, they made
good use of the property and thebuildings a lot of the
(35:19):
buildings but there's still alot of buildings that are vacant
yeah but they have, like Ithink in one of the buildings is
like the county's policedepartment oh that's cool In one
of them.
so.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Oh, that's really neat, yeah, so thankfully today,
like a lot of these buildingshave been renovated, remodeled
and are used, but there arestill many that are still left
abandoned.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Yep and unused.
Well, there was a lot ofbuildings, so yeah, there's a
lot of buildings.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
so, yeah, there was a lot of buildings.
So, of those 1,900 plus peoplewho passed away, there is one
death that is the most infamous,I guess, well-known of all of
(36:09):
that, of all of the deaths there.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
So in 1978, the asylum made a big splash in the
papers.
A patient by the name ofMargaret Schilling went missing
on December 1st 1978.
On December 1st 1978.
Now she wasn't found untilJanuary 12th 1979.
(36:37):
So like 42 days, 42 days latershe was found Six weeks.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Ugh.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
A maintenance worker discovered her, discovered her
decomposing body in a lockedward once used for patients with
infectious illnesses.
She was found naked, with herclothes neatly folded next to
her body, and then, to this day,there's a stain on the floor
(37:06):
where her body was found, andany attempt to remove the stain
has failed.
So what's interesting aboutthat?
There's a couple things.
Interesting is there's mixedreports on why she went missing.
Some say that they would playhide and seek the patients who
(37:30):
had free roam.
She was a free roaming patientand she was allowed to roam, and
so they say that they wereplaying hide and seek and she
got locked into this roombecause, obviously, the locks on
these rooms were on the outside, not the inside.
There's other reports that thisbuilding was under
(37:51):
reconstruction at the time thatthis happened, and so that one
it wasn't used at all, but therewere normally workers there,
but the workers were home forthe holidays because it was cold
, so they weren't working, andso she somehow found her way
into this building and gotlocked in.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Well, she's free roaming, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Right.
There's other reports that thisbuilding was searched multiple
times during the 42 days thatthey were looking for her and
they still never found her.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
See, I didn't come across that.
Yeah, and they still neverfound her, See I didn't come
across that.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, I would actually believe that more than
other scenarios, just becauseit's not uncommon for a killer,
if you will, to take someone andkeep them for a while and then
(38:50):
randomly place their bodysomewhere.
Now, if they're the perfectplace would be in a place like
that where like, oh look, shecould have gotten stuck.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yep, and it was ruled that she died of of a heart
attack.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Heart failure.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Due to the cold, because obviously there was no
heat in the building and she wasnaked.
So one of the things is, whenyour body goes into hypothermia,
you actually, instead offeeling ice cold, you feel like
you're burning up.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And so a lot of people.
When they reach that stage,they will strip off all their
clothing.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
And that also makes sense too, because a girl will
generally fold their clothes.
Yeah, and they were neatlyfolded.
I find myself, without eventhinking about it, folding my
clothes before I put it in thehamper, like yeah, you know.
And then I'm like, wait, whatam I doing?
Why am I bothering?
Right, what am I doing?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, so like it does lend to the natural causes in
that, and then because the roomwhere she was at was on the
upper floor, there was a bunchof windows up there so her body
would have been laying in thesun was where she was found,
(40:11):
which is interesting, because Ifound one report that said she
was in the basement, which madeno sense.
So much misinformation outthere at times.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, but there's a practical reason why her stain,
the stain of her body, is stillthere on the floor and you can
see like this is her shouldersand her hips and her hair.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
And her torso, like you can see these pieces right,
because what ended up happening?
Speaker 2 (40:42):
obviously she was decomposing.
Well, the chemicals they use toclean up what was left behind
actually cause an acid etchinginto the concrete of her body.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
And they actually did a test in 2008 of the stain and
determined, yeah, it was thechemical compounds they used
that actually caused it to bepermanent chemical compounds
they use that actually caused itto be permanent.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
That's wild.
Yeah, because I know that stuffis nasty and goes everywhere.
Yeah, because when you'redecomposing, like when you, when
you die, all of your blood goesdown like whatever position
you're in it's going to go downand it will make that imprint
right, mm-hmm.
But like I have seen where,when the bodies decompose, their
(41:42):
body basically liquefies, yeah.
Yeah, if you left long enough Iwatched a documentary where
there were a few families or afew people killed, like it was
the one in idaho with thecollege murders.
Yep, their blood was actuallydripping out of the house yeah
(42:04):
like you could see it where theyhad the sighting.
It was coming out from thesighting of the house.
Wow, wow, so like.
But it's not that their bodieswere decomposing, but it's just.
The liquid goes everywhere.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, so I actually, in regards to that, read an
article where, as her body layon 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 thestate yep, yeah, and that makes
(42:44):
sense.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
It's because it's gonna the concrete is going to
absorb it and then they're goingto try to clean it and it, but
it's porous.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
So it's because it's going to the concrete is going
to absorb it, and then they'regoing to try to clean it and it,
but it's poor.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
So it's in the concrete.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, you'd have to, like take the floor out.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, yeah, they just ended up using a really caustic
um cleaner.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
That helps seal it in , that helps seal it in.
Yeah, gross yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
So she was there long enough to leave this quite
remarkable print without it justbeing everywhere.
But yeah, it's really, it'squite sad, but I actually have a
picture of the actual articlewhen they found her and I also
have a picture of her gravesite,so, and I have pictures of the
(43:30):
athens asylum and patients andit would be that I'll post.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, it would be cool to ghost hunt and see if we
could do like an sc's method orsomething to find out like,
okay, tell us how you reallydied, right, right, will you
talk to us like yeah, and giveus that information and the
state requires that all thoserecords are sealed for 50 years.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
So we won't know how she died for another three years
that's not far though that'snot far like it's getting close.
I was doing the math in my head.
I'm like wait, hey, that's like28.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
All right, we're getting closer, we're almost
there, we're almost there.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
But you know, there are so much death, so much
emotion uh poured into the, intothese buildings, you would
definitely expect them to behaunted.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
And these rooms I mean, some of them are
dormitories, some of them areclassrooms and, obviously, the
museum, and so they have reportsof phantom footsteps, phantom
voices, doors opening andclosing on their own.
Imagine and I can being anindividual who's a non-believer,
(44:59):
highly skeptic, and sittingthere in one of these classrooms
because you're like a TA orsomething right, grading papers
at night, and all of a suddenyour door to your room opens and
then closes, and then the doordown the hall opens and closes.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
And it'll be like nope, I'm out.
It's different when you'realone, though it is.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Totally different.
When you're with somebody, youfeel a bit more like you're okay
.
When you're completely aloneand there's nobody else around
and you know that it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
It's very different, but yeah, a lot of the reports
are just the basic footsteps,doors, lights, right.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Some voices.
Do they allow ghost huntingthere.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
They do yes.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Ooh.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
In the occupied buildings.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yes, and really around Halloween is what I've
heard.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
So it's contact the museum because obviously it's a
museum.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Contact the museum and you can get a chance to to
get in and do some investigating.
Saw a handful of YouTube videosout there of people going in to
these abandoned parts of the ofthe property and it's like I
get it.
Urban X is a is a thing, but itis also highly legal.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
Yeah, if you get caught, look out.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Highly do not recommend doing it.
And some of these buildings andthe 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 veryunsafe conditions and you
definitely don't want to gethurt, because if you're there
and no one knows and you gethurt, you might become the next
(46:54):
exhibit.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
You might become the next stain on the concrete.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Yeah, exactly With that, there is one reported
haunting.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
No one can see your air quotes.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
I know, but there's one reported haunting slash
possession associated to thisplace and it has to do with the
stain.
So there was Debbie.
Southall went up one Halloweennight 1979, to where Miss
(47:31):
Margaret died and touched thestain that was left by her body.
So this would be the year aftershe died.
Right the next day somethingcame over Debbie.
Her personality changeddramatically.
She became distant, enraged atthe slightest provocation.
Her friend, susan Harrington,later claimed to have witnessed
items moving around on their own, an inhuman, shadowy figure
(47:55):
appearing to her and to Debbie.
After this, debbie became evenmore distanced, locking herself
in her room, refusing to comeout for days, especially after
long sessions locked away.
Susan broke into her room onlyto find Debbie had taken her own
life, her body decomposing,leaving its own stain on the
(48:16):
floor.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
How long did it take until she took her life?
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Doesn't say there's a small problem with this story.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
I'd say it's a big problem, but okay.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
It happened in 1976.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Not 79?
Not 79.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
No, before Margaret Schilling even died 79?
Not no.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Before Margaret Schilling even died.
There's been some mix-em-ups.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Some mix-em-ups.
I call BS.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, so what more than likely happened is urban
legends.
As they go right, the story ofher death on campus right, later
mixed with the story of theother gal's death, they start to
intermingle and the next thingyou know, a whole new story is
(49:15):
built, because the one thingthat isn't mentioned right is
that obviously this is auniversity campus.
People still die on campus, sothere's a lot of other deaths
and other things happening andmixing.
In Athens was listed on themost haunted places in America
(49:39):
as number 13.
So the town itself.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
So the whole town is considered to be the 13th most
haunted place in the entireunited states.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
I wonder, though, if we had a group of actual ghost
hunters create which ones arethe most haunted, you know, know
, like say, okay, we've all beento these places and let's all
vote, and then we'll see whichones, right?
Speaker 2 (50:11):
But how would you use criteria?
Would you say most haunted ormost active?
Speaker 3 (50:15):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Because they're not the same.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Most people would assume that it would be active.
Yeah, if you're talking haunted.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
The 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, wehad a lot of active things
happening, oh, and then we wentto the basilica murder house and
it was and I fell asleep in theI fell asleep.
Fell asleep, it was so quiet.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Right.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
So active to me equals haunted Activity.
Activity, whether it's residualor intelligent.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
There's, you know, you're getting stuff, you're
experiencing things.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, there is one very interesting phenomena about
Athens, and this might beentirely idiomatic in the sense,
but there is a lot ofcemeteries around Athens for
some strange, very reason, andif you start drawing lines, they
(51:20):
make a pentagram with thecampus being right in the center
.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
The main building.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
The campus is itself.
The whole campus is in themiddle of this pentagram.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
Interesting.
I wonder who figured that out.
Somebody with a drone?
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Yeah, someone with a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
I 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 certainpoints Like is it calculated?
Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah, I'd like to see , I'm just going to draw a
pentagram.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
I'm able to connect them, you know, at this bottom
corner of this one and this inthe middle of this one, and make
that pentagram.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Well, yeah, so from what I saw of the map of the
area right, athens is actuallybuilt because of the way it's
structured by the river.
It's actually kind ofstructured like a wheel itself,
so it's already a circle, almostcircular in itself, and just
how it's designed.
And so if you already startwith a circle, it's easy to.
(52:35):
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 1 (52:43):
Right, because the cemeteries are going to be on
the outlining areas.
You're not going to put acemetery right in the middle
generally doesn't campus, rightthey're always on the outlining
areas.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
So I mean, technically speaking, there are
now in the middle of campus, butthey weren't before they
weren't before, though right sothen you have, you know what was
it, five cemeteries, three,three, five.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
What is five?
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah, 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 theasylum.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
So I'm not sure that I really buy that.
It was a deliberate thing thatthey were placed there
deliberately so that if youconnected them you could make a
pentagram.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
I fully you don't think it was like the city
planners were like how can Imake the city a pentagram?
Speaker 3 (53:32):
well right, I mean be like who designed this right, I
mean honestly.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
You never do know the way the world, the world's
crazy, honestly could becomplete accident.
Speaker 3 (53:43):
It just worked out that way, that's out that way.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
That's kind of my thought.
That's kind of my thought.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
Well, and that's where you start getting into
people creating symbols out ofsomething that wasn't intended
to be that way.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Right, because I think that you can take certain
things and if you really work it, I think you can do just that.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
I really do work it.
I think you can do just that.
I really do?
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I wonder what you, what you could draw on top of
salt lake.
If you, if you looked at itlong enough, you know, I'm sure
somebody really creative couldfigure it out.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
I actually have the picture, I can see the picture
and and they try to like thiscity, actually the library, try
to debunk the pentagram and theythey show it with all the
(54:40):
cemeteries.
Let me see if I can click intoit.
But they're kind of scatteredWith all the cemeteries, right,
let me see if I can click intoit.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
But they're kind of scattered.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
There are where they show.
At the point of each one thereis a cemetery, but there's also
cemeteries around, so to me itlooks like.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
It's like that's not even an even star.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
No, it is a star.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
It's a star, but it's not an even one.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
So somebody is just doing that to make it more than
what it really is.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yes, yeah, they're trying to find.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
They're trying to embellish it.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Trying to find a reason.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
If you really want to put the lines on there, it
would be a scribbled mess.
Yeah, yeah, a reason, if youreally want to put the lines on
there.
It would be a scribbled mess.
Yeah, yeah, if you try to pickand choose, you know, then, yeah
, you can make a star, but Ithink you can make a cross out
of that too, if you tried yeah,you probably could.
Yeah, you could go.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
I don't, I don't like that, though I don't like it.
When people do that, they tryto put this demonic and this
crazy spin on it you know what Imean and turn everything into
something very wicked and veryevil, and I'm just so sick of
people doing that well, andthere's a part of sensual
centralization right that comeseven with the paranormal right
(55:59):
everyone, absolutely and so,like it, it does drive people
into that realm of looking forthose things, because Well, and
if you're going to look for it,you're going to find it
Eventuallyyou do.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Well, exactly If that's what you're looking for,
I bet you, utah has a lot oftemples, right.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
I bet you, if you pick five temples, the right
five, I bet you could draw apentagram using the temples as
points.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Why?
Because you have, you know.
Speaker 3 (56:34):
If you have enough of them you can make any picture
you want, really.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Yeah, 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'reeverywhere, oh yeah if you use
the churches, you got like 600.
I mean, you got points rightand so, yeah, if you have enough
points to choose from, yeah,you can make it look like
anything that you want yeah, butI hate that people want to be
(57:00):
deceptive and steer people in adark direction with it.
Speaker 3 (57:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
I hate the intent behind it.
Speaker 3 (57:06):
I think To make it more interesting or to make it
appealing and I wonder if itcould have been just something
that they did, for HalloweenCould be.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
Could be, and it caught on.
Speaker 3 (57:16):
Or like a tour or something, and it just caught on
.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (57:20):
Because I could see somebody doing something like
that to make it feel a littlebit more spooky or a little bit
more like ghosty.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
This is why Athens is so haunted.
See, there's a pentagram and inthe center of the pentagram,
the Ascene Asylum.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
And so, therefore, and the most haunted building,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Yeah, yeah, and therefore this is why.
I mean if I just dislike it, Iwould, yeah, I really.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
It is why I mean, if I just dislike it.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
It bothers me.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
It really kind of does.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
I can understand, because you're spreading more.
Misinformation.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, bs is what you're doing, but that's what
lore is all about.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
That's how lore starts People creating these
stories.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
But the problem is that a lot of people today
blindly buy into every singlething they hear Yep, and that's
the problem.
It's not so much that the loreis out there, it's that people
just they, they just see it onceand then it's like oh, in their
mind it's a hundred percenttrue, but do you think though?
Speaker 2 (58:22):
I 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 itwas any different back in the
1800s in that avenue.
Right, because we look atthings and we've covered it on
this podcast.
We covered the bear lakemonster.
Speaker 3 (58:42):
Monster.
Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah and right and it's like okay, one person
starts, it starts with oneperson, and then someone else
sees something and oh, it's gotto be the Bear Lake Monster.
There's no like discernment,right, and it just takes enough
people to snowball this thingand the next thing you know,
you've got a parade and LakeMonster days.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
The Lake Monster children's book.
Speaker 2 (59:04):
Yeah, I mean, and lake monster days, the lake
monster children's book.
Yeah, I think you have all ofthis 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 asense, that we want that this
stuff happens is we want it tobe true.
Not that it is true, right, butwe want some of this stuff to
be true we like the mysteriousand that's and that's fair.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
But 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 notreal.
Speaker 3 (59:39):
See, 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, Icould see somebody coming up
with something like that to makethe tour more interesting, yeah
, and make it more intriguingand add another splash of
mysteriousness to the tour.
(01:00:01):
You know what I mean?
Yeah, and I think in my mindsomething like that.
I can see where that would comefrom, right?
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
And.
Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
I'm not necessarily opposed to that, right.
I'm not, because mysteriousthings are fun, sure, and it
kind of creates somethinginteresting, but also not super
factual.
You know what I mean, is it?
You know what?
Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I mean, is it entertainment?
Right or is it facts or?
People like or is it modifiedfor your enjoyment?
Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
yeah, and I wonder based on a true story I and I
doubt loosely or wonder ifpeople actually take that so
seriously, where they performrituals or you know whatever in
the center of that pentagram,you know and I will bet you that
that does happen.
Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
I don't doubt it, because I don't doubt it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
I 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 parkand we were waiting for everyone
to lock up to wait outside, andthis gal had seen the movie the
night before and we're just,you know, sitting outside and
waiting.
The amusement park is closedand there's, you know, critters
and stuff moving around behindus and whatnot, and everything
(01:01:21):
that moved was it's the BlairWitch, it's the Blair Witch,
it's the Blair Witch, it's theBlair Witch.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
It's the Blair Witch, oh jeez, it's like oh my
goodness.
You know it's a movie, right.
Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
You know it's not real right.
Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
So, yes, I do believe that some people will take
anything and make it way morethan it should be, and then
start allowing that to maketheir decisions yeah which but
that can lead to problems tooyes, it can because some people,
especially ones that blindlybelieve it, even if it is made
(01:01:57):
up for the purpose of likeentertainment and the mysterious
part, they believe it.
And then they go out and theytry to do it.
And what if they ended upgetting hurt or something
happens because of it?
right, yeah this is where itbecomes a problem, like you know
.
Oh, I saw my favorite youtubepeople go on a ghost hunt and
(01:02:19):
this happened and that happened,and you know.
So I'm gonna go out and I'mgonna find a place and I'm gonna
do this, and you know, it couldlead down some bad roads yep it
can.
Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
That's where the responsibility of things that's
why I hope they they're notbeing 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 naturalselection here we come yeah all
right, everybody, if you enjoyeduh, this, uh, this wonderful
tale of of uh, I would saymurder and mayhem, but uh no
(01:02:57):
it's definitely not that it's alot of sadness in this one it is
, it was.
Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
It was less of the of the paranormal.
Unfortunately, when we got tothe the haunting stuff, stuff,
there just was not much outthere.
That is that you can findanyways.
Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
I do believe the place is, more than likely, very
haunted and very active attimes.
Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
Yeah, and I'm sure students and stuff and faculty
have had experiences there, butthere's none out there that we
could.
Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Well, we could substantiate yeah.
Yeah, so um, have a great nighteverybody.
Ghost hunt responsibly and, asalways, stay ghosty my peeps.
Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Thanks for watching.
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