At the top of a hill outside Bartonville, Illinois, there once stood a city of the sick: 63 buildings across 200 acres, opened in 1902 under a name that sounded like a verdict, the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane. Most of it is gone now. The cemetery is not. Roughly 4,100 patients lie there, beneath small numbered markers meant to protect their privacy.
Dr. George A. Zeller ran the place with unlocked doors and a rule of kindness, and he organized a burial corps to lay the unclaimed dead to rest. One of its members was a patient called Old Book, later identified as Manuel A. Bookbinder, who died of tuberculosis in 1910. Legend says he wept beside a cemetery elm at every burial. At his own funeral, Zeller wrote in his memoir Befriending the Bereft, the mourners, around 100 nurses and more than 300 spectators by the story’s count, saw Old Book standing beside that elm. The tree is said to have died afterward, wailing whenever it was cut or burned, until lightning finally brought it down. The museum’s founder, Christina Morris, says the end of the story is fiction, Zeller’s way of insisting his patients be remembered.
The hospital closed in 1973. Investigators still report voices, footsteps, and muffled wailing on the grounds, and visitors can enter only on guided historical or paranormal tours arranged through the Peoria State Hospital Museum. Around 2010, a former employee placed a memorial on Old Book’s long-unmarked grave. Whatever the mourners saw, he was real.
Story Source: the-line-up.com
Address: 4100 W Pfeiffer Road, Bartonville, IL 61607
Accessibility Rating: Guided Tours Only — Access permitted only as part of an organized tour. Independent exploration not allowed.
Google Map
What Others Have Experienced
A visitor who has returned to the location seven separate times has captured EVP recordings of unexplained knocking, footsteps moving through empty corridors, and sounds resembling children screaming in vacant rooms. Overnight stays are especially recommended for the most dedicated investigators.
— from hauntedplaces.org
A visitor who came specifically to film a documentary felt overwhelmed with unease in the basement despite being surrounded by her full crew. The feeling grew unbearable and she fled the space before filming was complete—photographs taken during the visit later showed orbs she couldn’t explain.
— from hauntedplaces.org
A self-described 95% skeptic who completed both the building tour and the cemetery walk came away rattled by a single moment she found entirely impossible to rationalize. The experience was brief but left a lasting impression that even extended reflection couldn’t resolve.
— from TripAdvisor
During a staff-guided ghost hunt inside the building in July 2014, a visitor and her group explored every floor from top to bottom, including an extended stretch in the basement. The full access to every level of the property set the experience well apart from a typical daytime tour.
— from TripAdvisor
While touring the building’s lower level with a companion, a visitor captured photographs that appeared to show two distinct figures—one large, one small—moving through a space that had been visibly empty just moments before. The images left her deeply uncertain about what she had documented.
— from ghostlyactivities.com
