THE MOST PSYCHOTIC MENTAL INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD

Built in 1784, the Royal Hope Hospital in St. Augustine, Florida has a history for what would be fit for a true horror movie. It is said that when citizens dug below the mental institution to fit water piping for the town, they discovered a cemetery right under it! So imagine this – a cemetery with a mental hospital above it – gives you the chills, right? To make matters worse, residents and visitors alike have reported that it is haunted, because of all the paranormal activity happening there. There have been beds shaking on their own, desks shifting and footsteps heard on an abandoned staircase. Many believe it is the spirits of the former residents there who never wanted to leave, coupled by the souls of those buried under the construction. The hospital doesn’t run anymore, as it is a museum housing haunting history of unstable ghosts. CLICK HERE to read witnesses’ chilling stories of being touched, scratched, hugged and hearing voices of weeping ghouls within the walls of the Spanish Military Hospital.

We usually believe that European countries are the fount of human civility, but it seems that in the former Soviet country of Serbia, the lives of mentally challenged children and adults alike are treated with little to no care. Being forced to reside in over-populated rooms and hosed like cattle when taking showers, individuals are treated worse than animals. People of adult age are made to sleep in cots meant for infants and the result is frozen, distorted bodies. Emaciated children are tied to the sides of their beds, just surviving until they breathe their last. Take a look at this VIDEO where reporters got a chance to take a tour inside some of these real-life houses of horror.

If you ever wondered why James Blunt named his debut album Back To Bedlam, here is the reason: Bedlam is the nickname for the notorious mental institution known as Bethlem after Our Lady of Bethlehem that has gone down in history as being one of the most inhumane mental houses to exist. It housed just a dozen or so patients at a time, but was still devoid of any proper treatment. Sewers ran below the building that regularly flooded the premises, due to which patients walked through icky black waters that contained the waste of the city. Psychiatry was conducted on patients but in a more brutal way than it is today. They were beaten, starved and forced to undergo treatment where they were suspended and spun for hours, resulting in vomiting and disorientation that was considered “therapeutic”. Visitors were allowed to view the patients who were paraded in cages and could be poked with a stick. How it went on for so long is unimaginable. READ THIS ARTICLE to find out more about the mental institution from hell.

This mental hospital was built in order to help alleviate already established mental institutions in America from overcrowding. Farms were also part of the infrastructure to give patients something to do, but the conditions they lived in and the treatments they were given were anything but humane. The patients had to undergo lobotomy and electric shock therapy. If this wasn’t appalling enough, wait till you hear this – doctors started injecting patients with metrozol and insulin to drive patients into a forced coma, thereby “ridding” them of extra work treating housemates.

Located in Kansas and opened in 1879, this mental institution is another site for mistreatment of mentally unsound patients. When a reporter visited the place, what he saw was something beyond all of the horror dreams you could come up with – for example, some patients were tied to their beds for so long that their skin began to grow over the straps. Many of the patients were nameless and wandering aimlessly through corridors due to the lack of care and attention. Paperwork was missing, so no one really knew the names or the mental disorders they were suffering. Another disturbing practice was castrating of patients that was surprising endorsed by law, to prevent them from procreating, being sexually over-active and as punishment for misbehavior. READ THE ARTICLE to go more in depth into the horror story that is Topeka State Hospital.

Like The Amityville Horror kept us awake at night, the stories that emerged from Amityville Insane Asylum are just as terrifying. It is said that one of the patients, Ricky Kasso conducted a ritualistic murder while only 17 years of age of his friend. He carried it out by repeatedly assaulting the victim with a knife, gouging out his eyes and shoving stones down his throat. Another report is of one of the attending doctors, Dr. Abramson who provided the psychedelic drug LSD to patients that shouldn’t have been administered. Most of his patients became addicts and one even jumped out of a window while intoxicated with the drug.

Do not think that this is a horror story from Greece, even though our ancient predecessors from the Mediterranean were quite cruel to those who were not mentally sound. Athens Lunatic Asylum, located in Ohio was opened in 1874. Many epileptic patients were housed here, because at the time, epilepsy was not yet determined to be a neurological disorder. There is a cemetery attached to the institution that had headstones with only numbers on them, making visitors believe that patients weren’t even known by name and therefore were not treated humanely. There was also the problem of overcrowding for still-living patients who were confined to rooms and beaten viciously by the limited staff. The creepiest story from Athens is about a patient known as Margaret Schilling who suddenly went missing and her naked dead body was found over a month later, decomposed and rotting into the cement. The outline of her lonely body can still be seen in the ground where she lay, to this day. Students around the area say that sometimes they can hear screaming in the hollow halls of the asylum and some have witnessed apparitions of a ghostly figure running from the site of Margaret’s murder.