Sylvia Shults’ new book, Fractured Spirits: Hauntings at the Peoria State Hospital was released this spring by Dark Continents Publishing. The asylum in Bartonville has long been an acknowledged hotspot of paranormal activity, due to what Shults calls “a perfect storm” of circumstances that can lead to supernatural occurrences. Fractured Spirits is a fascinating look at these ghosts. Join us for this Q&A with the author.
Peoria State Hospital is an abandoned asylum, right? So of course it’s got to be haunted…
Hey, hey, not so fast! The PSH is haunted, no doubt about it. You got that part right. But not for the reasons you might think. For one thing, the village of Bartonville, where the asylum was located, is in the center of a perfect storm for paranormal activity. Let’s take a look.
Way back in the early days of Illinois history, the land that’s now Bartonville used to be a Native American settlement. We’re not sure if there was an actual village there, or just a burying ground. But investigators have recorded the sounds of ghostly drumming, and what appears to be fragments of Native speech.
The geology of the hilltop where the asylum was built is set up for paranormal activity. There’s limestone all over the place. In fact, the Bowen Building (the old administration building and world-famous nurses’ college) was built out of limestone from the oldest quarry in the United States. The hilltop is also honeycombed with natural springs, and the ravines encircling the hilltop are sometimes filled with the rush of running water. To add to this powerful psychic attractant, the Illinois River runs just a few hundred yards away from the hilltop. It’s the longest river in the state, and the source of lots of history all on its own.
When the state closed the asylum in 1973, the buildings sat empty for a while, while the village of Bartonville tried to sell them. Not many businesses wanted to buy, because of the lingering stigma of mental illness. So the cottages were eventually bulldozed, and the rubble pushed into the ravines. There are still dishes and plates and all sorts of other rubbish down there to this day. That’s a big reason the spirits still hang out – all their stuff is still here.
So we’ve got a Native American presence, loads of limestone, artifacts, and running water all over the place, any one of which is a great conduit for spirit activity. But what makes the Peoria State Hospital so very haunted is this: a lot of people lived here, and died here. But! The asylum was one of the very best places for psychiatric care in the world for most of its history. This was not a place of fear and pain and abuse, like many asylums. Far from it.
In 1905, Jacob Beilhart moved his utopian commune known as the “Spirit Fruit Society” to a 90-acre site along Wooster Lake near the Chain O’Lakes. They valued hard work and free love as a road to salvation. Jacob died in 1908 and the group left after six more years at the farm. During the 1940s and ‘50s the property was converted into a health spa called Wooster Lake Health Resort. It was soon abandoned. “Urban explorers” took over the site and began to bring back stories about the abandoned camp. It became known as “
For more than 130 years, the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis have been caring for Peoria’s sick and infirm. Some say that a few of those dedicated women have remained at their posts long after passing from this world. The hospital began in 1877, when five Catholic nuns purchased a two-story framed house along the Illinois River to provide care for area residents. Today, their hospital has over 600 beds and employs more than 800 physicians. Over the years, patients and staff have reported encountering two nuns who appear to comfort the sick before mysteriously disappearing. No one knows who they were in life, but their presence is appreciated.
This former hospital has a complicated history that no doubt contributes to its paranormal activity. Originally the Kelso Sanitarium, Mennonite Church leaders purchased that building in 1919 after their first hospital became overcrowded. The sanitarium was renamed Mennonite Hospital, and specialized in adult long-term care. In July 1984, Mennonite Hospital combined with two other area hospitals to create the BroMenn healthcare system. In 1998, the old Mennonite Hospital building was sold to a vacuum cleaner company called Electrolux. Something from its years as a hospital remained, however. Old photographs and writing on some of the walls left by former patients has 
Like many poor farms and mental hospitals in Illinois, the Cook County Poor Farm (and the asylum built upon it) had a tragic history. This tragedy spawned a diaspora of ghost stories as the modern City of Chicago spread around it and, eventually, over the site itself. The original poor farm, established in 1851, occupied over 150 acres. The Cook County Insane Asylum was built there in 1858 and housed nearly 600 patients by 1885. When much of the complex was finally demolished a century later, the real estate developer who purchased the land was shocked to discover that her construction crews were digging up bodies. Archaeologists conducted an excavation and discovered three cemeteries on the property. The bodies were removed and reburied in a 3-acre park now called 
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