America's 10 Scariest Abandoned Asylums & Hospitals

by M J Steel Collins

1. Trenton State Psychiatric Hospital - Trenton, New Jersey

Now operating in new buildings, this was the first asylum in New Jersey when it opened in 1848. What makes this place particularly chilling is the bizarre and torturous treatment meted out to patients by Doctor Henry Cotton from 1907. He believed the cure to mental illness lay in removing body parts, mainly teeth, but also extended this to the spleen, stomach and other organs. Several patients died from postoperative infections.

Cotton's techniques were investigated in the 1920's, and were found to be disturbing. Patients struggled to eat and speak thanks to their missing teeth. It was concluded that this treatment did nothing to help. Cotton fell ill at the time of the investigation, thought to be a nervous breakdown. Still, patients continued having teeth forcibly and needlessly removed until 1960. The ghost of Dr Cotton is said to haunt the old asylum, and apparitions and screams of long dead patients have also been reported.

 
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Scottish based writer with a slight obsession with the stranger side of life, and massive Doctor Who fan. I also write for The Spooky Isles (http://www.spookyisles.com/), The Modern Scotsman (http://modernscotsman.com/), and have my own blog of terrifying ghost stories from around the world , Ghostly Aspects (http://www.ghostlyaspects.blogspot.co.uk/).