According to the previously-cited Line Up article, in February of 1976, the parents of an 18-year-old patient, Joy Evans, brought a class action lawsuit against Forest Haven Asylum. Evans had died in the facility's care, with horrific neglect injuries she likely sustained over months of prolonged mistreatment. Two years later, the case was settled, and part of the ruling determined that Forest Haven should be permanently closed, its admittees reassigned to (hopefully much better!) facilities across the state. Justice had been served.
Only, no not really. Eight years passed. Inexplicably, the Forest Haven Asylum continued operations with little outside interference. It was only in the mid-'80s that a spate of deadly pneumonia cases brought the asylum's neglect back into the public's gaze. Investigators found that patients were being fed while restrained in a lying down position, causing food to enter their lungs. The asylum shut its doors for good in 1991, after over three decades of institutionalized horror. Architectural Afterlife reports that over 380 people lie buried in a mass grave beneath that one single headstone in the asylum's slowly decaying grounds. It's unlikely the actual death toll will ever be known.
The prototypically creepy asylum is a vital part of our folklore. YouTube and television are packed to their digitized rafters with stories of one slowly decaying bedlam or another. The thing that separates Forest Haven Asylum is that this place is the real deal. All that stuff we shiver about happened here.
As one intrepid explorer reporting for Architectural Life put it, "while tracing these long corridors back and forth, you may still catch a sterile scent lingering in the air. Examining these spaces [immerses you] in the fragmented remains of entire past lives."
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