It’s said that one of the most haunted locations in the world is hidden right here in small-town Western Virginia. Welcome to St. Albans Sanatorium, a living hell for nearly every single one of the thousands of souls who ever spent any significant amount of time within these walls.

This massive, historic structure that presided over the New River Valley started life way back in 1892 as a Lutheran boarding school for boys where bullying was not only allowed, it was encouraged.
Jeremy Girouard / Google Maps
Far from a friendly bit of competitiveness, the lengths these boys went to best each other bordered on horrific. The results were devastating; the suicide rate among the students was so high that the school was forced to close in 1911.
DON Father / Google Maps
But such a massive, deceptively magnificent building couldn't go to waste, so the complex reopened in 1916 as a psychiatric infirmary, purportedly the best in the nation.
Alonzo Arteaga / Google Maps
It had its own rooftop garden, a bowling alley, and even a small farm on the premises. What a dream come true for someone suffering a mental breakdown, right?
Cristy / OIYS

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Wrong -- so, so wrong. There was no idyllic respite waiting for the tens of thousands of patients who suffered within the confines of these soundproof brick walls.
Brandon Johnson / Google Maps
Experimental lobotomies. Insulin-induced comas. Electroconvulsive therapy. Hydrotherapy, which consisted of hours wrapped in ice-cold sheets or days spent in a tub. An absolutely appalling ratio of 48 staff to 6,509 patients by the year 1945.
Brandon Johnson / Google Maps
Patients here were no better than lab rats, and far too many suffered permanent disability or even death (by malpractice, neglect, or suicide) as a result. Yet it took until the 1990s for St. Albans Sanatorium to close for good.
Now it stands abandoned. The windows are broken. The brick is crumbling. The hollow halls, finally empty of students and staff and patients, are now filled only with a century's worth of horrific secrets... and, if you believe the rumors, a startling number of restless spirits.
Brandon Johnson / Google Maps
These forces, products of all the untimely death to occur throughout the hundred year institutional history of this massive building, have led to St. Albans Sanitorium being called the most haunted location in the Eastern United States.
DON Father / Google Maps

Although abandoned, St. Albans Sanatorium is still open to the public in a limited capacity. Learn more on the sanatorium’s website. After a visit to this creepy structure hidden in Radford, Virginia, detox with a stroll along the town’s scenic river walk.

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St Albans Sanatorium, Fairlawn, VA 24141, USA