4, Willard Asylum’s Mystery Dead And Their Suitcases
The remains of the Willard State Psychiatric Hospital sit on the shores of Seneca Lake in New York. When the hospital officially closed in 1995, the workers who were shutting it down found scores of suitcases containing the belongings of people who had lived and died there, many of whom were long forgotten.The contents of the suitcases tell stories like that of Mr. Frank, who was in Willard for three years before being transferred to the VA hospital in nearby Canandiagua. He died 30 years later after spending most of his life in an institution.There was also Sister Marie, who was described in her patient files as ugly and whose religious visions and beliefs were classified as figments of her imagination. After her commitment to Willard, she was so traumatized that she adopted the personality of a nine-year-old girl. When Sister Marie died at 69 years old, her body was shipped off to be used in medical research.Other suitcases shed less light on the lives of those who owned them. For example, the suitcase belonging to Ernest P. was empty.For about 50 years, the patients at Willard were briefly remembered by at least one man, Lawrence Mocha, the asylum’s gravedigger. He lived at the cemetery and buried at least 1,500 people in rows of 60. Each grave was marked only by a number. In 1968, Mocha died at 90 years old and was also buried at the cemetery in a numbered grave.Today, even those numbered markers are gone. New York State is blocking attempts at matching names with graves, stating that it would violate the privacy of those who died in the asylum and were buried by Lawrence Mocha.
3, Who’s Buried In The Numbered Graves Of Letchworth Village?
Letchworth Village was a New York asylum that opened in 1911. Until 1967, those who died there were buried in unmarked graves in a nearby cemetery in the woods. All but forgotten, these people have only rows of numbered steel markers to acknowledge their lost lives. A second cemetery was opened in 1967 that did mark the burial places of the newly dead. After the residents of a nearby group home brought up the idea of remembering those who had lived in local asylums, a project was undertaken to match the names, numbers, and gravesites in the unmarked cemetery. But vandals and years of neglect had taken their toll, leaving many of the grave markers uprooted. Records remain of who was buried there, but it’s almost impossible to match the names with the numbers.At the entrance to the cemetery, a bronze monument lists around 900 names but no numbers linking them to the plots in which the people were buried. For some, there’s not much of a name, either. They’re simply identified as “Baby Girl” or “Baby Boy” and perhaps a surname.Like many other asylums, Letchworth Village was plagued with so many stories of abuse and mistreatment that it’s still believed to be home to some of the dead souls who suffered there in life. The eerie, impersonal markers—which will likely never be matched to those buried beneath them—seem only to add insult to injury.
2, The Corpse Stain
Opening in 1874, the Athens Lunatic Asylum was one of Ohio’s largest facilities for dealing with the mentally ill. Locals called it “The Ridges,” and for years, it was the home of countless Civil War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.As people began to drop off the teenagers they couldn’t control and the elderly they didn’t want, the facility became grossly overcrowded. The staff was overwhelmed, patients were gradually put to work on the property, and the quality of care spiraled downward. When the hospital closed in 1993, locals began to tell stories about the ghosts of abused residents who had died tragic deaths and were still haunting the hospital. According to one story, a patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared on December 1, 1979. After a token effort to find her, the staff chalked her up as a loss. Her naked body was discovered 42 days later in a sealed-off ward on the top floor that had once been used to quarantine infectious patients. Officially, she died of heart failure, but what really happened is another story. Before she died, Margaret removed her clothes, folded them, and placed them neatly beside her. By the time she was found, she had decayed so much that the substances leaking from her body left a stain on the concrete floor. Still there today, the stain is definitely in the shape of a human figure.In 2008, the Journal of Forensic Sciences published a study that examined the stain. They found that it contained compounds that were consistent with a decomposing body. The biological agents and traces of cleaning agents are believed to have reacted to create the eternal stain.So what really happened to Margaret? One version of the story says that she was a deaf-mute who had been hiding from the staff and was unable to call for help when she became trapped. Another version says that she suffered from severe disabilities and slowly froze to death in the cold winter. Either way, locals believe they still see her in the window on some nights, and it’s undeniable that there are parts of her that will remain in the asylum forever.
1, Charles Whitman’s Brain
In the 1950s, the Austin State Hospital (formerly the Texas State Lunatic Asylum) began collecting the brains of its deceased patients to determine if mental illness had a physical component. These brains were preserved in jars that were carefully labeled with the patients’ names and diagnoses, with around 200 specimens canned and shelved over approximately 30 years. In 1986, storage space was becoming a problem. The hospital offered to give the brains to anyone who wanted to use them as a research tool. With major universities vying to get them, the collection was eventually transferred to the University of Texas in 1987.Among the brains was that of Charles Whitman, the infamous ex-Marine who climbed a tower at the University of Texas in 1966 and started shooting. By the time he was shot dead by police, Whitman had already killed 16 people and wounded 32 more. Earlier, he had killed his wife and mother. Whitman left a note requesting that someone look at his brain to find a reason for all the thoughts he’d been having. Later, it was discovered that he had a brain tumor. In the mid-1990s, researchers took a look at the university’s collection of brains, which had only been gathering dust until that time. When they searched for Whitman’s brain, they couldn’t find it. Along with about 100 other brains, it had disappeared. Various people at the university came up with different excuses to explain the missing brains. The possibilities included that the brains had been moved, thrown away, placed in storage elsewhere, or returned to the state asylum. The state said they never got the brains back.According to a December 2014 update, between 40 and 60 of the brains were destroyed by the university because they had degraded to the point of being unusable for research. However, the university said that Whitman’s brain was not among them, now claiming that they had never received his brain in the first place.