Bartonville State Asylum
Tale From Troy Taylor
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"If spirits truly are the personalities of those who once lived, then surely these spirits reflect whatever turmoil plagued them in life. As proof, you need look no farther than the strange events at the old state mental hospital in Bartonville, Illinois, a small town near Peoria.
In its final years, after the last patients had departed, staff members started to report some odd occurences in the now empty ward and cells. In more recent years many vandals, trespassers, and curiosity-seekers claim to have had their own weird encounters in the place.
The first ghost story about the hospital came from its founder, Dr. George A. Zeller, who was one of the most influential mental health care providers in Illinois history. Shortly after the hospital opened in 1902, Dr. Zeller supervised the creation of cemeteries for the facility and a burial corps to deal with interment. 
Dr. Zeller's burial corps always consisted of a staff member and several patients competent enough to take part in the digging of graves. Of all the gravediggers, the most unusual man was a fellow called A. Bookbinder. Old Book, as he was affectionately known, had come to the hospital from a county poorhouse. He had suffered a mental breakdown and lost the power of coherent speech while working in a printing house in Chicago. The officer who had taken him into custody had noted that the man had been employed as a bookbinder, and a court clerk inadvertently listed this as the man's name. After Old Book was attached the burial corps, attendants soon realized that he was especially suited to the work. During Old Book's first interment he removed his first interment he removed his cap and began to weep loudly for the dead man.
"His emotion became contagious and there were many moist eyes at the gravesite," Dr. Zeeler wrote.
Old Book would do the same thing at each service. As his grief reached its peak, he would lean against an old elm tree in the center of the cemetery and sob loudly. Eventually Old Book died. More than one hundred nurses attended his funeral, along with male staff members and several hundred patients. As the last hymn was sung, four men grabbed the ropes holding the casket above the empty grave.
"At a given signal," Dr. Zeller wrote, "they heaved away at the ropes and in the next, all four lay on their backs. For the coffin, instead of offering resistance, bounded into the air like an eggshell, as if it were empty!"
"In the midst of the commotion," Dr. Zeller continued, "a wailing voice was heard and every eye turned toward the Graveyard Elm from whence it emanated... There stood Old Book, weeping and moaning with an earnestness that outrivaled anything he had ever shown before...It was broad daylight and there could be no deception."
After a few moments the doctor summoned some men to remove the lid of the coffin. As soon as the lid was lifted, the wailing sound came to an end. Inside the casket lay the body of Old Book, unquestionably dead. Everybody looked over to the elm tree. The specter had vanished!
"It was awful, but it was real," Dr. Zeller concluded.
"I saw it, 100 nurses saw it and 300 spectators saw it." If it was anything other then the ghost of Old Book, Dr. Zeller had no idea what it could have been.
A few days after the funeral the Graveyard Elm began to wither, and within the year it died. Later workman tried to cut down the tree but stopped after the first cut of the axe caused the tree to emit what was said to be "an agonized, desparing cry of pain." After that Dr. Zeller suggested that the tree be burned, but as soon as the fire started around its base, the workers, hearing a crying sound coming from the tree, quickly put out the flames.
The hospital was finaly closed down in 1972 and remained empty for a number of years before being sold at auction in 1980.
Even though the site is private property and trespassing is forbidden, vandals and would-be ghost hunters still enter the place. Many claim to have encountered some pretty frightening things, from unexplained sounds to full-blown apparitions. Some might even say that many of the former patients are still around!
"The place is full of spirits" has been said on more that one occasion. I wouldn't be surprised if this proclamation is right." -Troy Taylor
