S2 – 2: No Longer is Insanity Considered an Affliction

I began to hear a tapping sound. Eventually, the tap turned louder, and soon it became a loud banging or crashing. Convinced an animal, or worse, an intruder had entered the building, I turned on my flashlight and headed toward the sound. Except when I turned the corner where the sound was emanating from, there was nothing there, nothing that could make that sound, and yet it was still happening directly in

front of me. I must admit, if I was alone, there's a chance I would have quickly exited the building. But I did have someone with me, and my pride was on the line, so I continued toward the sound. When it suddenly stopped with no explanation, we searched high and low for anything in that empty space that could have made such a ruck as and we came up empty. Little did I know this was a common occurrence in this building. And what I also didn't realize was I

was standing right behind the hospital's former morgue. So join me, friends, as we had to Wisconsin and visit the Sheboygan County Asylum. I'm Amy Brunei, and this is haunted road. To fully understand the hauntings, rumors, and confusion regarding the history at the Sheboygan County Asylum, or what was officially known as the Sheboygan County Comprehensive Healthcare Center when it closed, you

have to go back to its roots. Sheboygan Asylum refers to three different structures between eighteen seventy six and two thousand two. The Sheboygan County Hospital for the Insane was a former lunatic asylum serving Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. Opened in eighteen seventy six in Winowski. It was replaced in eighteen eighty two with a larger facility in Sheboygan, which underwent

several expansions before closing in nineteen forty. It was succeeded by Sheboygan County Comprehensive health Care Center in Sheboygan Falls, which operated until two thousand two. These three operations are regularly confused in research and tragedies. History that occurred in the first two incarnations are often times confused with the

still standing, though not in use, healthcare center in Sheboygan. Regardless, the history of each is interesting, so let's go through each iteration to fully understand why the Comprehensive Healthcare Center came to be and what actually happened within its walls. Before the original A. Winowski Asylum opened in June eighteen seventy six, the chronically insane, as they were called, had previously been housed in the state hospital and the jail.

In its earliest years, the Sheboygan Asylum was under the direction of Glanville Jewett, who had about twenty two people under his care. On February nineteenth, eighteen seventy eight, a fire broke out in his facility, killing four of the seventeen patients under Jewett's care at the time. An account in the Oshkosh, Northwestern States the building was of wood, erected by Mr Jewett about two years ago expressly for the purpose, and situated but a few meters from his residence.

There were eighteen inmates at the time, all of whom had been locked in their cells for the night as usual, at which time everything was right so far as could be seen. At twenty minutes before twelve o'clock, an alarm was raised by Lucretia Toothaker, an old lady, one of the incurable insane, brought from Oshkosh last summer. On hearing it, Mr Jewett arose and it once proceeded to learn the cause.

Arriving at the building, he opened the door of the furnace room in the basement and found it full of dense smoke, and at once a bright flame dashed out from the ceiling overhead and spread rapidly across the room. Using buckets of water, people on the scene tried to tame the fire and rescue everyone inside. The cells were quickly unlocked by Mr Jewett, who, with the aid of two or three others who had arrived, got them out with as much haste as possible, many of them having

to be carried out nearly suffocated with smoke. On the cause of the fire, Mr Jewett says there had been no fire in the furnace since three o'clock the day before, and he thinks the fire to have originated from the ashes of a pipe laid upon a projection of a beam near the floor overhead, that is again from the Oshkosh Northwestern Afterwards, survivors were all cared for in Jewett's own house and other buildings in the neighborhood. He proposed to erect a new building again as fast as it

could be done. Unfortunately, he never saw that plan through because that April Jewett passed away from injuries sustained in the fire. After Mr. Jewett's death, a plan was formed by the county board to move the asylum closer to the city of Sheboygan. In eighteen eighty one, the county purchased nineteen acres located just west of today's voll Wrath Company Grounds, bordered by Superior and Erie Avenues. During construction,

the patients were kept in neighboring homes. The building contract was let and the new building was completed and furnished by June one, eighteen eighty two. The committee then employed A. J. Whiffen and his wife as superintendent and matron, respectively, of the institution. On June seventh, the building was opened to forty inmates, being all those kept at Winowski and twenty

others transferred from the Northern Hospital. When this second iteration opened in eighteen eighty two, it was called the County Hospital, but became known as the Asylum. It also served as a poorhouse the following year. In eighteen eighty three, an addition increased the building's capacity from forty to ninety, and in eighteen eighty six twenty acres of additional land were purchased, and two years later the number of patients increased so

rapidly that another edition was authorized and built. On December twenty nine, fire once again reared its ugly head and claimed the life of the night watchman who discovered it. According to reports, the County Insane Asylum was damaged by a fire that started in the washroom about one o'clock. Chester Carver, the night watchman, aged sixty years, was suffocated and Superintendent A. J. Whiffen was seriously injured in trying

to save Carver. Sounds eerily reminiscent of the building before. Meanwhile, the asylum campus grew. It didn't take long for the news structure to fill. In eighteen twenty more acres were added, and thereafter the number of patients continued to increase from year to year. In nineteen o five, the County Board purchased the Tailor Farm, consisting of two hundred fifty acres, together with the buildings on the property, and arranged for the addition of more room at the institution. It farmed

its land to feed and employ the inmates. By nineteen eleven, after further expansions and the acquisition of an adjacent farm through a bond issue, it stood on three hundred nine acres and had a capacity of two hundred twenty five inmates. A name that is familiar to even the current building entered the picture on March first, nineteen ten. That is when the Whiffins stepped back from the asylum and the

r Key family stepped in. Dr Herman r Key entered the role of superintendent and his wife acted as matron at the institution. Herman ran the hospital until his death in nineteen thirty. His son, Mr Harold as Happy r Key was appointed to head the County Mental Institution in June of nineteen thirty. Between nineteen twenty five and the forty there were discussions about a land swap between the asylum and the mission House College in the town of Hermon.

The large amount of acreage was thought to impeed the westward growth of the city. Although initially excited about becoming a college town, the ideal lost momentum and then failed. About the same time, another blow was dealt to the institution. A former resident of the asylum spoke out about insufficient food during his stay. The accusations were refuted and proven falls, but the facility ended up closing to patients in nineteen forty.

When the facility closed, a new facility had been built at five Corners in the town of Lima, which the Archies continued to oversee. Before we get to the new facility, there's one more bit of interesting history attached to this one. In the spring of nineteen forty two, when things looked especially grim for Allies, it was rumored that Adolf Hitler planned an air drop of weapons to his soldiers held

prisoner at detention camps in England. That very real fear led to the United States agreeing to take charge of prisoners captured by the Brits. After nineteen forty two, thousands of prisoners of war were brought to the United States and housed for the duration of World War Two. The old abandoned Sheboygan County Asylum had been selected to house the POWs. While it could easily accommodate the expected five hundred fifty prisoners, the maximum number housed in the three

story brick building never exceeded four hundred fifty. The prisoners were accommodated in the asylum itself. By nineteen forty five, there were disastrous labor shortages in the United States, and because of its tremendous agricultural needs, Wisconsin would have suffered greatly had it not been for the Pow labor program. Camps were located close to farm fields that needed working

or factories in need of a labor force. The POWs were not required to work, but boredom and the ability to earn money or coupons for the canteen motivated them to volunteer for almost any job available. Prisoners were paid an equivalent of eighty cents per day, not in cash, but in canteen coupons, which they could spend for cigarettes, candy,

and beer. When the war ended in nineteen forty five, the POWs were free to leave, but the majority of German prisoners continued working in the United States until nineteen Finally, the dilapidated structures that were once the Sheboygan County Asylum were torn down in the nineteen sixties, and the plot has since been developed into residential neighborhoods, the Sheboygan Clinic campus, and Pick and Save grocery store. So Pick and Save if you're listening, I am happy to come investigate if

anything weird is going on there. The new hospital, then dubbed the Sheboygan County Hospital for the Insane, was built and opened by nineteen thirty nine. There was a dedication ceremony for the new facility held in early October nineteen thirty nine. While more than one thousand person's watched, County Judge F. H. Schlichting Sunday afternoon tapped mortar around the cornerstone of the new County Hospital for the Insane, now

nearing completion in the town of Lima. A copper box containing pictures, coins, several issues of the Sheboygan Press, and other items was sealed into the cornerstone by mortar wielded from Judge Slichtings Trout. The judge addressed the crowd. It is a source of great pride for all our citizens that we are here today to lay the cornerstone of another great institution. This mark is one or more mark of progress in the history of this great Sheboygan County.

This great step forward is being taken to alleviate human suffering. He continued. These fine modern buildings which are being erected here are further evidence of the progressive, constructive attitude of the people of this county. Sheboygan County never retreats. It goes steadily forward, discarding the old and taking on the new, whenever it is merited and proven to be the benefit of its people. This is from the Sheboygan Press. Schlichting explained, this is a new era. No longer do we put

people away in an insane asylum. We now commit those afflicted as understanding fellow citizens to hospitals for the treatment of mental diseases. No longer is insanity considered an affliction about which nothing can be done. Rather, we now consider it as a disease, just as is cancer, tuberculosis, or

any other physical ailment, and amenable to treatment. Right here in this hospital we are having such fine facilities for this purpose of hydrotherapy units which are recognized as essential for treatment of mental diseases, but which are not now and never have been in our institution. Full hospital facilities, including operating rooms and the like, will be a part of this building, and provisions are being made for a

full time trained nurse. The nineteen forty construction covers over two hundred thousand square feet assists of tunnels runs underneath it. This new facility brought many features to patients, including a recreation room, dental office, cafeteria, and courtyard. It was also touted that the new building was being constructed so that each and every room would have sunlight at some point

during the day. For almost a decade, between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy eight, the facility became an acute care service for the mentally ill, and for some of that time also offered rehabilitation services for various addictions. After nineteen seventy eight, county officials discontinued the mentally ill services and the facility became a home for the developmentally disabled

and chronically ill. Between nineteen eighty eight and two thousand two, the facility slowly closed down and transferred patients as it went. As of two The Sheboygan County Asylum still stands, but is now privately owned and mostly closed to the public. It's widely alleged that the medical building is haunted, partly because it is so often confused with the original asylums. But while yes, the health care center did not have any fires or German POWs on site, it has seen

its fair share of death and tragedy. Before I go into this, it's important to note that local residents were hugely supportive of this facility. It was home to many of their loved ones who could not go elsewhere. I have interviewed as staff members, and it is widely looked at as a positive place with no history of abuse or neglect. But the nature of the hospital itself means that yes, many people died on site, hundreds of them actually,

many of natural causes old age or terminal illness. One of the rumors that persists is that multiple nurses took their own lives in the structure. I was able to find record of two staff members who died by suicide on site. One was a janitor who died of a self inflicted gunshot wound in nineteen sixty five. The other was a woman who in nineteen sixty seven suffocated herself by putting a plastic bag over her head, and she

was later found in her bed by co workers. Sadly, being a mental health facility, there were also occasional suicides within the patient population. In nineteen sixty three, a patient hanged herself from a window handle in her room, and in nineteen seventy one, in full view of other patients looking out their windows, a patient jumped from a water tower while trying to be talked down by multiple employees. The gentleman had been in the care of the institution

for thirty seven years. Now keep in mind these are only the debts I could find record of in newspapers. It stands to reason there were many not made public. As far as paranormal activity goes, reports are rampant. Visitors report a tall entity in the tunnels, They hear footsteps in the halls, and multiple shadow figures are seen in

the corridors. Old bangs and slams come from areas where there are no doors to slam, and guests report being touched or having their hair pold, and it's not uncommon to hear screams or talking coming from empty halls and rooms as evidence. In the beginning of this episode, I can definitely vouch for these slamming phenomenon. To talk about the paranormal activity on site and what the future holds for the Sheboygan County Asylum, we will be talking to

Craig Nearing. He is the founder of Fox Valley ghost Hunters and investigates the hospital regularly. He's got some interesting insight and some wild experiences to share, so that is coming up next. I am sitting here with Craig Nearing, who is the founder of Fox Valley ghost Hunters, and he is very closely affiliated with the asylum it's health.

What I have not mentioned yet is the fact that the asylum is actually featured on season six of Kindred Spirits, So depending on when you're listening, it has not aired as of this recording, but it is the season six finale of Kindred Spirits. So Craig is our client on the show, so we got to know each other that way, and he's just a wealth of information as far as the asylum itself and the activity that goes on there. So welcome Craig, Thank you for having me. Of course,

happy to have you. It's been a few months since I visited. I don't want to give away too many spoilers as far as the episode goes, just in case people haven't seen it yet, but I would say that our experiences at the Asylum and kind of our outcome there, we're very different from what we've seen in the past, and I think a large part of that was that it was a location that was just so focused on healing and fixing and kind of a had of its time really when it opened, as far as seeing you know,

mental health as being something that was treatable and not something to just lock someone away for forever. So that being said, what got you so closely involved in the asylum itself, Well, it was a place that most of my paramormal team always wanted to visit or get involved in, and it was very hard to get into. The owner didn't allow other teams or anybody to ever come out

and investigate there. And it just so happened that the owner knows my brother, and my brother is a really good businessman, and he says, anybody that's in the business like that, he goes, I'd love to talk to their brother. So that was kind of the starting point for giving stepping foot into the asylum and being able to investigate there. Yeah. I do find that some of these relationships with property

owners and things, it's it's very organic. There's a lot of these buildings that we see and we want to get in there so badly because we know the history and we know rumors of it being haunted. And many times it's just about kind of meeting the right person or you know, fostering up friendship or something along those lines is how it eventually happens. And we did meet him and he seemed very open at this point, so

well done on that. Yeah, thank you. He's an interesting individual, because I mean, anybody who purchases a building like that has to be an interesting person, I would say, and he is. He seems like he's a collector. He's got a lot of antiques in there. Um, he's renovating certain areas of it. He's got very big plans for it, which I think is really cool. But with all that going on, do you think that that kind of does

anything to the activity. I would think so anybody that would bring antiques or you know, old items in there, even things related to hospitals and asylums and stuff like that would definitely have things that could be attached to that stuff even coming in. Yeah, and I felt like while we you know, we really did investigate quite a bit there, and I could have done on an entire other episode on just the items themselves, because there are a lot of historic artifacts in there. But that being said,

everyone it is under lock and key. That places very heavily surveillanced, surveilled, whatever the word would be, and there are people on site, so it is tempting. I think these big old buildings, I think people assume there's no one there, but in this case there are people very much there and cameras everywhere, so be aware of that kind of just getting into the activity. Aside from even all of the items that are there. If you visit

the asylum, what can you expect to experience? Would you say, Like I tell people, when we don't pay our ghosts, they're not on the payroll. We're very respectful to ghosts as far as they were once people too, so we don't do any provoking. We treat them like you would treat a normal human being with respect. But people coming into the asylum for tours and events and us in general, we've had our hair pulled. I've had things touched me

on the shoulder, disembodied voices. A lot of times you'll hear a little girl that likes to sing in the hallway. Sometimes you'll even hear her humming. Dark shadows that moved between the doorways and stuff, especially if you're looking down some of the long corridors and always with the patients rooms, you can sometimes see the like shadows pop in and out, or even see a possibility of a head that pops out of a room to speak around the corner. Many of our guests I've seen that, Yeah, And I mean

I found in particular kind of that basement area. We had some very crazy experiences there, but that was the area for me that seemed the most active. It's kind of where you go down to where the org once wasn't you go around the corner and up this hallway to where the chapel is and everything is that kind of the norm. Is that usually kind of the most active place for people. Yeah, it seems to be a lot of the hotspots seem to be in the basement.

A lot of running and screaming with guests down there too. Even in the tunnels. It's just you get some really cold spots that just like come out of nowhere, and it's a warm summer day and you can definitely seem like something is definitely around you at the time, and it's footsteps down there and a lot of interesting things

in the basement. This is something I don't really talk about that often because it's slightly embarrassing, but you know, sometimes when we are doing these kind of investigations in larger locations. You know, years ago, when I was on the show Ghost Hunters, there were six or seven of us at a time setting up equipment, and now it's just Adam and me on Kindred Spirits doing the equipment portion, which I don't think we really thought out, you know.

But that being said, I do find, you know, sometimes I have to venture off on my own to go get like a camera or you know, a piece of equipment we left, and there was a point where I did have to go down into that basement by myself, and there's this whole other like tunnel section. There's there's

many tunnels, and I'm already terrified of tunnels. I hate being underground, and so I do remember walking through that tunnel at some point alone when I do that, and I start feeling anxious or aunt say, or you know, I get that kind of feeling like I'm not alone. I always whistle because I feel like nothing bad can happen if you're whistling, right. But I was whistling through that tunnel and I walked through and I was by myself, just walking, and I do think this has happened on

the show as well. But the lights started turning on and off and I'm down there all by myself, and I think if I had not been faced with situation is like this many times over the years, Like if I was kind of like a new but newbie, I probably would have run screaming out of that building. Yeah, that lights an issue. It happened to me once too, and I talked to the owner bout and he's like, well, it's never done that before, so it's weird to happen

once in the lobby. And then they also happened in the tunnel where this one light would like flicker and it was just a weird the way it flickered, and it wasn't some special bulb or anything. It was a

normal bulb. But the owner said, yeah, that don't normally happen. Well, that's the thing too, is you know, it kind of coincided with me feeling like maybe I wasn't alone, which that could have just been my own paranoia, but that was one of those moments where I was like, jeez, if if under normal circumstances, I would probably have just like run out of here, but then I would have had to answer to Adam for like the rest of

my life. So so now one of the things that's kind of hard when you're researching the asylum is like, so you call it the asylum because its original roots were the Sheboygan County Asylum. Now it's had like three iterations at this point. When it closed, it was the Comprehensive Health Care Center, which, as you and I have spoken with like not recording that if you leave that name kind of up, people think it is actually a place that you can take someone who's injured because they

don't realize that it's closed. But I guess what I'm getting at is that going through trying to research was very difficult. I remember when we were filming there and I was researching, trying to go back through records because there are three different versions of basically the same place. A lot of that history and lore kind of gets crossed over and you know, mistaken for happening in that building. You know, things like the German POWs or the fires

or anything like that. Has that ever posed a problem during your investigations or when people come in. Do you have to kind of correct investigators sometimes on the actual history. Yeah. In fact, a lot of helpers, a lot of them are kind of in the darker, all confused about all the different things because, like you said, they carry over from one asylum to the next and everybody gets confused. The whole topic of the peel W's being over at our asylum isn't true. They were never were there. They

were at the other asylum. However, the peel Ws were busted over to our asylum to harvest the fields for the food that were sometimes used for the people that were eating in the asylum. So they're busted over to the fields, but they never actually stayed in the asylum or lived there, like it says in some of the other outputs. Even Wikipedia has so many um wrong, you know, things listed for the asylum, including that it's two thousand, seven hundred fifty feet when it's actually two d seventy

square feet, just a lot of indiscripancies. That is interesting in the sense that, you know, part of being a paranormal investigator, and I do say this a lot, is that obviously you can believe in ghosts or you cannot believe in ghosts, and that's fine, but it's really important to get the history correct, not just from the way we do our job and making sure that we're addressing the correct people, but for like respect issues, you know,

you just want to respectfully get things right. And I think that we are posed with this problem a lot, you know. Like I remember, I was we were investigating a theater recently and it was called the Rialto Theater. Do you know how many realto theaters there are in this country? And so I was trying to research it and go through old newspapers and things, and I could see how people could very easily kind of get their information frost. So I respect how hard that must be

kind of trying to shuffle through that. But have you learned any interesting history or stories about the building that is there now that people might not know? Um, A lot of the nurses that used to work there come through our tours, not a lot of them tell us different stories, you know, different suicides that had happened over the years. A couple that we have confirmed, one in general with the woman named Kim that committed suicide in

the nurses wing. Um. I believe she had hung herself, which is kind of a tragic story, but we did find that that one was confirmed. And there was another one that had jumped off of a waterteller I think it was like a maintenance sky or something, and that was confirmed as well. So there's a lot of people that come through, like the nurses, have stories, but you also have to basically kind of do your history there too to make sure that even because every one of

them has like a different story to what happened. Yeah, that's a tough one because I think sometimes you know, employees will come in and it's been decades obviously since they worked there. But then also they might have not directly been associated with something that they're saying happened. It might have been something that they even heard through the

grapevine at the time. And what I found interesting as I interviewed, because I interviewed a few former employees when we investigated there, and they were all very fond of the location. They didn't necessarily have you know, bad memories or there were no stories of like abuse or anything like that. It was mostly there were some sad stories. You know. There were some people that they really desperately tried to help and I and it didn't work out

for whatever reason. But I found that interesting. How often do you have former employees or even maybe even former patients come into the building. Yeah, I'm not sure about the patients. Would never actually had anybody say I was a patient there. I've seen some a couple online that's that they were there for a little while as a patient, but we never got into an actual you know interview. Probably with the nurses coming through last year and the year before. We probably had maybe a total of ten

that have come through in the past two years. And have they had any active video while they were there and wondering if the building remembers them. Yeah, I think some of them did. Some of them had an amazing time. I think that even been back like two or three times since that, and others. I think just love to see that the asylum technically, it's still in really good shape.

The owner is trying to restore a lot of the areas back to its original look, and I think just having them come in and sees that, you know, and and how it was when they were there and how it looks now, just something that they'd like to see. I think that sometimes when you do restore these locations to look the way they were before, that actually causes activity or raises the activity levels. And it's nice to have the nurses because they definitely know, you know, doing that.

What what do you think the owner's hope is. Is he wanting to open it as a museum or what do you think he wants to do with it. He had a lot of ideas where everything from like a little tiny, not necessary a mall, but they wanted to do like a coffee shop in the front section of the building where you'd walk in and just with restoring

the floors, restoring all the hardwood. Upstairs, he wanted to turn the second floor where the the owner of the hospital their family would stay at the time, you know, back when it was forties fifties. He wants to turn that into like little condole units or something or something where people can come and spend the night while on

events in town and stuff. It's interesting because when you you know you you walk through this hospital and it is like just very tiled and big hallways, and then you walk through this door and you walk into these living quarters that are gorgeous like somebody you know that that's where the owner's family lived, and like these beautiful hardwood floors. You would never know that you you look like I can't even describe it. You literally look like

you were in a Victorian house or something like. You feel that way, but you're in this little section of a massive asylum, which I find to be so interesting with that's how they did at in the time the family lived there. So the asylum ultimately closed in two thousand two. And how long have you been investigating it now? This is our third year, so we've been there a total of three years. And what do you think causes

the most activity? Like when you go in, is there anything in particular that you find that you do or say that causes things to happen? A lot of times we'll talk to the spirits there on certain floors based on what they were like drugs and alcohol, asked them if they're like uh in an a a meeting, if they're getting the help they needed, Sometimes even props are

brought in. We've actually had a few of the ghosts, even down in the tunnels, say that they liked Papst Blue Ribbon beer, so we'll bring them in a beer. They liked cigarettes, we'll bring them in cigarettes. And I also noticed that one time we tried doing we had three girls in one of our always they were singing any songs for like Christmas and gospel or inspirational songs. They were singing them in the hallways, and it seemed like the activity picked up at one they were singing.

Or we play some old tunes that maybe back in the fourties and fifties they like to hear, you seem to get more activity, noises, things that tend to come out a little bit more. I think music does instigate activity a lot, because it's kind of like scent in the sense that it just transports you back instantly to

a time. And we've had great success with that. And you know, fun fact, when we're filming, you know, when we're investigating not on camera, we can play all the music we want, but when we're filming, we have to be very careful about what we play because of licensing rights and things. But we did play music knowing that we probably wouldn't be able to play it on TV, and I'm pretty sure it did get us some results. But that's interesting, and it's actually like a very respectful

way to go about it. Unfortunately, a lot of these buildings like this, it's the inkland ation of people to go in and start yelling or provoking or making blanket assumptions about who they're speaking with and what their mind set is. And it's not as I think exciting for some people sometimes to think of it as just walking in and sitting down and having a conversation, walking in like you know, you're meeting someone for the first time. But that legitimately is how you get the most activity.

Like that is how it works the most information. I should say, you can go in guns blazing and provoke and probably get some pretty extreme activity, but is that really how people want to do that. So I'm glad that you guys are proponents of being super respectful, especially in a place like that. Yeah, it's hard to get

a lot of people on the outside. They don't come to our tours, they've never seen us, some of them never even heard of us, and then they just get that first opinion of us of all, we're being disrespect full to the people that were once at the hospital there because of their conditions and why they were there, and we're not about that. Like I said, we're very respectful to the ghosts of that past because there were people that were like you and me. They're not evil

entities or anything dwelling within an asylum. They were once people, So we treat them with respect and we don't provoke. That's the main thing, absolutely, And I think historically it's important that we kind of remember how these places existed and functioned, and I think that investigating them and digging

into the history is a big part of that. And you know, if I had someone who spent time in one of these locations, like a relative or something, I wouldn't want to think that their spirit was just there in this big, empty building and no one was trying

to help them or interact with them. So it's comforting to me to know that there are people like you and your team that go into these places just in case there's someone who needs help or someone who needs assistance, like if we are right about all this, but that someone's going in and respectfully speaking to them. But yeah, it is kind of a stigma that a lot of us paranormal investigators have to deal with, like this idea

that we're taking advantage. Now, you guys do do tours, but obviously, like we're very respectful tours, you know, So do you guys do daytime tours as well as nighttime tours or how does that all work out there? Last year we started doing historical tours in the day for people that wanted to learn the history rather than the paranormal, because a lot of more would I ask us what you do a historical tour? So last year we did

two of them. The scup coming year will probably do a couple more, so people can see it during the day and get the historical part of it rather than just the paranormal part of it. I would recommend doing both, just having been there. It's one of those places that photographs very very well if you're into that sort of thing, Like it's just the lighting is spectacular in there, and just the artifacts and it has held together very well.

Whenever we go into these super old buildings like this, it's amazing how fast they just start falling apart when no one is there to live in them, you know. But this one is in very good shape and being there even at like twilight, the lighting and so it's it's obviously very spooky, but it is it's beautiful. I love the history of it, and I think investigating there taught me a lot about the motivation of some of

these therapists and doctors and nurses. And it was kind of one of the first asylums that I investigated that I didn't have a bunch of horror stories coming out of it, because it was kind of built in the thirties and forties and they really were kind of turning a page at that point as to how they treated people with mental illness, and it was fascinating to me. Yeah, as compared to like Waverly Hills where they had those

nask the experiments on people. Yes, I mean some of the places I've investigated, like trans Alleghany, the things they did to people are just horrifying. If it's fair to say an asylum can be refreshing, this one was so tell me a little bit about how people can get in touch with you, what you guys do there, if they want to go on tours, if they want to visit, let's get people out there. If they want to see it. Yeah, definitely follow us on Fox Belly ghost Unders on Facebook.

We also have Fox Belly ghost Hunters dot Com. There's a page just especially for the Asylument's should Boygan Insane Asylum investigations and yeah, I know the names a little misleading, but we want to shy people away from visiting the local downtown hospitals. So um, that's one of the reasons

for that. Me and my lead investigator just bought a haunted school over in Glenbula, Wisconsin, and we'll be closing on that in February and eventually we'll we haven't tours there as well in the near future, so a couple of different places, and then just following us on Facebook, you'll see all the different locations and events that we have to offer, including the Bogan Asylum. That's fantastic, So I feel like I'll probably be investigating that school in

the future. Yeah, and Adams got to come. Yeah, we would love to. So well, it's been really great to talk with you. I appreciate you taking the time, and yeah, everyone listening. If you can go check out the asylum or anything Craig is working on. They are a great group and we loved working with them, so thank you so much, and hopefully we'll chat again soon about this school. Yes,

thank you. The Sheboygan County Asylum Hospital, Comprehensive health Care Center, whatever you want to call it, is undoubtedly haunted and yes, on its own, that is spooky and scary and for some fun, but it's also an important reminder of why we do our due diligence in finding out the history of such places before you walk in and start talking to its ghosts. Any empty hospital is going to look scary inside and out, but this one had such a

positive focus and reputation. You're not going to meet the ghosts of those faced with mal treatment. Rather, you're going to perhaps be speaking to someone who had very real struggles in life and may still be having them in the afterlife. I encourage anyone who investigates there to remember that and treat them accordingly, because who knows, you may just be doing more good than you realize. I'm Amy Bruney,

and this was Haunted Road. Haunted Road is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkey. The podcast is written and hosted by Amy Bruney, Executive producers include Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced Irima ill Kali and Trevor Young. Research by Taylor haggerdorn Amy Bruney and Robin Minoter. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.