Night 1: The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
The first day of my Route 666 tour was fraught with peril as the rental car I had reserved would not rent to me. Apparently, Thrifty, like a haint, cannot cross the running waters of the Mississippi. Hertz finally came through, and they threw in a doughnut. You know, a Hertz Doughnut?
I drove the 6+ hours to Jane Lew, WV, arriving in the night. As the sun was setting over the mountains, we passed signs for the Flatwood Monster Museum. Now I am very curious about it.
We checked into our Days Inn with a very judgy woman giving us the hairy eyeball for being a mother and son sharing a king size bed (not that I was going to be there). We ate at the Robin's Nest diner, bought some scratchy lotteries and rested before I left for the Lunatic Asylum.
I got there at about 11:15 and this is what I saw...
OK, not letting me load a picture...c'mon blogger get your shit together. Anyway, if you have ever seen my favorite horror movie, Session 9, the building was built exactly like that one...a central hall with wings extending to either side like bat wings. I was assigned to group 3. We started on the third floor, worked our way up to four, down to one and then up to two.
The group was myself, Kate (our tour guide), two guys from Ohio who I thought were a couple at first but then realized they were father and son, a couple from West Virginia who I thought were brother and sister (and who knows, live and let live) and Justin, a tour guide on his night off just there to do a ghost hunt by himself.
The third floor had some spooky stories like Big Jim, a 7' boxer who had been hit two many times. His ghost was known to throw things around. A seclusion room was where a gentle, timid patient named Dean (who the other inmates were jealous of due to his preferential treatment by guards) was repeatedly hanged with a bedsheet in an attempt to kill him. The two guys trying to kill him couldn't hold him up long enough to asphyxiate him. So, they put his head under the post of a bed and jumped on the bed until the post hit the floor. Pleasant stuff. We were cut loose on our own. I went into a geriatric wing and tried to get an EVP of a baby crying (they were brought for the elderly to spend time with). I started getting real creeped out and hung out with the couple from West Virginia. By 1:30, when our time on the third floor ended, I decided I was going to stick with Justin and watch him hunt ghosts.
The fourth floor was home to alcoholics and drug addicts. We set up in a hallway on the alcoholic ward and Justin put a flashlight out that was just barely making the connection inside to stay lit. He also had a weird theremin like thing that made noise when something moved around it. I recorded 20 minutes of him and Kate asking something questions and the light turning on an off in response. The tour guides were ecstatic but the dudes from Ohio just shrugged. It was compelling, but not enough to move me firmly into the "yes ghosts are a thing" camp. The motion detector went off a few times and there were loud bangs and slams in the empty part of the hall. I enjoyed it.
By the first floor, I was running out of steam. We set up in a dormitory that was used to house civil war soldiers (both yankee and reb). I was given dowsing rods and they never really worked. We left the first floor disappointed.
At about 5am, we moved to the second floor where another dowsing rod session yielded nothing. Then we moved into a bathroom inhabited by someone named Ben, who is either an 8 year old boy or a 40 year old orderly. Kate and Justin did this weird thing where Kate wears headphones attached to a spirit box. She can only hear the spirit box. When a word or phrase comes through, she says it out loud. Across the room, Justin asks questions and, sometimes, the shit Kate says matches the shit Justin asks...but a lot of times there is just silence or nonsense talk. I recorded that on audio and it was also fun, if not completely compelling.
Very tired, I left at 5:30 and made my way back to the hotel to crash for 3 hours before getting up and leaving for Chicago.
I drove the 6+ hours to Jane Lew, WV, arriving in the night. As the sun was setting over the mountains, we passed signs for the Flatwood Monster Museum. Now I am very curious about it.
We checked into our Days Inn with a very judgy woman giving us the hairy eyeball for being a mother and son sharing a king size bed (not that I was going to be there). We ate at the Robin's Nest diner, bought some scratchy lotteries and rested before I left for the Lunatic Asylum.
I got there at about 11:15 and this is what I saw...
OK, not letting me load a picture...c'mon blogger get your shit together. Anyway, if you have ever seen my favorite horror movie, Session 9, the building was built exactly like that one...a central hall with wings extending to either side like bat wings. I was assigned to group 3. We started on the third floor, worked our way up to four, down to one and then up to two.
The group was myself, Kate (our tour guide), two guys from Ohio who I thought were a couple at first but then realized they were father and son, a couple from West Virginia who I thought were brother and sister (and who knows, live and let live) and Justin, a tour guide on his night off just there to do a ghost hunt by himself.
The third floor had some spooky stories like Big Jim, a 7' boxer who had been hit two many times. His ghost was known to throw things around. A seclusion room was where a gentle, timid patient named Dean (who the other inmates were jealous of due to his preferential treatment by guards) was repeatedly hanged with a bedsheet in an attempt to kill him. The two guys trying to kill him couldn't hold him up long enough to asphyxiate him. So, they put his head under the post of a bed and jumped on the bed until the post hit the floor. Pleasant stuff. We were cut loose on our own. I went into a geriatric wing and tried to get an EVP of a baby crying (they were brought for the elderly to spend time with). I started getting real creeped out and hung out with the couple from West Virginia. By 1:30, when our time on the third floor ended, I decided I was going to stick with Justin and watch him hunt ghosts.
The fourth floor was home to alcoholics and drug addicts. We set up in a hallway on the alcoholic ward and Justin put a flashlight out that was just barely making the connection inside to stay lit. He also had a weird theremin like thing that made noise when something moved around it. I recorded 20 minutes of him and Kate asking something questions and the light turning on an off in response. The tour guides were ecstatic but the dudes from Ohio just shrugged. It was compelling, but not enough to move me firmly into the "yes ghosts are a thing" camp. The motion detector went off a few times and there were loud bangs and slams in the empty part of the hall. I enjoyed it.
By the first floor, I was running out of steam. We set up in a dormitory that was used to house civil war soldiers (both yankee and reb). I was given dowsing rods and they never really worked. We left the first floor disappointed.
At about 5am, we moved to the second floor where another dowsing rod session yielded nothing. Then we moved into a bathroom inhabited by someone named Ben, who is either an 8 year old boy or a 40 year old orderly. Kate and Justin did this weird thing where Kate wears headphones attached to a spirit box. She can only hear the spirit box. When a word or phrase comes through, she says it out loud. Across the room, Justin asks questions and, sometimes, the shit Kate says matches the shit Justin asks...but a lot of times there is just silence or nonsense talk. I recorded that on audio and it was also fun, if not completely compelling.
Very tired, I left at 5:30 and made my way back to the hotel to crash for 3 hours before getting up and leaving for Chicago.
Comments