To many, the mere mention of the Bartonville Insane Asylum sends a chill down their spine. Surrounded by stories of troubled spirits and fantastic visions, the asylum in Central Illinois is well-known and a favorite point of residence for many who are interested in the paranormal.
Bartonville, with about 7,000 people, is located in Peoria County, Illinois. Located on Route 24, this small town is also home to the 182nd Airlift Wing of the United States Air Force. In addition, he touts that he is the hometown of major-league baseball player Jim Thome. In 1885, however, the buzz in the city was all about starting construction on a new hospital facility – the insane asylum. The buzz didn’t last long. Not even at this time.
According to the prairieghosts.com website (http://www.prairieghosts.com/barton.html), the construction of the insane asylum was completed in 1887, and the structure resembles a medieval castle. Just 10 short years later, the structure was demolished when huge cracks began to appear in the structure. It was discovered that the asylum had been built in a ruined mine, and that the sedition of the buildings, having nothing very much to support them, was literally collapsing. But five years later, the asylum is up and running again.
Prairieghosts.com continues to say that Dr. George Zeller was angry about the asylum and the care of the sick. He did not want to put bars on the windows, or to use restraints, which was common in that day and age. Zeller also saw the need for the immediate development of a system for burying patients who had passed away, and he quickly set about implementing that plan. The asylum was completed with four cemeteries, all located behind the main building.
The older cemeteries only have numbers on their heads, mainly because many of the patients arrived at the asylum without names. I visited one of the older cemeteries, and it is sad to see small stones and only numbers printed on them; He who rests there has no names for us, no days marking thousands of births or deaths. The more recent cemeteries are the names of the patients.
Dr. Zeller entrusted the burial duties and care of the cemeteries to the patient who had not come to them by name. Believed to have worked as a bookbinder in the Chicago area, a Bartonville man was brought to the Insane Asylum after suffering a nervous breakdown. Completely dumb, man is not a name at all. Because his occupation was listed as a “book binder”, he became known as A. Bookbinder, and was often called the Old Book.
The old book did its job well. Dr. Zeller, however, was surprised to see Book remove his hat and weep at each of the burials he was led to. Funerals were especially helpful because of the patients’ respect, because no one, not even the staff, knew much about the patients. But Old Book behaved as if he had long lost a friend or loved one. He would stand at the elm in the cemetery and grieve. A tree known as the Graveyard Elm.
By Old Time The book itself passed, it was well loved among the staff. All attended his burial in the very cemetery where Liber had laid so many others to rest. What happened that day, by Dr. Zeller’s documents were made and those writings were discovered many years later. This he said, that some believed in dissolute spirits, others that the doctor himself was mad.
Zeller wrote that the ropes were lifted from the coffin so that it could be lowered to the ground, the box not resisting, but instead feeling light, they thought it was empty. At that moment weeping was heard coming from the Tree Cemetery, and when all eyes were turned to the tree, Old Book was seen standing there weeping.
Dr. Zeller immediately ordered the box to be opened, and inside he and the spectators saw the body of Libro. Then the crying stopped.
The doctor claims that about one hundred bands and three hundred spectators were there to watch the events that day. Indeed, they quickly point out that the 300 spectators were probably patients, all with mental illness and disorder, who were never credible witnesses of the events of the day. They doubt, moreover, that perhaps Dr. Zeller had been working in the asylum for too long and was beginning to develop some kind of insanity.
Within a few days that followed the burial of the Old Book, the Elm Cemetery began to die. When the crew began to cut down the tree at Mr. Zeller’s command, they claim that screams and groans could be heard from the tree. and they no longer fall apart. When the doctor had ordered the tree to be burned, the crowd had to stop again, claiming that it was immediately heard that the wood had been set on fire, and that it had been fired from there.
In one of the asylum cemeteries remains an unmarked grave book. There are so many records of insane asylums surrounding the asylum that it is hardly possible to determine which one belongs to the Old Book. The remains of the Graveyard Elm were seen by this author when he visited the place, and although most of its species are dead, it is still standing.
Bartonville Insane Asylum is now privately owned, and visitors are not allowed without the owner’s express permission, although many make the mistake of looking for ghosts or committing vandalism. Many people have said that paranormal-experiences paranormal-experiences Central Illinois they believe. Local reports tell that the old patients, many unwanted in life and in the asylum as soon as they were shaved, lived with so much anguish and thirst for love and family, yet they cannot pass to the other side. The halls of the asylum are left to wonder, apparently waiting for someone to come along and give them the peace of mind they need to leave this world and move on.
More information about the asylum can be obtained by visiting PrairieGhosts.com, a very informative site created by Troy Taylor. Also visit http://www.eco-absence.org/il/bartonville/. A video of the complex can be viewed at http://www.eco-absence.org/il/bartonville/.
