Just looking at it you get a strange feeling. It's is a scary place with an even more terrifying past.
Opening in 1840, it was one of the first "Insane Asylums" in the country. In those days mental illness was a shameful condition regarded as work by the devil or God's punishment for sins, which resulted in cruel forms of experimental toucher. Patients committed had little expectation that they would ever be released. A total of 11,647 patients died on the premises.