Peoria State Hospital (Bartonville Asylum)

Peoria State Hospital's ghost story is documented by the superintendent himself: when patient Manual "Old Book" Bookbinder died in 1910, Dr. George Zeller and hundreds of witnesses saw his figure crying at the cemetery elm tree during his own funeral, then found his body still in the casket. The Graveyard Elm died within a year, wailed when axed, and sobbed when burned.

When Manual A. Bookbinder died in 1910, his casket felt empty.

Four men lifted it for the burial at the potter's field behind Peoria State Hospital, and the weight was wrong. Hundreds of patients and staff watched the funeral. Dr. George Zeller, the hospital's superintendent, was there. Then a sound came from the old elm tree at the edge of the cemetery: weeping. Everyone turned. According to Zeller's own diary, the mourners saw Old Book standing by the tree, crying, exactly as he had done at every other funeral for years.

Zeller ordered the casket opened. The body was inside, undisturbed.

Old Book, as the patients called him, was a mute who couldn't tell anyone his real name. Staff called him Bookbinder because he'd worked at a printing house before being committed. His grave marker reads 713. During his years at the hospital, he served on the burial crew, and after each funeral he would lean against the elm tree in the potter's field and weep for the dead. Every single time. "In each death, he found great sorrow," Zeller wrote. "He wept at each, passing tears for the unloved and forgotten."

The tree started dying after his funeral. Within a year, the Graveyard Elm was dead. When groundskeepers tried to cut it down, the first strike of the axe produced what they described as a terrible wailing sound. They stopped. When they tried to burn the trunk instead, the roar of the flames turned into a sobbing, crying sound. They put the fire out. The tree stood dead and untouched until lightning finally struck it and brought it down.

The hospital itself opened on February 10, 1902, originally called the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane. Zeller, who served as superintendent from 1902 to 1913 and again from 1921 to 1935, rebuilt the institution from the ground up. He implemented a "cottage plan" with 33 buildings spread across 215 acres, including patient housing, a store, and a power station. He invited newspaper reporters and community members to visit, which was almost unheard of for mental institutions at the time. At its peak in the 1950s, the hospital held 2,800 patients.

The place closed in 1973, when only about 600 patients remained. Of the original 63 buildings, just 12 still stand. Four cemeteries on the grounds hold the bodies of thousands of patients who died during the hospital's 71 years of operation.

Modern investigators report activity beyond the Old Book legend. Visitors describe voices in the empty wards, footsteps in buildings where nobody works, and a heavy, sad feeling that settles in certain rooms without warning. The Bowen Building (demolished in 2016) and the old tuberculosis ward (Pollak Hospital) drew the most attention from paranormal teams. American Hauntings runs overnight ghost hunts at the site.

But the elm tree story is the one that distinguishes Peoria State from every other abandoned asylum in the country. It's not a rumor or a legend passed down through staff. The superintendent of the hospital documented it. He opened the casket himself. He saw what the crowd saw. And the tree that a dead man cried under for years died when he did, and screamed when they tried to take it down.