Haunted Asylums you don't wanna stay the night at

These Asylums will HAUNT your nightmares

1. Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane – Buffalo, New York

The green-capped towers rise high into the sky, looking more like a backdrop for a gothic vampire movie than a hospital. Opened in 1880 near the heart of Buffalo, the hospital was revolutionary in its day.

Like many of the insane asylums built during this period, the Buffalo State Asylum, later renamed the H.H. Richardson Complex, was part of the Kirkbridge Design. The building layout follows the aspirations of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbridge, a respected psychiatrist in the mid 1800s who hoped to advance the design of mental facilities by separating patients by gender and severity of illness. In a typical Kirkbridge building, a central administration building stands front and center, with long infirmary wings extending off either side, providing fresh air and sunlight to all of the patient rooms. Prior to his design, the mentally ill were often housed in county jails and in the basements of public buildings, where they were often neglected and forgotten.

Unfortunately, even a well-intended vision couldn't prevent the abuse and mistreatment. Overcrowding and lack of funding often left patients sleeping in fecal soiled bedding with little to no care. The Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane was a prime example of this. The hospital was so overpacked, many patients slept on top of one another in tiny beds, covered in filth.

Treatment for the mentally insane during this era consisted of nothing more than inhumane experiments. Doctors would cut into patient's heads to incapacitate portions of the brain, turning them into living zombies. Other methods involved frying their brains with electricity or submerging them in tubs of water for hours on end. It's no wonder some of them continue to haunt the facilities.

The Buffalo State Asylum has been closed down since 1974, but whispers of the dead can still be heard behind the towering brick walls. Thrill seekers, risking arrest for trespassing, report hearing blood curdling screams echoing down the abandoned hallways. Some have reported that the interior of the hospital looks as though it was evacuated swiftly, leaving behind rusting metal beds, equipment and even a dollhouse sitting in the middle of the floor, serving as a haunting reminder of the lives that passed through the arched brick doorways.

2. Greystone Park Psychiatric Center – Parsippany Troy Township, New Jersey

The Greystone Park Psychiatric Center was opened in 1876, prompted by the efforts of Dorothea Lynde Dix, a nurse who tirelessly lobbied for better health care for the mentally ill.

While the hospital had good intentions, the center was soon overcrowded, swelling to more than 7000 patients by 1953, primarily due to an influx of World War II veterans who returned with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Lacking modern medications, archaic procedures such as electroshock therapy and insulin shock therapy were used, which typically only made things worse for the patients.

Insulin-Shock-Therapy

Patients enduring insulin shock therapy were treated to daily injections of insulin,with the dosages being increased over a six week period. Once the brain was overloaded with insulin, the patient would go into a coma, some suffering a series of seizures in the process. Often, the patients would be given electroshock treatments while in the induced coma, just to top off the torture. Doctors at the time applauded the 50% success rate for treating schizophrenia, but the ones this didn't help were left with irreversible conditions, including brain damage, severe obesity, restlessness and constant sweating, if they survived it at all.

One of the hospital's more famous patients was folk-singer Woody Guthrie, who was a patient at Greystone from 1956 until 1961, suffering from Huntington's Disease, an inherited degenerative nervous disorder. While there, Guthrie jokingly referred to Greystone as "Gravestone," a name that was fitting for the institution. The hospital closed in 2003, amid reports of sexual abuse, suicides and the well-publicized escape of a convicted rapist.