New Hampshire State Hospital

Originally built in 1842 as the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane, one of the state's most infamous institutions.

The New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane opened its doors on October 29, 1842, the seventeenth such institution in the United States and the seventh in New England. Its creation was driven by the same wave of reform that sent Dorothea Dix traveling from state to state, documenting the deplorable conditions in which the mentally ill were confined: chained in unheated rooms, imprisoned in county jails alongside criminals, left to waste in almshouses with no medical attention. The New Hampshire Legislature chartered the asylum in 1838, chose Concord as its site in 1841, and appointed Dr. George Chandler as its first superintendent. The original building was a four-story central structure flanked by two three-story wings, designed to accommodate ninety-six patients. It was, for its time, considered progressive. That optimism did not last. As the decades passed, the patient population swelled far beyond the facility's capacity. What began as a sanctuary became a warehouse. By the early 20th century, the hospital had been renamed the New Hampshire State Hospital, but the change in name did little to change conditions inside. Patients endured overcrowding, neglect, and in the worst periods, abuse and experimentation. The treatments inflicted on patients reflected the limited and often cruel understanding of mental illness that prevailed through the 19th and early 20th centuries: restraints, ice water baths, isolation, and later, lobotomies and electroshock therapy administered with minimal oversight. Like so many state institutions of its era, the hospital accumulated a staggering amount of human suffering within its walls over more than a century and a half of operation. Much of the original complex was eventually closed and abandoned, though portions of the campus were converted to state offices. The abandoned wings of the old hospital are where the paranormal activity concentrates. Those who have ventured inside report phantom footsteps echoing through the empty corridors, particularly on the upper floors where the most severely ill patients were once confined. Disembodied screams have been heard by visitors and state workers alike, sounds that seem to come from within the walls themselves. Cold spots appear without warning in rooms that have no ventilation, and objects on shelves and tables have been observed sliding and falling as if pushed by unseen hands. The old elevator, disconnected from any power source, has been reported operating on its own, its doors opening and closing on empty floors. Perhaps most unsettling is the pervasive feeling reported by nearly everyone who enters the abandoned sections: a constant, inescapable sensation of being watched. State employees who work in the converted office buildings adjacent to the old hospital describe an atmosphere that shifts palpably when you cross from the renovated sections into the original structure. NH Magazine has identified the hospital as one of the most haunted places in the Granite State, and the site regularly appears on lists of New England's most disturbing abandoned locations. The building's long history of institutional suffering, combined with the sheer number of people who lived, were treated, and died within its walls, gives the New Hampshire State Hospital a weight that visitors describe as almost physical. No formal paranormal investigation has been widely publicized, but the reports from state workers and trespassers have been remarkably consistent for decades.