The Haunted Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, Weston: History, Ghosts and Ghost Hunts

Across the West Fork River from downtown Weston stands a blue-gray sandstone building about a fifth of a mile long, with a white clock tower rising over its center. It was one of the largest hand-cut stone buildings in the United States when it was finished in 1881, and it is a National Historic Landmark today.

For 130 years it was the state’s main psychiatric hospital, known first as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, then the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane and from 1913 as Weston State Hospital. It closed in 1994. Since 2007 its owners have opened it to the public under its original name, and it has become one of the best-known haunted buildings in the country. This guide covers the real history, the ghost stories as they are told, and how to visit or join a ghost hunt.

History of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

Virginia’s legislature authorized the asylum in the early 1850s, part of a wave of reform inspired by Dorothea Dix, who had found mentally ill people chained in unheated jails. Its design followed Dr. Thomas Kirkbride’s ideas: a central block with long stepped wings, plenty of windows for light and air, and farmland where patients could work. Baltimore architect Richard Snowden Andrews drew the plans, stone was quarried nearby, and German and Irish masons worked alongside convict laborers. Construction began in 1858.

The Civil War stopped the work and nearly cost the project its money. In June 1861 the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry marched into Weston and took the unspent construction funds from the local branch of the Exchange Bank of Virginia, carrying the gold to the pro-Union government in Wheeling. That money helped restart building in the new state of West Virginia, which renamed it the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane in 1863. The first patients arrived on October 22, 1864, while armies still crossed the area.

The hospital was designed for 250 people, but it held more than 700 by the time the main building was finished in 1881. Admission records from its first decades list reasons such as epilepsy, ‘bad whisky’, ‘novel reading’ and ‘laziness’. A patient set a fire in 1935 that destroyed six men’s wards. By 1938 it held 1,661 patients, and a 1949 Charleston Gazette investigation found people sleeping on freezing floors, six or seven to a room, with the most difficult patients caged.

In the early 1950s neurologist Walter Freeman brought his transorbital, or ice pick, lobotomy here as part of the West Virginia Lobotomy Project, and many patients were operated on between 1952 and 1955. The population peaked at about 2,400 in the 1950s, nearly ten times the intended number. Conditions improved from the 1980s as new mental health services opened, and in May 1994 the patients moved to the new William R. Sharpe Jr. Hospital and Weston State Hospital closed.

The empty building suffered: in 1999 a paintball group did serious damage inside, and plans for a hotel, golf course and prison came to nothing. In August 2007 the state auctioned it, and Joe Jordan, a Morgantown demolition contractor, bought it for $1.5 million. His family restored the original name and opened it for tours, using ticket and event money to maintain the buildings. The use of the word ‘lunatic’ and some event names have drawn criticism from mental health advocates; the owners say they kept the name because it is the original.

The ghosts of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

Lily

The best-known spirit is a little girl called Lily, said by guides to have lived and died at the hospital. Investigators on the paranormal tours say they get responses when they call her name. No records of a patient named Lily have been published, so treat her name as part of the asylum’s lore.

Jacob and Ruth

Guides and local reporters also name Jacob and Ruth among the spirits most often contacted on tours. Like Lily, they are names that have grown up around investigations rather than people traced in the records, and the asylum does not have its old patient files.

The fourth floor

Not every story is gentle. A presence on the fourth floor, called ‘the creeper’ in some accounts, is described as more sinister, and the upper wards are where many visitors say they feel watched or unwelcome.

Doors, voices and shadows

Beyond the named spirits, the most common reports are slamming doors, disembodied voices, tapping and footsteps, and shadow figures at the end of long corridors. West Virginia Tourism lists the asylum on its Paranormal Trail, and it has appeared on many paranormal TV shows. A guide told a Washington Post writer she had seen a ball move on its own in one of the rooms featured on TV.

Where to look

• The fourth floor wards: The upper floors of the Kirkbride building, linked to the most unsettling reports.
• The seclusion rooms: Cells used to isolate patients, part of the flashlight tours.
• The Medical Center morgue: Included in the Medical, Forensics and Geriatrics ghost hunt and the morgue flashlight tour.
• The cemeteries: Three hillside cemeteries hold patients whose families never claimed them.

Visiting Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

The asylum is open for walk-in tours six days a week (closed Mondays) during its season. Heritage tours come in shorter first-floor and longer four-floor versions and cover the building, the Kirkbride philosophy and how patients lived. Daytime paranormal tours of about 90 minutes run several times a day for $35, and evening paranormal tours of about two hours visit four of the most active spots for $40.

For a real night inside, book a ghost hunt. The Main Building hunt and the Medical, Forensics and Geriatrics hunt each run eight hours, from 9 PM to 5 AM, for $100 per person plus tax, and private hunts for groups of ten or more cost $150 each. In October these are replaced by Asylum After Dark nights from 11:30 PM to 6 AM. Ghost hunters must be at least 12 and with an adult. The asylum also hosts a haunted house, a fall festival and flashlight tours of the lobotomy, morgue and seclusion areas at special events.

• Visiting Guided tours only; closed Mondays
• Tours Heritage tours, daytime and evening paranormal tours ($35 to $40) and flashlight tours
• Tickets Overnight ghost hunts 9 PM to 5 AM, from $100
• Ghost hunting Yes: public and private overnight ghost hunts year-round

Tips for your visit

• Take a heritage tour first: the history makes the night far more meaningful.
• Dress warmly; the building is unheated in places and cold even in spring.
• Bring a flashlight and spare batteries for the overnight hunts.
• Book October dates early, when Asylum After Dark sells out.
• Treat the stories with respect: real people suffered here, and their names are mostly lost.

More haunted places nearby

• Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park: a haunted Civil War battlefield in Pocahontas County
• Hotel Morgan, Morgantown: a 1925 hotel with a Room 314 legend
• Haunted hotels in West Virginia: places to stay around the state
• Haunted places in West Virginia

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
• Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (official site)
• Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum: Ghost tours and hunts
• e-WV: Weston State Hospital
• Clio: Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
• TribLive: Tour of old West Virginia asylum gives compelling glimpse of mental health history
• WOWK 13 News: Mountain State ghost tales, 10 haunted places in West Virginia
• WV Tourism: West Virginia Paranormal Trail