Location: Weston, West Virginia
Date: Nov. 12, 2022
Miles From Home: 358
Did you know that Weston, WV, blasts an extremely loud, highly creepy air-raid siren every night at 10pm to announce curfew? Neither did we.
But more on that later.
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West Virginia has an energy all its own. It’s a vibration that gets my hackles up and resonates so strongly in certain areas that crossing the state line has actually woken me up from a nap. In the most complimentary way possible, I look out the window and say, “This place is so weird.”
The mood was misty as we crossed the border from Kentucky and headed up into the mountains; Siri taking us to a place that’s been on my bucket list since bucket lists were a thing: Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
We usually try to drive past the evening’s location while the sun is still up to take photos and run the drone, but we were pushing it this time. It was a cloudy day, the rain was spitting just enough to be annoying, and we were due for dinner with friends. All of that anxiety melted away, though, when we saw her.
TALA is breathtaking and so enormous that neither your eyes nor a fisheye lens can take it all in at once. It’s set back from the road quite a bit, and the long pathway begs for a slow-motion drive-up shot where everyone in the car “oohs” and “ahhs” the entire way.
We take a few rain-soaked selfies and building shots. We don’t really say much, but we’re thinking the same thing: “This is huge! (That’s what she said.)”
The History of Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
Trans-Allegheny is a famous example of a Kirkbride building, a design that was first conceived by an American psychiatrist named Thomas Story Kirkbride in the mid-1800s. The Kirkbride Plan was created specifically for mental asylums and included beautifully decorated, well-kept buildings with long, sprawling wings that would bring as much fresh air and sunlight into patient rooms as possible without compromising privacy. Kirkbride believed that in addition to the latest and greatest treatments of the time, the building itself could have a curative effect on “lunacy”.
TALA opened as the Weston State Hospital in 1881 after more than two decades of construction to house 250 patients who were deemed unfit for society. It’s the largest stone-cut masonry building in the US, and its twin gables and green-accented cupola make it one of the most identifiable haunted locations in the country.
If you didn’t like your family members or neighbors back then, it was relatively easy to send them to the State Hospital (and get them out of your hair.) A sign on the wall – also available as a poster in the gift shop – outlines all of the potential reasons someone could be committed in the late 1800s. Some of the more ridiculous “ailments” include: fighting fire, masturbation for 30 years, and novel reading. The list reads like a parody of “things that are too ridiculous to actually be committed for,” but it’s real.
Sometimes the history is scarier than the mystery.
While its original intentions may have been good, the story of TALA goes like so many other buildings of its era – it was originally built to provide a safe haven for people with mental and physical disabilities, away from the prying eyes of “normal” society. Instead, it became society who wanted refuge from those who were hard to care for, didn’t conform or, apparently, had imaginary female troubles.
By the 1950s, TALA was severely overcrowded, with as many as 2,400 patients living in a space designed to hold a tenth of that. Still, the facility remained open until 1994, when advancements in the treatment of mental health led to its closure. When buildings of this stature close for good, it’s always a good news/bad news situation. The patients have better opportunities for care, but the loss of employment can devastate the surrounding community.
Logistics
TALA has a variety of tours during both the daytime and evening, but it’s one of the most expensive locations out there for a private overnight. According to their website, having the building to yourself for the night is $1500 ($150+ tax per person with a minimum of 10) plus a $250 insurance rider if you don’t have your own. As much fun as that sounds, we opted for the public hunt instead. Though publics are still $100 per person, they last 8 hours. That’s a decent deal.
Once you’ve been in this field for a while, you get very good at doing Overnight Math to determine whether an event is worth the cost.
One thing about a public overnight is just that – the public. Depending on the location, you could be spending the next several hours with up to 60 new friends. Our group of 8 was quickly lost in a sea of other paranormal enthusiasts, some lugging cases of equipment (like us) and others empty-handed, but we were all tittering with anticipation for what the night would bring.
Overnight ghost hunts usually go the same way – introduction and rules by the guides, a tour of the building, and then people are either split up into groups and rotated to different areas of the building throughout the night, or allowed to roam free. Either way, you’re bound to have your night vision destroyed at some point by someone taking a flash photograph or turning the corner with a blinding flashlight.
The key to surviving a public overnight is to wait it out. The people who are just there to experience a creepy building in the dark leave pretty quickly – so do those who were there reluctantly to begin with. If you tolerate the talking, the lights, and the person doing Tiktok dances in every single room down the hallway, it’s only a matter of time before the building starts to get quiet.
And that’s when the real fun begins.
My Night at TALA
TALA’s ghost stories are linked to its torturous past, which makes a lot of sense if you believe (like I do) that extreme trauma can cause a piece of that energy to break off and remain behind. It remains a memory lost to time, repeating itself over and over, with or without the living. Sometimes, we just get lucky enough to witness it.
You’ll get a lot of terrible stories on the pre-investigation tour, but the one that turned my stomach the most is the story of Dean, an asylum resident who was tortured to death by two other inmates. As the story goes, the men – Big Jim and David Mason – tried repeatedly to hang Dean, but he survived until one day they forced his head under a bedpost and then jumped on the bed.
Horrifying, I know.
For us, the most activity happened up in the attic, in a room where the floor is strewn with playing cards, cigarettes and other accouterments signaling a night of drinks and fun. We sat down across from each other on the floor, started shuffling the cards, and within short order both of the room’s closet doors moved on their own – the first one closing and the second one opening. Were we recording? Of course not. But it was a cool experience that we still talk about to this day.
We also had an amazing experience during the walk through when a fully formed, solid shadow figure poked its head out a few doors down from the tour guide and waved at us. I heard three people gasp in amazement, which proves that I wasn’t imagining things, and everyone repeated the same waving hand movement.
Now that I think about it, that moment was exactly when the guide was telling us that the curfew siren would blow at 10pm. An original from World War II, its only modern use is to tell the (apparently houligan-ish) teenagers to get off the road, though, at the time, we thought this was the Purge part of the tour. Ghosts aside, it was one of the creepiest moments I’ve ever had at a haunted location.
Were we recording? Of course not.
Finally, TALA was also the first (and probably not the last) location where I turned a corner and jumped at the sight of my own shadow.
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Trans-Allegheny was the second night of a weekend trip that also included West Virginia Penitentiary, the scariest road in the state, and our first yurt experience. You can read about that adventure here.
Have a haunted location that you think would make for a good road trip? Contact me and let me
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