Glore Psychiatric Museum

The former State Lunatic Asylum No. 2 in St. Joseph held nearly 3,000 patients at its peak and now houses the Glore Psychiatric Museum, where the Tranquilizer Chair exhibit triggers waves of panic in visitors and investigators have recorded a male voice screaming "GET OUT!" near the elevators. Over 1,200 patients are buried in the asylum cemetery with only numbered metal stakes for markers.

A former security guard at the Glore Psychiatric Museum swears he watched a woman materialize in the restraint chair. Not near it. In it. Strapped down, thrashing, and then gone.

The museum sits inside what was once State Lunatic Asylum No. 2 in St. Joseph, Missouri. The asylum opened in November 1874 with just 25 patients. By the 1950s, it held nearly 3,000. One patient spent 72 years inside these walls. Over 1,200 patients are buried in the asylum cemetery out back, their graves marked with nothing but numbered metal stakes.

George Glore worked here as a supply clerk starting in 1966. He began building life-size replicas of the devices used on patients over the decades: the Tranquilizer Chair (invented by Benjamin Rush, the "father of American psychiatry"), the Bath of Surprise, the Lunatic Box, a giant patient treadmill. When the collection became the museum in 1967, something shifted. Staff started seeing dark shapes in doorways and hearing voices in empty corridors. As if pulling the instruments of suffering into the light had pulled the people who endured them back too.

The Tranquilizer Chair exhibit is the epicenter. Visitors who stand near it describe sudden waves of panic and claustrophobia, emotions that hit without warning and vanish when they step away. Museum curator Sarah Chen experienced something more physical in 2012. She felt fingers close around her wrist with enough force to leave bruises in the shape of a hand.

Down in the basement, near the old morgue door, the temperature drops three to six degrees without explanation. Investigators from the Missouri Paranormal Research Society ran multiple overnight sessions between 2010 and 2016. They recorded electromagnetic field spikes throughout the building and captured audio that, on playback, contained a male voice screaming "GET OUT!" near the elevators. A separate recording picked up what sounded like "Loser," loud and guttural, in a session where no one present heard anything at the time.

Motion detectors in the basement trip regularly with nothing visible on camera. Visitors describe a feeling of crowdedness in rooms where they are completely alone, as if the space is still packed with the nearly 3,000 people who once lived here. A male figure has been seen running through the basement hallway. A woman's voice has been heard asking for help.

Dustin Pari and Kris Williams, both from the TV show Ghost Hunters, have investigated the museum on separate occasions. The museum appeared on a paranormal TV series in late 2025, available on the Travel Channel and Hulu. The St. Joseph Museums system now offers after-hours paranormal investigation rentals, giving teams access to the building at night with a guided tour before the lights go off.

George Glore died in 2010 after decades of curating the collection. Scott Clark took over as curator. The museum keeps drawing visitors who come for the history and leave talking about something else entirely. The restraint devices are behind glass now. The patients who were strapped into the real ones left no names on their graves, just numbers on metal stakes in the dirt.