Northern State Hospital

Northern State Hospital in Sedro-Woolley treated 2,700 patients at its peak with shock therapy and lobotomies before closing in 1976. Ghost Hunters confirmed it as haunted, and staff at the current Job Corps center blame a prankster ghost named Fred for thrown bedpans, while witnesses report a girl with a red ball and a nurse hanging from a noose.

Over 1,400 people are buried in a 1.5-acre field at Northern State Hospital. Most of their graves are marked with nothing but plot numbers. An on-site crematorium handled the unclaimed bodies, burning them and burying the remains without ceremony. Nobody outside the hospital knew most of these people's names until a researcher started digging through records in the 2010s.

Northern State opened in 1912 as an asylum in Sedro-Woolley, a small town in Washington's Skagit Valley. By the 1950s, roughly 2,700 patients lived on the campus at once. The treatments matched the era: shock therapy, insulin-induced comas, and lobotomies tested on the most violent patients. Dr. Walter Freeman, the traveling lobotomist who performed the procedure with an ice pick through the eye socket, visited the facility. The hospital closed in 1976 after the state legislature cut funding.

The Sci-Fi Channel's Ghost Hunters (TAPS) investigated the campus and concluded it was haunted. Their team captured video of a shadowy figure moving through a hallway and recorded humming and singing in the attic. The evidence was enough for them to classify the site as active.

The most frequently reported ghost goes by Fred. He's a prankster. Staff at the Cascades Job Corps Center, which now occupies part of the campus, blame Fred for tossing sheets and throwing bedpans. He doesn't seem malicious, just bored and looking for a reaction.

Other sightings are harder to laugh off. Witnesses describe a man and a little girl carrying a red ball walking through the grounds. A nurse has been seen hanging from a noose in one of the old ward buildings. In the tunnels that connect the campus structures, people report a heavy dragging sound echoing through the concrete at night. The old nurses' dormitory produces faint voices. The gymnasium has had reports of activity since the 1950s, when the hospital was at peak capacity.

A researcher named David Koenig spent years identifying the unnamed patients buried in the cemetery field. The state eventually allocated money for a memorial after his work brought attention to the graves. The 2023 Seattle Times project "Lost Patients" documented the scope of what happened here: thousands of people committed involuntarily, treated with experimental procedures, and buried anonymously when they died.

The campus sits in a beautiful valley, surrounded by farmland and mountain views. The Cascadia Daily News ran a feature in 2025 asking "What's the Deal With the Old Northern State Hospital?" because new residents in the area keep discovering the grounds and asking questions. The hiking trails maintained by Washington Trails Association pass through the old campus, labeled on the map as the "Northern State Ghost Town" trail.

The girl with the red ball was last reported in 2023. The 1,400 graves are still marked with numbers, not names.