Ghoulish
I’d like to say that I’m not easily offended. I’m on Reddit after all, and I’m a fan of dark humor. And when I am offended, I hold to the belief that people have a right to their opinion. Go ahead and put your ideas to the test. What’s the point of having beliefs if they can’t stand up to criticism? I’m of the same opinion as Ken “Popehat” White, that “no sensible and well-ordered society can recognize a right to be free from offense.” (If you have a free afternoon, go to Popehat and search “butthurt,” “offended,” or “free speech.” You’ll have a very informative trip down that rabbit hole.) I believe that, even when I’m disgusted by certain conduct. Believing that Aura Haunted House should be able to operate and approving of it are two different things.
I’m from the Peoria area, so I occasionally get ads relating to that region. I first heard of Aura Haunted House on Spotify in early October. They must have shelled out some money, because I would hear “at Peoria State Hospital, hundreds died here; some never left,” or something like that over and over again. I had some vague recollection of an asylum near me being “haunted,” but no real idea what its story was. So I found its story.
Peoria State Hospital/Bartonville State Hospital/Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane was a state-run insane asylum from 1902 to its closure in 1973. The Illinois General Assembly provided for a state insane asylum in 1895, and Governor John P. Altgeld (of “Altgeld’s castles” and one of the very few Illinois governors with principles) appointed a committee to search for sites. This committee chose Bartonville, outside of Peoria. Construction took longer than expected (unsurprising for an Illinois job), with design changes and reconstruction taking seven years. At its peak, it housed over two thousand and eight hundred patients, with over thirteen thousand passing through in the first twenty-five years. It was a center of growth in psychiatric treatment, with its first director, Dr. George Zeller (a graduate of UIUC), being renowned for his efforts to improve public awareness of mental illness, and a psychiatric nursing school on the campus from 1943 to 1969. Zeller’s “aim was to restore individuality and remove every suggestion of imprisonment.” He successfully advocated for a “non-restraint, non-sedation, and non-imprisonment” manner of operating the asylum. In his first tenure as director, from 1902 to 1913, he dropped the word “incurable” from the name, because he considered no one beyond the reach of medicine.
His patients came from almshouses all over the state. They ranged from severe epileptics and incurable alcoholics to those would be now called schizophrenics and psychotics. One patient Zeller treated had been ill-treated by her previous caretakers: “‘[She] was kept in a box in which straw had to be changed several times a day [at the almshouse she came from]. In one of her spells she beat out her own eyes… the institution was better for having cared for her; the State is better for the knowledge that justice was finally done this long neglected woman.’” Other patients were so violent that every other asylum would have locked them away. And the staff helped them with kindness. The asylum was “… considered #1 for curing patients for 69 of its 71 years. The Hospital also boasted the #1 nursing program in the country for 30 of its 31 years of operation.”
With seventy-one years of kindness, what happened to the Hospital? Well, after its closure, the buildings were auctioned off. There were plans to create office spaces, but that never worked out. Most of the buildings were eventually demolished, with only twelve out of sixty-three remaining today. Some serve as business, one serves as the Peoria State Hospital Museum, and one houses Aura Haunted House.
Aura plays up the “really haunted” aspects of its production, as in this ad. On its website, it says: “During the hospitals (sic) years of operation, hundreds died and according to stories and eyewitness accounts, their spirits stayed behind to walk the hallways. Some visitors say, you can still feel the AURA of those patients still within the Pollak Hospital Building to this day!” How classy.
One of the actors portrays “Old Book,” who was part of the gravedigging detail from 1902 to his death in 1909. He was a bookbinder who suddenly became mute one day, and could not take care of himself. At every funeral, he would weep loudly as the body was placed in the ground. At his own funeral, Dr. Zeller and others recorded that they heard wailing and saw the form of Old Book standing under an elm. Stories of hauntings have been passed around since then.
That’s not what bothers me. Like I said, people are entitled to their beliefs. I don’t give two shits for ghost stories. What bothers me is that Aura Haunted House is using the suffering of the mentally ill for ticket sales. If you’ve seen any police body cam footage, or, hell, even talked to someone who couldn’t take care of themself due to mental illness or even dementia, you can see that they’re suffering. Even when they’re in safe and caring places, like the State Hospital or a nursing home, they suffer. Watch the ad again and see how they attach terror to the patients. Ooh, aren’t insane people so scary? They’re so scary their caretakers keep them in a laundry basket and they beat their own eyes out! And, ooh, scary nurses! They’re so scary, they’re part of an excellent school for psychiatric patients! Why, I’ll bet they torture people in their eight-hour work day.
I’m not saying that mental illness can’t be frightening or dangerous. Look up Richard Chase or Herbert Mullin. I’m not saying that haunted houses are bad. I’m saying it’s crass to set up a haunted house in a hospital that was a pioneer in the treatment of the insane. I’m saying it’s ghoulish to use the dead as props. I’m saying that those who run Aura Haunted House ought to be ashamed of themselves.
