Athens, Athens County, Ohio
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| Photo: Wikipedia |
On a wooded hillside overlooking Athens, Ohio, stands one of the most imposing surviving former psychiatric hospitals in America.
Today, the sprawling property is known simply as The Ridges.
Its enormous Victorian buildings rise above the surrounding landscape, their long wings stretching outward from a central administration building constructed according to a nineteenth-century philosophy that architecture itself could help heal the human mind.
For nearly 120 years, thousands of people lived, worked, suffered, recovered, and died here.
And according to generations of stories, some of them may never have completely left.
Visitors, students, employees, and paranormal investigators have associated The Ridges with unexplained footsteps, disembodied voices, shadowy figures, strange sounds, and the feeling of being watched inside buildings that once housed hundreds of psychiatric patients.
But the most famous story connected with the former asylum is not merely a ghost story.
It began with the disappearance of a real woman.
And with a stain on the floor that became one of the strangest legends in Ohio.
The history of The Ridges began after the Civil War.
In 1867, the Ohio legislature authorized construction of a new psychiatric institution for southeastern Ohio. Athens was selected as the location, and construction of the enormous hospital began the following year.
The facility was designed according to the principles of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, one of the nineteenth century's most influential advocates for the humane treatment of people with mental illness.
Kirkbride believed a psychiatric hospital should not resemble a prison.
Patients should have fresh air, sunlight, beautiful surroundings, exercise, meaningful activity, and space away from crowded cities.
The building itself was intended to become part of the treatment.
The Athens hospital reflected that philosophy.
A central administrative section was surrounded by long, staggered wings designed to provide patients with ventilation, sunlight, and views of the countryside. The grounds eventually included gardens, farmland, orchards, greenhouses, ponds, walking paths, livestock, and recreational areas.
When the Athens Lunatic Asylum opened in January 1874, it represented what was then considered a progressive approach to psychiatric care.
It had been constructed to accommodate approximately 572 patients.
It would not remain that way.
People were committed to the institution for an enormous variety of reasons.
Some suffered from conditions recognizable today as schizophrenia, severe depression, bipolar disorder, dementia, addiction, or post-traumatic stress.
Others entered with epilepsy, tuberculosis, postpartum depression, or conditions associated with aging.
Historical admission records also reflect nineteenth-century medical and social attitudes that could classify behavior or conditions very differently from modern medicine.
Over time, the institution grew.
More buildings were constructed. More land was acquired. Patients worked on the farms and grounds, helping produce much of the food needed by the hospital.
The institution became almost a community unto itself.
But the original philosophy of small-scale therapeutic care became increasingly difficult to maintain.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the hospital was shifting away from the original Moral Treatment model toward a more custodial system.
And the population continued climbing.
By the 1950s, approximately 1,800 patients were being treated at the facility—more than three times the number envisioned for the original hospital.
Psychiatric medicine was changing as well.
Patients at Athens experienced treatments that reflected the medical thinking of their respective eras.
Hydrotherapy was used.
Electroconvulsive therapy was introduced.
And during the era when psychosurgery was promoted as a treatment for severe mental illness, lobotomies were also performed.
Some treatments once considered innovative are now remembered as disturbing chapters in psychiatric history.
Others evolved into therapies that, in substantially refined forms and under very different medical standards, remain in use today.
The arrival of effective psychiatric medications in the 1950s helped change institutional care dramatically.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the national movement toward deinstitutionalization had reduced the population at Athens considerably.
Approximately 1,800 patients had once occupied the hospital.
By 1985, only about 200 remained.
But during those final decades, one patient would become permanently connected with the mythology of The Ridges.
Her name was Margaret Schilling.
In December 1978, Schilling disappeared from her ward.
A search began.
She was not found.
More than a month passed.
Then, in January 1979, her body was discovered inside an abandoned section of the hospital.
She had apparently entered an unused ward and become trapped or unable to find her way out.
She had removed her clothing and folded it nearby before dying on the floor.
The tragedy might have remained one of many sad episodes in the hospital's long history if not for what reportedly remained after her body was removed.
A stain.
The outline left on the floor appeared disturbingly similar to the shape of a human body.
Attempts were reportedly made to clean it.
The image remained.
Over the years, the stain became one of the most famous features associated with the former asylum.
Stories grew around it.
Some claimed that Schilling's spirit continued to occupy the building.
People reported unusual sounds and sensations near the area where she died.
Others claimed to see a female figure inside the old hospital or looking through its windows.
The outline on the floor became inseparable from the haunting legend of The Ridges.
There are possible natural explanations for the stain.
A body left undiscovered for weeks undergoes significant decomposition. Fluids and chemical changes can permanently affect porous materials and finishes beneath it.
That explanation does nothing to make Margaret Schilling's story less disturbing.
Nor does it prove that later paranormal experiences attributed to her were supernatural.
It simply separates a documented human tragedy from the mythology that developed around it.
And Margaret is far from the only person whose death remains connected to the grounds.
The former asylum contains three cemeteries.
More than 1,900 patients who died at the institution and whose remains were not claimed by relatives were buried there.
For many years, their graves were identified not by names but by small numbered markers.
Time was not kind to the cemeteries.
Markers were displaced, damaged, buried, or lost beneath vegetation.
In more recent years, volunteers and organizations have worked to restore the burial grounds and return names and identities to people who had effectively become numbers.
The cemeteries add another dimension to the paranormal reputation of The Ridges.
Visitors have described strange sounds, unexplained movement, and an oppressive feeling among the graves.
But the cemeteries are first and foremost burial places.
Whatever anyone believes about ghosts, the people buried there were real.
Their graves deserve the same respect as those in any other cemetery.
Stories of unexplained activity are not confined to the burial grounds.
Across the old hospital complex, people have reported hearing footsteps in empty hallways and voices coming from unoccupied rooms.
Doors have reportedly opened or closed without an obvious cause.
Shadow-like figures have been described moving through corridors.
Some witnesses have reported seeing figures through windows in sections of buildings believed to be empty.
Others describe sudden cold spots or the unmistakable sensation that another person is standing nearby when no one can be seen.
The sheer scale of The Ridges undoubtedly contributes to its reputation.
This is not a single abandoned house with a creaking staircase.
The property covers hundreds of acres.
Its historic hospital complex contains vast corridors, staircases, wards, utility spaces, former patient rooms, offices, and institutional spaces accumulated through more than a century of expansion.
Old buildings also produce old-building noises.
Heating and ventilation systems carry sound.
Wood, plaster, pipes, masonry, and metal respond to changing temperatures.
Animals move through surrounding wooded areas.
Voices and footsteps can travel surprising distances through enormous institutional structures.
And anyone entering a former psychiatric hospital already famous for hauntings is likely to pay considerably more attention to every unexplained noise.
Yet even without a single ghost story, The Ridges would remain haunting.
Its history contains thousands of individual lives.
Some patients stayed briefly and returned home.
Others spent years or decades there.
Some experienced treatments that helped them.
Others lived through periods when psychiatric medicine understood far less about the conditions it was attempting to treat.
And some died there with no family willing or able to claim them.
The hospital finally ceased operating at The Ridges in 1993, when the remaining patients were transferred to a newer facility.
Ohio University took stewardship of the property.
Instead of demolishing the massive historic complex, the university began finding new purposes for portions of it.
Today, The Ridges is no longer an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
Several buildings have been renovated and reused for university programs, research, cultural facilities, classrooms, and offices.
The former central administration building now houses the Kennedy Museum of Art.
The surrounding grounds contain walking trails, preserved landscapes, historic structures, and the old asylum cemeteries.
Other portions of the enormous complex remain restricted or await future rehabilitation.
That means visitors should not attempt to enter closed buildings simply because they have seen them featured in paranormal stories.
The Ridges belongs to Ohio University, and posted restrictions should be respected.
Perhaps that is ultimately what makes The Ridges more compelling than the exaggerated asylum legends that surround so many abandoned institutions.
It does not need invented torture chambers or fictional murderous doctors.
Its documented history is powerful enough.
A nineteenth-century experiment in humane psychiatric care became an overcrowded twentieth-century institution, survived enormous changes in medicine, closed after nearly 120 years, and left behind buildings, cemeteries, records, memories, and stories belonging to thousands of people.
And in one quiet section of the old hospital, a woman named Margaret Schilling disappeared in the winter of 1978.
Weeks later, she was found.
But the outline left behind became part of the building.
And nearly half a century later, her story remains part of The Ridges. 🌹
Visitor Information:
The Ridges
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
Website: https://www.ohio.edu/ridges
The Ridges is owned by Ohio University and is no longer a psychiatric hospital. Portions of the historic complex have been restored for university, cultural, and educational use, including the Kennedy Museum of Art. The grounds and designated trails may be visited, but some buildings and areas are closed or restricted. Visitors should obey all posted signs, respect the asylum cemeteries, and never enter secured or abandoned structures without authorization. Current access information should be checked through Ohio University before visiting.
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