4.22 - San Haven (Dunseith, ND) - Less Taken

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Most taking contains content that may not be suitable for
all audiences. Listener's discretion is advised less taking. He eases
the door of his father's old sedan closed and stands

(00:23):
for a moment in the evening chill, as if waiting
for warning lights that never come. He's seventeen, and he's
heard about every ghost story that comes with this place,
Tales of tb patients gasping in iron lungs, and the
children who followed, locked in rooms where nobody bothered to listen. Tonight,

(00:47):
he hopes to find some of them, or at least
their echoes. Beyond the boiler room, San Haven rises like
a wounded demon, walls cracked, roof sagging, and windows bricked
in like empty eyes. Up close, it's less imposing, more

(01:11):
like something built to last but left to die. He
steps through a gap in the west wall, and he's
greeted by a draft that not only smells but taste
of rust and rod. Inside. The flashlight flickers twice before
burning steady. The beam cuts through the dark, revealing strips

(01:32):
of peeling wallpaper and what appears to be a lonely
child's tricycle leaning against the wall. He remembers one of
the stories he's heard, room two thirteen, where a girl's
scratch marks scar the doorframes like desperate prayers, or, more importantly,
desperate attempts to escape. He half expects to see them soon.

(01:57):
He lifts his foot onto the first stare. The board
groans underneath his weight, as if warning him to leave now.
He pauses, his heart racing. He takes a breath, and
then follows the hallway's crooked spine toward the second floor.
Every step feels borrowed, heavy, the same kind of weight

(02:22):
you might expect your legs to feel in the Nightmare.
On the landing, a wheelchair lies overturned in a corner.
It spokes bent. A child's shoe peeks from a pile
of plaster debris in trash. For a moment, he believes
some of these stories might be real. He crosses the hall,

(02:47):
searching each doorway until the beam finds the faded number
two thirteen, scrawled above a jagged gap in the wall.
The floorboards here looks sponge soft. He leans in curiosity
thick in his chest, then comes to crack, a single,

(03:11):
terrible crack that snaps the night open and reminds him.
This isn't a nightmare, this is real life. He stiffens,
breath caught, but there's no time to step back. The
wood gives way beneath him. He drops into the darkness

(03:31):
with the sound of his own body striking the concrete.
The flashlight skitters away. It's being dying against the floor,
and soon silence floods the entire ward. San Haven was

(04:02):
meant to be a sanctuary and isolated tuberculosis hospital, nestled
in North Dakota's Turtle Mountains, but over decades it's mission blurred.
Patients vanished, ned loock wards, whispers of mistreatment spread, and
the buildings themselves begin to decay. Today San Haven stands

(04:22):
gutted and silent, a monument and good intentions gone horribly wrong.
You're listening to stan Haven, the latest episode from Less
Taken Season four Holloland, and in this episode, we explored
the horrific history and legends surrounding the former San Haven

(04:43):
Stanatorium in North Dakota. Please let us know what you
think of this episode when you're done by leaving a
fair rating and review. Wherever you're listening. You can also
leave reviews. Check out All Things Less Taken and pick
up some of our merch at Less Taken Pod dot
and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and

(05:04):
threads under the handle at Let's Taken Pod. I'm Seam
Humphries and this is Less Taken Real life horror stories
from the Midwest. Thanks for listening, and I hope you
enjoy stan Haven. An orderly named Clara moves between rose

(05:59):
of lungs, each one a metal coffin for breath. Her
flashlight beam cuts through the steam, pulls of moisture on
the floor, and the faded hospital green paint peeling on
the walls. She stops at Room seven. The hiss of
machinery slows, then dies altogether. Heart thudding, Clara leans forward.

(06:31):
The glass port is fogged, but she can just make
out a still form inside. She reaches for the call bell,
but before her fingers touch it, the machine roars back
to life. Clara stumbles back as the ward fills with
its rattled heartbeat. The light flickers. Terrified, she doesn't want

(06:55):
to wait to see who or what might be trapped
on the other side. In November nineteen twelve, state officials

(07:20):
cut the ribbon on the North Dakota tuberculosis Sanitarium, vealing
a campus tucked into a high ridge of the Turtle Mountains.
They opened its doors to wagon loads of patients, removed
from crowded towns and guided by the belief that dry
elevated air in slow TB's relentless progress. Each morning, doctors

(07:43):
and nurses patrol sunny porches and ward corridors, convinced that
isolation and fresh air are the era's best medicines. From
a central administration hall, four long wings stretch outward like spokes,
each ending in broad, open air porches, where patients recline

(08:04):
in wicker chairs beneath canvas awnings inside. Nurses in force
strict bedrest, administer cod liver oil tonics, and record nightly fevers.
In the nineteen thirties. The sanitarium brings in iron lungs,
massive steel shells that breathe for those who cofts have

(08:25):
stolen their breath, and it really emphasizes just how few
effective therapies existed before antibiotics arrive on the scene. Patient
intake climbs toward five hundred each year, and despite the rescuers,
nearly forty percent of newcomers never leave small wooden cottages

(08:45):
Dot the campus for families who choose to stay close,
hoping proximity might entice a miracle. Yet hundreds of patients
die here, their names entered in the ledgers and whispered
on distant farms, echoes that seem to linger in empty
beds in quiet hallways long after they're gone. He's fourteen

(09:31):
ship north in this summer of nineteen fifteen, with a
simple white blanket and a cough he can't seem to shake.
They put him on the porch of wing Bee, where
nurses teach him how to breathe again. With his elbows
raised and his chest open, his days bleed together in
a haze of medicine and fresh air. He eats porridge

(09:53):
at dawn, dozes off in a wicker chair under her
high sun. Then he shuffles back and said when the
cold night air shudders the verandahs. At night, he hears
the coughs, sharp, ragged, never ending. Sometimes he presses his
ear to a neighbor's doorway and wonders if he'll be

(10:15):
the one to stop breathing tomorrow. But in the morning
he stands on the porch again, inhiling the thin mountain wind,
telling himself that here, somewhere between hope and sorrow, his
breath might come back. He might be able to breathe

(10:37):
normally again. Nurse Mary and moves down the hallway that

(11:09):
once hosted iron lungs. Now, the open air porches are
sealed behind windows, and the once bright paint peels in
ghostly strips. She pauses where she sees a corroded ivy
stand sway without a touch. There's a sort of soft

(11:35):
chant that drips from behind a locked door. It sounds
like children's voices, repeating a lullaby that they can't seem
to finish. Marian tests the handle, The cold steel gives
and the door opens. She can't really see inside, but

(12:01):
she senses that somehow, she feels their eyes staring at her.
She starts to peer inside the room, but then the
chant cuts off, and it's replaced by a single breath
so strong that it fox or glasses bearing steps back.

(12:26):
The stand stops rattling, the lights steady, but she knows
what she saw, and she feels these wings are no
longer empty. By the mid nineteen fifties, antibiotics have tb

(13:00):
cases statewide with open air porches and iron lung wards
falling silent. State leaders eye the empty campus as a
solution to overcrowded mental institutions. State leaders eye the empty
campus as a solution to their overcrowded mental institutions. In

(13:21):
nineteen fifty six, the North Dakota Legislature directs the Department
of Public Welfare to convert the former TB Sanitarium into
a state hospital for the developmentally disabled and mentally ill.
While makers allocate an initial one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars for renovations, citing the campus's isolation and sturdy brick

(13:44):
construction as ideal for secure care. Open air porches are
sealed behind steel framed windows to enclose wards. A and
B barred sashes and reinforced doorframes replace broken glass in
the east and west corridors. Three padded seclusion rooms are
installed in ward c complete with observation ports and alarm wiring.

(14:10):
Central heating ducts are extended from the boiler room into
the wings, replacing porch side oxygen tents with more indoor wards.
In nineteen seventy one, the facility is officially redesignated San
Haven State Hospital. Haitian numbers swell from roughly one twenty
in nineteen fifty six to over four hundred by nineteen

(14:32):
seventy five, filling every former tb ward. Daily census logs
record patients transferred from county jails, orphanages, and juvenile homes,
anyone deemed in need of long term confinement. Early psychiatric
drugs arrive in nineteen fifty four, as well as lithium.

(14:52):
By the nineteen sixties. Nurses and minister sedatives at meal
time and record behavior charts under fluoresca and lights. Yet
staffing ratios dipped to as low as one nurse for
every twenty five patients, fueling reports of neglected hygiene for
long restraint use in minimal therapeutic programming. Every morning, janitor

(15:41):
earl unlocks war doors that clings shut behind him by
prison gates. He sweeps beneath beds once meant for fresh
air therapy, now occupied by patients who shuffle circles or
whisper to empty corners. Nurses carry heavy ring keys at
their waist, each door, each closet, each padded room locked

(16:04):
at all hours. They administer bland porridge and sedative doses,
trying to calm restless minds families who once lived in
cottage roads to comfort their TV's stricken loved ones find
themselves turned away, and new arrivals fill beds faster than

(16:24):
the staff can count them. Nurse Ellen pushes her head

(17:00):
cart down the dim corridor. Florescent lights flicker overhead, casting
the walls in a sickly yellow. Behind Room twelve, she
hears it, a low, ragged chant, half whispered, half screamed.
She rounds the corner. The door stands ajar and inside

(17:25):
the padded walls glisten with dried blood. A single mattress
lies shredded springs jutted out like broken ribs. In the corner,
a patient huddles, their wrists raw where restraints tore at
the flesh. His eyes are black and hollow. He tilts

(17:47):
his head, breath rattling, and he whispers, they won't let
me rest. Ellen stumbles back. The patient's head tilts up
so fast that snaps her focus to the ceiling, where
dozens of slashes mark the padded ceiling, each of them

(18:07):
looking like a tally. Throughout the nineteen seventies and early
into the nineteen eighties, San Haven's consensus swells from roughly
two hundred and fifty patients to over four hundred, nearly
one hundred and forty percent of the facility's original design capacity.

(18:33):
Wards built for fresh air creek under the weight of
double bunks and stretchers. Corridors men for orderly rounds become
clogged with wheelchairs and rolling carts as the hospital tries
to accommodate transfers from county jails orphanages in psychiatric wards
across North Dakota, State funding fails to keep pace with
the influx. By nineteen eighty two, nightly staffing ratios dipped

(18:57):
to one registered nurse for every twenty five to thirty
patients on some wings, with aids covering the rest. Mandatory
overtime becomes routine, and training budgets shrink. Many new hires
receive only a day's orientation before manning isolation rooms. Equipment
wears out faster than it can be replaced, and routine

(19:18):
maintenance falls to the bottom of the ledger. Understaff shifts
and limited therapeutic programs drive alliance on straight jackets leather
straps in what are called seclusion closets. In nineteen seventy
nine state audit flags the use of restraints for hours
at a time sometimes applied, the patients unable to understand

(19:41):
why they're even confined to begin with. Local newspaper reports
document individuals found in soiled bedding, dehydrated from misswater checks,
and suffering from pressure sores where restraints bind too tightly.
In nineteen eighty three, the Fargo Forum publishes an expose

(20:02):
a quoting former attendants who described nights spent alone with
agitated patients and malfunctioning alarms. Public outcry prompts the Department
of Human Services to close on campus family cottages that summer,
citing liability concerns. The move severs one of the few
remaining lifelines between patients and loved ones, deepening isolation even

(20:25):
as regulators continue to probe the hospital's operations. He's nineteen

(20:59):
and here from a county home, labeled incurable after he
stopped speaking. His days all seem to blur together as
he stares up by bright lights. His meals are a
cold slop. When he rocks in his chair, nurses call
it melancholy pacing. Nights come with force, quiet doors, locked,

(21:22):
lights dim, and he lies on a stiff bed in
a cell like closet, walls padded but still unwelcoming. Sometimes
he hears the others, faint sobs and half formed screams
drifting down the hallways. He presses his face to the
door's narrow window, and he sees shadows slipping by. He

(21:45):
presses his lips to the glass and whispers, I'm here,
but no one ever answers. By morning, he's forgotten the
outside world. His only refuge is the soft echo of
his own heartbeat. And I hope that someone anywhere still
remembers his name. The night Guard. Howard moves through Ward

(22:26):
b's empty beds, every footstep echoing like a shout in
the stillness. A cold draft sweeps through the windowless corridor,
carrying the faint smell of mold and something else, something foulered,
like a stale antiseptic mixed with some kind of rot.

(22:48):
As he rounds the corner past Room two thirteen, the
light flickers and then dies. In the instant of darkness,
he hears a voice whisper his name, soft enough to
be the wind, urgent enough to be only human. Then

(23:13):
a drip begins somewhere ahead. He draws his flashlight, and
its beam slices through to gloom to reveal an IV
stand rocking slowly by itself. He takes a step closer
and the stand crashes to the floor with a hollow
clang that reverberates along the halls. He sweeps the beam

(23:36):
with the flashlight down the ward further, just in time
to catch a pale handprint smeared across the appealing pain,
as if someone pressed it there just seconds ago. Then finally,
the front door, locked weeks ago, swings open on a
long drawn out creek. Early nineteen eighty seven, North Dakota

(24:22):
cuts mental health funding by fifteen percent, plunging San Haven's
budget by forty percent. Overnight roof repairs stop and new
admissions freeze. May of nineteen eighty seven, State audit flags
seventy percent of wards with leaking roofs, failed fire inspections,
and molds spreading throughout the events. June nineteen eighty seven,

(24:45):
nursing staff collapses from one hundred and twenty to forty five,
ratcheting patient loads from one to four up to one
to ten. Kitchen, laundry and housekeeping contracts soon expire. September thirtieth,
nineteen eighty seven, the governor signs a closure order two
hundred patients shuttled off to facilities and doubles Lake and

(25:06):
Fargo amid family protest over rushed relocations. Autumn of nineteen
eighty seven, the title of the building reverts to the
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewall with a five thousand dollars
security line item. By December, utilities are cut off, kitchen
fires grow cold, the boilers drain, and stained glass windows

(25:29):
are soon boarded up. In January of nineteen eighty eight,
a local paper dubbed Sanjan North Dakota's greatest abandonment, publishing
photos of crumbling ceilings and raccoon nest and empty beds.
March nineteen eighty eight seventeen slip in through a shattered

(25:49):
service door, bun plunges through rotted floorboards. In ward c
her screams echo until deputies arrive. No charges, just community service.
From nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety, County emt locks
record a dozen rescues sprained ankles, hypothermia and pitch dark wings,

(26:13):
lacerations from broken glass. Summer of nineteen eighty nine, graffiti
artists tag walls with Luis lives and e Ward nineteen
eighty four, stoking rumors of a murderous patient still stalking
the halls. In nineteen ninety, an underground entrepreneur runs fifteen

(26:33):
dollars ghost tours. Two guests break arms, climbing through a window,
and liability fears shut the tours down by September. Nights
bring faint moans and dragging chains, or at least so
they say. More Realistically, though, the place is plagued by
scrap salvagers who pry the locks open. With no permanent security,

(26:57):
the complex becomes a magnet for vandals and daredeyvels. Dusk falls.
In August two thousand and one, a trio of high
school daredevils flip through an archway, flashlights carving arcs across

(27:21):
peeling paint and half collapsed beams. They can hear the
cicada's hum in the overgrown courtyard as they climb a
rusted fire escape to the third floor roof, the dying
sun gilding shattered glass, Laughter drifts on the breeze and
the crack the sharpened hail, and a scream that ricochets

(27:44):
through corridors. Long silent. One figure freezes at the ledge,
back lit by an orange sky as the asylum and hails.

(28:28):
Nightfall bleeds through the shattered panes of ward Sea, pulling
along the fractured tiles like ink. Seventeen year old Jessica
moves through the narrow service catwalk, her flashlight a trembling
pose that dances across twisted rebar. Each one of her
footsteps echoes with a sudden thud, but curiosity drives her

(28:53):
toward the ceiling hat she's heard whispers about for years.
She leans in, brushing away to peer in the attic
rafters when the ancient railing gives way. One second she's
gripping rust, the next she's hurling through the darkness. Her
flashlight spirals down and then shatters upon impact, and the

(29:18):
dead hush that follows scream doesn't just echo along the halls.
It detonates against the empty corridors. Moonlight slashes a path
to where she lies, a single shoe tattered beside a
spreading stain of blood, the air taste of iron, and

(29:39):
in the silence, you can almost hear her final breath,
an echo that hangs between the warped floorboards and the
black expanse above. Some nights, when the wind rattles through
the old ward Sea trespassers swear they can hear Jessica's
panic cry and the metallic clatter of a beam tumbling

(30:01):
into a shadow. The fatality we've just explored has not

(30:34):
been reported at San Haven or ever recorded in the
county or state archives. However, a local sharer's logs do
know two non fatal incidents. In two thousand and nine,
a sixteen year old fractured an ankle after stepping through
a decayed floorboard into west wing. You already know about

(30:56):
the story before that in two thousand and one, but
in twenty sixteen, an adult visitors suffers deep lacerations from
broken glass in the abandoned chapel. Their injuries are treated
on site by ems. With this in mind, there are
chronic structural failures. There are rotten floor joist and unsupported

(31:17):
catwalks that can give way under minimal weight. There is
collapsing plaster ceilings, loose bricks, and fractured litels above doorways.
There's also widespread lead based paint peeling from the walls.
The insulation in the ceiling cavities is filled with asbestos.
In twenty eighteen, county commissioners pass an ordinance requiring all

(31:40):
abandoned structures to be fenced and posted with hazard warnings.
Dan Hagan's main entryway is fitted with new gates and
a no trespassing platcard. In twenty nineteen, Roosevelt County Historical
Society installs a weather proof interpretive sign at the roadside overlook,
outlining the site's medical history enlisting potential dangers. In twenty twenty,

(32:04):
local high school students introduced an abandoned building safety module
in freshman health classes, using San Haven as a case
study in structural and environmental risk. In twenty twenty one,
a joint safety awareness campaign by the Turtle Mountain Band
of Chippewall and County EMS distributed informational flyers to area

(32:24):
youth groups discouraging unauthorized exploration of San Havean. As of

(32:45):
twenty twenty one, San Haven's hulking profile still dominates the
ridge edge, an assembly of weathered brickshells ring by gaping
window frames and sagging rooflines. The original nineteen twelve TV
stands sentinel beside the nineteen twenties administrative wing, both stripped
of doors and utilities, their interiors open the wind and

(33:08):
wildlife corridors read like fractured time capsules. There are rusted
bed frames, half buried in peeling linoleum, shards of milking
glass crunching underfoot, and sumac saplings forcing roots through cracked
concrete and the plumbing. The ceiling plaster flakes like the
dried paint around the nurses station, and those scorch marks

(33:31):
hint at small fires lit by trespassers seeking warmth or
simple thrills without active stabilization or even a temporary weather
proof membrane. Freeze, thaw cycles pry bricks loose, and windstorms
terror at unsupported lentils. Engineers mapping the west wing note
bulges in the outer wall, where shifting foundations have begun

(33:53):
to separate mortar joints by several inches. Ownership remains with
the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, which maintains liability insurance,
but lacks both the capital and staff to mal efface restoration.
No adaptive reuse study has been funded, and this site's
remote location continues to deter private investors. Few notes. In

(34:18):
twenty eighteen, the Roosevelt County Historical Society proposes a two
point three million dollar renovation of the old chapel, transforming
its vaulted interior into a museum dedicated to indigenous patients
and early twentieth century medicine. Despite public support, the plan
collapses when matching funds failed to materialize. In twenty twenty,

(34:43):
draft legislation aimed at designating San Haven as an at
risk historical site stalls in the state Senate lawmakers, site
prohibitive liability, cost, uncertain tourism revenue, and the lack of
concrete reuse proposals. However, in August of twenty twenty one,

(35:04):
facing decades of environmental hazards such as lead paint as best,
there's installation and leaking underground storage tanks, the Turtle Mountain
Band of Chipwaw secure a five hundred thousand dollars EPA
grant that's specifically earmarked for the demolition and remediation of

(35:25):
a certain fifty acre hospital parcel. Thanks for checking out

(36:44):
San Haven, the latest story episode from Let's Take in
season four Hollo Lands. Please let us know what you
think of Less Taken by leaving us a fair rating
and review wherever you're listening, or by visiting Let's Taken
pod dot com. There you leave reviews, check out all
Things Less Taken, and support the show by picking up
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(37:09):
and be sure to follow us before we follow you
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Taken Pod. Please come back in a couple of weeks
from more on San Haven as well as other lore
around North Dakota, before we continue on elsewhere in the
Midwest for our next real life horror story. A quick

(37:31):
note on our storytelling. While we do our best to
stick to the facts, we sometimes take creative liberties to
maintain narrative cohesiveness. You might have noticed this with some
of our spookier scenes in this episode. I'm Sam Humphries
and this is Less Taken Real Life Horror Stories from
the Midwest. Once again, thanks for listening, and I hope

(37:55):
you subscribe to the channel with auto downloads on and
join us soon for our next terrifying Midwest adventure. Let's

(38:22):
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4.22 - San Haven (Dunseith, ND)

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