Central State Hospital, Indianapolis: The Asylum, Its Ghosts and What Remains

Central State Hospital was Indiana’s first state psychiatric hospital, a campus on the 2800 to 3300 blocks of West Washington Street on the west side of Indianapolis. At its height it held thousands of patients, and its history of overcrowding, underfunding and neglect has made it one of the most talked-about haunted places in the state.

Most of the hospital is gone now. What survives is the 1895 Old Pathology Building, home of the Indiana Medical History Museum, plus a handful of other buildings in a redeveloped neighborhood. This guide tells the real history, the ghost stories that have grown up since the closure and how much weight they carry, and how to visit the part of the hospital you can still walk into.

History of Central State Hospital

Planning for a state asylum took about twenty years. The Indiana Hospital for the Insane opened in 1848 in a single brick building on Washington Street with five patients. It treated people diagnosed with depression, dementia, epilepsy and alcoholism, among other conditions, and it grew quickly. By the end of the century nearly 3,000 people were living there, and new buildings spread across the campus. It was renamed the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane in 1889 and Central State Hospital after 1926.

Overcrowding, chronic underfunding and understaffing, together with how little medicine then understood about mental illness, led to abuse and neglect. Uncontrollable patients were kept in cells an 1870 superintendent described as dark, damp and filthy. In 1885 two ornate brick dormitories went up as part of reforms, and in 1896 a pathology department opened with clinical laboratories, a teaching amphitheater and autopsy rooms, built to study the physical causes of mental illness. It is now the oldest surviving building of its kind in the country.

Reports of abuse continued into the twentieth century. The patient population reached about 2,500 in 1950, then fell as the national move away from large institutions took hold in the 1960s. The grand Victorian dormitories were demolished in the late 1970s. In 1994, after allegations of patient abuse, funding shortfalls and a shift to community care, the hospital closed for good.

The city bought about 160 acres of the site in 2003 and sold it to a developer in 2006. In 2014 the old administration building reopened as student apartments. As of 2022 only three original structures remained: the 1886 power plant, the 1895 pathology building and one other. The Old Pathology Building, designed by Adolf Scherrer and on the National Register since 1972, has been the Indiana Medical History Museum since the 1980s.

The ghosts of Central State Hospital

The voice in the administration building

The best-sourced story comes from Maggie Zoiss of Indiana Paranormal Investigations, who told WRTV that during a summer investigation for a documentary, three people in a second-floor room of the administration building heard a voice say “Pull down from the top”. Nobody in the room had known how the old windows opened. She also described hearing a childlike voice. The building is now apartments and closed to investigators.

Stories from the closed campus

After 1994 the empty buildings drew trespassers and ghost hunters, and online lists filled with stories: patients seen on the grounds, screams from basements, machinery switching itself on and lights in tunnels. Most of those buildings have since been demolished, and none of these reports comes with a named witness or a date. Treat them as folklore, built on a very real history of suffering.

The museum's view

The Indiana Medical History Museum neither promotes nor denies the stories. A spokesperson told Indiana Public Media that staff let people decide for themselves. Visitors who walk into the original autopsy room and the steep wooden amphitheater usually understand why the stories exist.

Where to look

• The autopsy room: In the Old Pathology Building, still with its original fittings.
• The teaching amphitheater: Where doctors lectured students over the dissection table.
• The laboratories: The original chemical laboratory and the photography room, with its camera for enlarging microscope slides.
• The old administration building: Where investigators heard the voice; now apartments, seen from outside only.

Visiting Central State Hospital

The Indiana Medical History Museum, in the Old Pathology Building at 3045 West Vermont Street, is the one part of Central State Hospital you can go inside. It is open to the public on guided tours, which take you through the autopsy room, the amphitheater, the laboratories and the photography room. Tour days and times change, so check the museum’s website before you go.

The rest of the former campus is a redeveloped neighborhood with apartments and private land. Do not try to enter old buildings or tunnels. There are no public ghost hunts here; the museum is a medical history museum, not a haunted attraction, and its guides are the best people to ask about the hospital’s real story.

• Visiting Museum in the 1895 pathology building, open on guided tours; the rest of the old campus is apartments and private land
• Tours Guided tours of the Old Pathology Building
• Hours and season Check the museum website for tour days
• Ghost hunting No public ghost hunting; the old campus buildings are private

Tips for your visit

• Book a museum tour and ask the guide about the patients’ lives, not just the ghosts.
• Look at the Old Pathology Building’s exterior: it is the oldest surviving building of its kind in the country.
• See the old administration building from the street only; it is home to residents.
• Combine your visit with the Hannah House and Crown Hill Cemetery on the same day.

More haunted places nearby

• Haunted places in Indianapolis: the Hannah House, the Slippery Noodle, Irvington and more
• The Hannah House: the south side mansion with Indiana’s most famous cellar legend
• Haunted places in Indiana: including the Randolph County Asylum and the Indiana State Sanatorium, where Haunted Rooms runs ghost hunts
• Haunted places in Indiana
• Haunted places in Indianapolis

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: Central State Hospital (Indiana)
• Wikipedia: Indiana Medical History Museum
• Indiana Public Media, Moment of Indiana History: Central State Hospital
• Indiana Public Media: 4 haunted sites in the Hoosier State (2019)
• WRTV: Paranormal investigator recalls voices at old Central State Hospital