My awesome publisher recently sent me her edits for Time Warped. So, for about three weeks, I virtually chained myself to my laptop, ignored my family and friends, and worked diligently to fine-tune my novel. After sending the revised manuscript off to the aforementioned awesome publisher, I was now free, once more, to think about those little things in life such as my hygiene, eating, and seeing to the needs of my hubby, daughter & puppy (their actual names will come back to me eventually).
After obsessively tinkering with the pages of my future best-seller, I find I’m unable to leave the subject matter behind me. Time Warped is set in an insane asylum, of all places, and now all the nuts are truly coming out of the woodworks. Everywhere I turn, I’m either seeing, hearing or reading about asylums. Talk about being committed to one’s work!
And now as I sit here ready to hammer out a new entry for my paranormal journal can you guess what news story leaps out at me above all the others? An item about a haunted asylum in Pennsylvania, of course!
“Pennhurst State School and Hospital, originally known as the Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic.” ~ Wikipedia
Though Pennhurst Asylum has been closed since 1986, it’s about to be featured on the Travel Channel as part of an investigation conducted by The Quest Paranormal Society.
Turns out, Pennhurst Asylum is one of the top most haunted places on earth, and was founded not only as a mental facility but as a school too.
Pennhurst first opened its creepy doors in 1908, as a gov’t run institution, to treat, study and educate children with mental and physical handicaps (such as epilepsy). Since its inception, family members began to dump off many of their black-sheep relatives at this lovely boarding school, never to see them again. Convenient, huh?
With over ten thousand patients admitted, there was no way government funding could keep up with the costs and care needed to effectively run such a facility, so the place soon became a chamber of horrors. Patients/Students were found chained to metal cribs, were physically and sexually abused, starved, and they often ran through the grounds completely naked. Perhaps not the most conducive atmosphere for learning—you think?
You may be surprised to learn, not one of the students at Pennhurst graduated with any sort of honors and not a single patient actually got any better.
Despite its academic failures, Pennhurst’s after school program still continues to thrive long after their patients have expired. Visitors at Pennhurst have reported hearing disembodied voices, doors slamming, patients screaming and many have actually even witnessed bodies materializing.
Personally, I can’t imagine a more horrifying place to visit, not only for its emotionally charged atmosphere, but for its blatant attempt to milk every penny out of the tortured patients still residing within its padded walls. They’ve even got the original Eddie Munster performing live at the asylum with his band. I kid you not. Sounds to me like the inmates are definitely running this asylum.