![]() ![]() In 1990, the recently deposed head of the German Democratic Republic, Erich Honecker, was treated here for liver cancer, and it was from the now-crumbling wards that he fled to Russia.īeelitz-Heilstatten was finally abandoned in 2000, and like many other empty hospitals is marked by peeling paint, deserted corridors, and rusting medical equipment. The hospital at Beelitz was occupied by the Red Army in 1945, and resembled its own small-scale village, complete with private power plant, a post office, restaurants, and even a butcher. It was here that a young Adolf Hitler was brought to recuperate after suffering a wound to his thigh during the bloody Battle of the Somme. A sprawling complex of over 60 buildings, it was converted into a Red Cross hospital during World War I. Medical staff at this now slowly decaying site outside of Berlin once treated two of the most reviled figures in recent German history, Adolf Hitler and Erich Honecker.īeelitz-Heilstatten was built around the end of the 19th century, initially as a hospital to care for the increasing number of tuberculosis patients in Berlin. Some abandoned hospitals seem more sinister than others by virtue of who was treated there-perhaps none more so than Beelitz-Heilstatten. ![]() James C Farmer via Flickr // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 But a cemetery in the woods a few miles away is home to hundreds of unnamed graves, the plain crosses marked only with numbers. The full story of Letchworth, exactly what transpired in the hospital, and how many passed through the morgue, is unknown. In the pitch-black basements are the laboratories, dentists’ rooms, and the morgue. Empty wards still contain beds and paintings on the walls from the children who lived there. Today the hospital, like the rest of Letchworth, is completely abandoned. Exposed along with Willowbrook in Staten Island by Geraldo Rivera, Letchworth was eventually shut down. This self-contained village in the woods was designed to be at the forefront of progressive treatment, but Letchworth was closed in 1996 after reports of decades of abuse and neglect. At the center of Letchworth Village was the hospital and mortuary. The village was divided in two by a river (creating a girls' and a boys' half), and included its own power station, printing press, stores, and places of worship. By 1950 over 4000 patients lived there, many of them children. Today, the Virginia Renaissance Faire is a shadow of its former self, an ironic reminder of a bygone time, and one of the most curious haunted sites in the state.Built in 1911 in the upstate hamlet of Thiells, New York, Letchworth Village was created to be a utopian village for the mentally ill. This Renaissance Faire was built in the 1990s as a permanent home for the Virginia festival, but attendance never met expectations, and after a few unsuccessful seasons, the property faced foreclosure. Off Kings Highway, these once-riotous festival grounds now sit abandoned, the Tudor-style structures slowly being consumed by the wild woodlands of Virginia. Virginia Renaissance Faire in Fredericksburg has since been forsaken by the unkind passage of time. There's something about old, abandoned places that causes the mind to wander. What are some abandoned places in Virginia? Given all of this, it's no surprise that this former hospital is now the home to many a lore and legend, and some of the most hair-raising ghost stories in Virginia. Patients were given beds and other "luxuries," while activities like lectures, concerts, and visits into town were provided along with a library and workshops for sewing, carpentry, and shoemaking to teach practical skills. When John Minson Galt II took over the hospital in 1841, conditions improved as "moral management" began being used for treatment, emphasizing self-control, work therapy, and leisure activities. Founded in 1773, the Public Hospital was built at a time when mental illness was not diagnosed by a doctor, but rather by a jury-like group of 12 citizens who gave a verdict of "criminal, lunatic, or idiot." As with many early asylums, conditions were barbaric and patients lived in small cells outfitted with only a straw mattress and chamber pot. While DeJarnette Sanitarium is the most notoriously haunted sanitarium in Virginia, there are many, many more abandoned asylums and hospitals in the Old Dominion. The Public Hospital in Colonial Williamsburg is the oldest psychiatric hospital in the nation and the first hospital specifically purposed for treatment of the mentally ill. Is DeJarnette Sanitarium the only haunted sanitarium in Virginia? ![]()
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