Post 10 - Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
4-minute read for the main post - 15 minutes total with photo captions at bottom
There I was, standing desolately alone at midnight, in one of the cavernous, football-field-long hallways on the top floor of this abandoned lunatic asylum when I felt a sudden, chilly breath down the back of my neck.
No other sound, no creaking floorboards, just the distinct sensation of someone - or something - standing right behind me expelling a shaky gasp of frigid air right down my neck. And I was wearing three layers of lycra cold-gear plus a neck gaiter!
My entire body stiffened and convulsed with such a shiver that I felt like I had suddenly been stripped naked and doused with ice water.
Having been utterly “in the zone” - totally absorbed in light-painting a pitch-black room - I whirled around, looking for the source of the goosebumps now crawling all over me like a thousand spiders.
Nothing.
No one.
No broken (or open) windows, no cracks in the ceiling, no vents nearby.
Chuckling nervously to myself, I thought: “Don’t get carried away, man….It’s just your imagination.…right? RIGHT?!?!?
No kidding, that did actually happen. I’m honestly not making it up. I didn’t tell anyone in the group about it at the time because it seemed so silly, but I still get goosebumps to this day thinking about it.
Let’s be clear, though - I don’t believe in ghosts.
I don’t watch “ghost hunter” shows - although this building has been featured in several of them, including Syfy’s “Ghost Hunters” and Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures”.
I don’t buy into all the shtick – despite the spooky stories that were gleefully told during the pre-shoot presentation.
It was a stormy April evening, so it’s not unreasonable that a chilly gust of wind could have made it through an open rafter somewhere that I couldn’t see. I was, after all, on the top floor, just under the roof. And there were enough holes in the roof that we had been warned about possible encounters with errant bats (although we were assured in the same breath that it would be extremely unlikely to be bitten by one….). So there you have it. A simple, rational explanation. Just a gust of wind. Or a bat. Or something. Certainly not a “ghost”. Since they don’t exist. Right?
I tell you what, though – despite all rational explanations – that experience marked the abrupt end of my evening. I was running late anyway (I rationalized). I was in the upper-most reaches of this monstrous building, and I should have already been on my way back down to the lobby to hook up with the rest of the group (to avoid getting locked in for the night).
Even so, I don’t think I’ve ever packed up my gear so efficiently and enthusiastically. I didn’t even finish my last shot – I turned off the power to the camera while the shutter was still open. I was operating with an extreme singularity of purpose - get the HELL out of there, as fast as humanly possible….
But I still don’t believe in ghosts…. : -)
Ghost lore is the stock in trade for the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. They give “Paranormal Tours” every two hours during the week, with “Ghost Hunting” sessions in the evenings, and make enough money to operate (and restore parts of the main building) without State or Federal assistance. I was there with a Meetup group as part of the Photography Tours package, which included a nighttime light-painting session in the main building (April 13th, 2019) and a morning tour of the rest of the grounds (April 14th).
Here’s an interesting historical side-note from the Asylum’s website:
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, constructed between 1858 and 1881, is the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America, and is purportedly the second largest in the world, next to the Kremlin.
The Asylum, operational from 1864 to 1994, was originally designed for the care of 250 patients. By the 1950’s, it had become overcrowded with 2,400 patients, and was finally closed due to increasing awareness of the mistreatment of patients and the squalid and unsanitary conditions resulting from 6 to 8 people being housed in rooms designed for one. Over its somewhat unsavory history, over 4,000 lobotomies were performed in the hospital (with a high death-rate due to the dangerous “ice-pick” method used). Shock-therapy and other “cures” were liberally employed.
Indeed, as our guide explained during our tour in the morning, back in the day (mid 1800’s through the early 1900’s), it took little more than a husband’s word that his wife was insane to have her committed. Due to the sum they would get from the State for each ward they took in, the asylum would pay between $10 and $15 for each “patient”. Husbands that wanted to be rid of their wives without the scandal of divorce would simply have them “institutionalized” - and come away with a nice bonus for the effort. Of course, the more the wife angrily protested, the more that was seen as “proof” that she was insane.
For more info on the history and lore of TALA (as it’s “affectionately” known), and timing of tours, check out this link:
I will tell the rest of this story below, through the photos I took that night and the next morning.
If you’d like to skip that commentary, you can go straight to the Gallery for this post.
Note that the Gallery contains some extra images from the morning tour that are not included in the blog post.
The evening light-painting session began with a pre-shoot tutorial and presentation by Don Rosenberger, the leader of our Meetup group. Don is an accomplished portrait photographer - and light-painter (especially of cars!) - who often gives free lectures on various topics, in addition to leading Meetup outings. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the Meetup page for the Fairfax (& DC Metro Area) Photography Meetup.
After the lecture, we went our separate ways to explore the huge building, but I ended up working with a few other photographers at different points throughout the night. To clarify, all the photos below are lit only by flashlight - there was no ambient lighting (or heat, for that matter) in the main building (except for in the center stairwell and the main lobby).
I had brought several different flashlights (LEDs and incandescent, for different light temperatures), and some colored gels to cover the flashlights. There was also a last-minute addition in the form of a child’s “toy” that I thought might be fun to try out, namely a “fiber optic fountain night light” that cycled through various colors:
Even though I had a wireless remote shutter release, so I could have done this on my own, it was easier with help, so I paired up with another photographer who happened to choose the same hallway to start in. Here are some of the images we came up with as we painted the hallway with different gels, as well as ourselves and each other with the fiber optic light.
I painted the hallway with a blue gel while my friend painted the room on the right with a red gel. That faint “ghost” in the middle is me as I stopped moving long enough to register on the sensor. I think. Yeah, I’m sure it is. It must be. Right?
Red Room. red room. redroom. redrum. redrum. Redrum. REDRUM. REDRUM! REDRUM!!! (The Shining)
Green Room….no wait…that doesn’t work… : -) I tried out a green gel for a shocking, “toxic” effect….and I don’t see ANY ghosts in this shot….
Running the fiber optic light over my face and down my body produced a cool effect - as soon as I saw it on my camera’s screen, I knew we had to experiment with it some more….
This one looks almost like some ghostly clown with a pointed hat…
I don’t know WHAT that is, but it looks like some freaky, insectisoid alien with green wings.
For this “woman-on-fire” effect, I painted the outline of my friend from behind
“The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy”. (Blade Runner)
Moving on to the another floor, I met other photographers “painting” that hallway. For this shot, several of us set up our tripods, while someone walked down the hallway, lighting up each room he passed. This was a 2-minute exposure, so he had time to hit most of the hallway, leaving the end in shadow.
Someone in the group had a special “light wand” that produced this unique “banding” effect - I was painting this photographer from behind while several others took their photos (I triggered my camera remotely).
After working with the others for a while, I moved on to some “solo spaces”. I found this hallway with a wheel chair sitting in the middle. As I walked down the hallway (with the camera shutter open), I lit up various spots with an LED flashlight, which has a naturally blue-ish cast.
I found this creepy, decrepit bathroom - not sure why there was a chair in the tub, but I suspect that someone put it there with some idea for a shot in mind. I tend not to touch or move things around in a scene when I find them, so I didn’t move the chair out of the way.
On other floors of the asylum, I found various rooms that had been “dressed up” to show what they would have looked like back in the day. Not exactly sure what form of arcane torture (hot or cold bath?) this woman is undergoing, but it did give me a bit of a start when my flashlight first lit her face in this otherwise pitch black room.
Other rooms in the building were doctor’s offices, and had been furnished as they would have been when in use. You can see how windy it is outside in the way that the clouds are dragging in this 30-second exposure.
A doctor’s office with some historical artifacts, selectively lit by an incandescent flashlight to give it a warmer feel
A conference room with reference material - and the stream of my flashlight as I accidentally pointed it at the camera while painting. At first I considered this photo a “mistake” and wasn’t going to include it, but on second thought I kind of liked the light-stream look and decided to add it to the set.
Some abandoned stuff scattered on a table, including some really creepy dolls heads wrapped in plastic, just visible in the lower left of the frame.
This old Victrola was sitting frozen in time next to a plush red chair, where the listener would have had to crank the handle to get the record to play
Fortunately, after the brush with my “ghost”, I came to my senses enough to record my descent from the top floor of the asylum back down to the lobby where the remaining photographers were packing up for the evening. Here is the video of that “journey” through the cavernous building, just to give you a feel for what the place looked like.
After getting back to the motel by about 1 am, and getting a few hours of sleep, we were back at TALA at 7 am for the morning tour. From about 8 to 11 am, our guide took us to several of the other sites behind the main building we’d been in the night before. These included the wards for women, violent criminals (basically the prison ward) as well as the hospital, and geriatric wards.
Here is the layout of the TALA grounds
The Womens’ Ward was among the more decrepit of the buildings on the grounds. Frankly, this is more of what I had expected all the buildings to look like, so I was somewhat surprised about the relatively good condition of the main building when I had first walked through it the night before.
Near the main entrance to the Womens’ Ward
A stairwell in the Womens’ Ward, with fine filigree work in the metal - a close-up view of this is shown in the Gallery
A communal bathroom in the Womens’ Ward
A dilapidated hallway in the Womens’ Ward. This was a good example of why we all had to sign a comprehensive liability waiver for this tour (and were repeatedly warned to watch for low-hanging and falling debris)….
The Violent Ward, or prison for the criminally insane, was the next stop on our tour.
The Violent Ward consisted of large, open “dorm rooms”, all with heavily-barred windows. These were the spaces dedicated to the less problematic inmates that could be housed in “general population”.
Another view of the dorm-style rooms in the Violent Ward
Watcher or watched? Guard or guarded?
Cells for the truly violent inmates had heavy steel doors with reinforced grills over the windows - and they were NOT padded….
Ok, so maybe ghosts DO exist….
The exterior of the Violent Ward
The asylum was originally meant to be self-sufficient in terms of food production. In fact, the therapeutic regimen of many of the non-violent patients included working in the greenhouse (above) and on the extensive acreage dedicated to farming and livestock management. By the time it was closed, the food produced on the grounds was insufficient for the population, with frequent cases of malnutrition being the result.
The Hospital Ward is where patients received all manner of health care, including surgeries - and lobotomies.
The Hospital Ward was also in a state of beautiful disrepair
The Hospital Ward also had some reinforced cells to house violent patents in need of medical care
Although the Geriatric Ward was the least “restrictive” of the buildings, it still had ominous bars on some of the windows. It did, however, have amenities not found in the other buildings, like a “beauty parlor” and communal cafeterias, as well as cheery Disney characters painted on some of the walls.
The “beauty parlor” in the Geriatric Ward, with a lone chair and hair dryer left behind as a reminder of its former purpose
A kitchenette in one of the cafeterias of the Geriatric Ward
The back of the main TALA building, as seen from a second-floor window of the Geriatric Ward
A painting of Disney’s Bambi (with a butterfly landing on her tail) in one of the stairwells of the Geriatric Ward
The attempted cheerfulness of some of the decor of the Geriatric Ward was still harshly contrasted by heavy, barred windows throughout the building
After the morning tour of the various wards in the back of the premises, we were given some time to explore the restored areas of the main TALA building, which included a museum of artifacts rescued from the building before the state stripped it prior to its sale to a private owner in 2007.
The central oval stairwell in the main TALA building
In the museum, we are reminded of the huge numbers of people that cycled through this institution over time. The plaque on this coffin reads: “Among about 50,000 people who died here between 1864 and 1994 there were thousands, wards of the State, whose remains went unclaimed. They were placed in simple wooden coffins next to their vital statistics enclosed in glass jars, then buried, unidentified, in one of three graveyards located in the hills behind the Asylum”.
The museum included some of the original office machines and maintenance implements used by the staff over time
We are reminded by the toys they left behind (above and below) that many children also lived in the asylum over time, either as patients in their own right, or born to patients after arrival (not sure if the Pepsi can is an “artifact” or trash left by a visitor)
It's interesting to see this collection of original bottles from the Asylum, showing what "medications" had been used. From top left to right, some of the more noxious ones included: Heroin (with 14% alcohol and 2% chloroform); Gallien's Emulsion (Cod Liver Oil - eww!); Cannabis Indica (with 40% alcohol, guaranteed "Psychologically Tested"!); Codeine (spelled Codine); Opium (with 46% alcohol); a bottle simply labeled "Poison" with two grinning skeletons holding hands on the label (!); and my favorite - "Quick Death" (Insecticide AND DEODORANT?!?). Of course, Brandy (“Designed For Medicinal Use” per the label) and Whiskey were also included among the “medicines”.
In addition to the doctors’ offices and conference rooms I had light-painted the night before, I found some rooms where the families of the doctors had lived. This “child life-size” doll (maybe an early version of Raggedy Ann?) seemed a bit worse for the wear….
A wicker stroller and well-worn mink(ish) coat, probably used by a doctor’s wife
A child’s room - that teddy bear comes to life at night and creeps around, breathing down the necks of unsuspecting photographers. Just kidding. Or am I?
I can’t be the only one that finds dolls like that kinda creepy….
The imposing facade of the main building, rendered all the more severe by a steady rain and heavy cloud cover.
How many patients being admitted were intimidated by this as their first view of their new “home”?
Thanks for reading this post! If you enjoyed this historical tour through a bygone era, leave a comment below.
Be sure to check out the Gallery for more photos not included in this post.
Remember - next week I’ll reveal the truth about my alien abduction! Don’t miss it!
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