15 of the eeriest abandoned hospitals and asylums around the world

For some people, the allure – even the eeriness – of abandoned places draws them to dilapidated destinations year-round. For others, visiting vacant Victorians and otherwise abandoned mansions, or scrolling through images of abandoned castles, is a yearly tradition that gets them in the Halloween spirit. And when it comes to spooky structures, it doesn’t get much more creepy than abandoned hospitals and asylums.

Hospitals are vacated and left to decay for a variety of reasons – maybe a larger location is needed, buildings have been damaged and repairs are too costly, or the disease the hospital was created to treat has been eradicated. Similarly, most of the psychiatric hospitals constructed in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries – previously known as ‘mental asylums’ – no longer exist. Their doors were closed in the second half of the 20th century, following the development of medications used to treat mental illness and the shift away from permanent institutionalisation and toward a community-based model of care.

But regardless of why their hallways went dark, there’s something unsettling about these empty medical facilities. Even if you wanted to visit them, most are closed to the public. So we’ve done the next best thing and rounded up photos of some of the most chilling abandoned hospitals and asylums in the world.

Location: Hong Kong

This eerie, now-abandoned hospital in Hong Kong’s Western District, known today as the Old Mental Hospital, has had several lives. Completed in 1892, the L-shaped building was originally constructed as quarters for the medical staff of the Government Civil Hospital. The building’s rusticated granite blocks, wide verandah and decorative pinnacles and parapets belied its next life as a psychiatric ward for the hospital’s female patients, which it was until 1961, when the Castle Peak Hospital opened. For the next 10 years, the Old Mental Hospital was used as a psychiatric outpatient treatment centre, and in 1998, work began to convert it into the Sai Ying Pun Community Complex. Though most of the complex is new, the original granite facade remains, and it was declared a monument in 2015.

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Location: Washington, DC, USA

The first public health hospital in the US capital – the Washington Infirmary – was founded in 1806 as a place to care for the city’s ‘poor, disabled and infirm persons.’ Because of its role as not only a hospital but also a workhouse and poorhouse, it was renamed the Washington Asylum, and in 1846, it moved to a larger site that would become its permanent home. Over the years, the asylum was used as a smallpox hospital, quarantine station, disinfection plant and crematory. In 1922, the city constructed a new health-care facility, Gallinger Municipal Hospital, which was renamed District of Columbia General Hospital in 1953. Following the hospital’s closure in 2001, the hospital – known as DC General – was used as a shelter for unhoused families until its closure in 2018.

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Location: West Virginia, USA

One of the most popular abandoned asylums to visit in the United States – also known as the Weston State Hospital and, ominously, the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane – the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was constructed between 1858 and 1881. It’s often touted as the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America and the second-largest in the world, after the Kremlin. But regardless of its ranking, the hospital is enormous, comprising nine acres of floor space under three-and-a-half acres of roof.

Like most psychiatric hospitals of the era, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was intended to provide high-quality mental-health care in a state-of-the-art facility. But by the 1950s, it was overcrowded – housing roughly 2400 patients in a building designed to hold 250 – and conditions deteriorated until it closed its doors in 1994. Given that its cavernous halls are now open for tours and paranormal investigations, it’s no surprise that there are plenty of rumours related to the asylum.

Location: Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales

Built between 1844 and 1848, the North Wales Hospital opened as a facility for Welsh-speaking people living with mental illness. Despite three expansions, the hospital was consistently overcrowded, reaching its peak population of more than 1500 patients in 1948. Changes in the treatment of mental illness – especially the use of medication – left patient numbers dwindling, and the hospital announced its closure in 1987.

Unfortunately, the North Wales Hospital has been abandoned since it closed in 1995, and years of neglect, vandalism and theft have left it dilapidated. The local government hopes to restore the structures, given that the hospital is considered ‘an exceptionally fine and pioneering example of early Victorian asylum architecture.’ For now, the abandoned buildings and grounds are closed to the public.

Location: Poveglia Island, Italy

Located in the Venetian Lagoon, Poveglia Island is a quick boat ride from St Mark’s Square. But unlike that crowded tourist spot, it’s eerily empty. Thanks to its dark history, Poveglia has a reputation for being one of the most haunted places in Europe, making it a frequent stop for paranormal investigators. Its ties to illness go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the island was used as a quarantine station for ships sailing into the Port of Venice.

In 1922, Poveglia’s abandoned hospitals and other structures were converted into an asylum. A nursing home was the final medical facility to open on the island, and in 1968, the last to close. Poveglia has been uninhabited since and is not open to the public. But while many of the rumours and ghost stories associated with the island have been proven false, there are still some true urban legends out there.

Location: New York/New Jersey, USA

On the south side of Ellis Island – across from the main building containing the Great Hall and what’s now an immigration museum – a hospital sat empty for more than 60 years. From 1902 through 1930, the sprawling, 29-building complex was the largest US Public Health Service institution. By the time it closed in 1951, roughly 1.2 million of the 12 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island were treated in the state-of-the-art facility.

But unlike many abandoned hospitals, this one has been welcoming visitors since 2015. That’s when the non-profit Save Ellis Island first began offering hard-hat tours of the derelict hospital buildings – including the infectious and contagious disease ward, the kitchen, staff housing, the morgue and the laundry building where more than 3000 pieces of laundry were once washed and sanitised daily. Proceeds from the tours go toward the continuing preservation and restoration of the complex.

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Location: Beelitz, Germany

Some abandoned hospitals are creepy because of the way nature has taken over the formerly sanitised halls and once-state-of-the-art medical equipment, but Germany’s Beelitz Heilstätten is infamous for other reasons. The complex was built in 1898, in a forest about 48 kilometres outside the growing metropolis of Berlin, to treat city residents with tuberculosis. As Berlin became increasingly crowded, so did Beelitz Heilstätten. In 1928, the sanatorium expanded to accommodate 1300 patients, with new buildings including a surgical hospital, a laundry and a shopping arcade with a cobbler, stationer, soap workshop, bakery and tailor.

During World War I, Beelitz Heilstätten was converted into a military hospital, where patients sent to recuperate after illness or injury included a young soldier from Austria named Adolf Hitler. It remained in Germany’s hands throughout World War II, until the Red Army took over the site in 1945. From 1945 through 1994, Beelitz Heilstätten was the largest Soviet military hospital outside the USSR.

The final years at Beelitz Heilstätten weren’t exactly peaceful. Between 1989 and 1991, a serial killer murdered five women and a baby on the grounds. And in December 1990, Erich Honecker – the deposed leader of East Germany – and his wife took refuge there. The Soviet Army withdrew in 1994, and the hospital complex has sat eerily empty since.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Fans of Brutalist architecture may be aware of the massive Khovrino hospital complex in northern Moscow. Construction of the medical facility, aka ‘the Umbrella,’ began in 1980 but encountered a variety of problems, causing a five-year stall in progress. Though construction picked up again, the project was abandoned in 1992 due to a lack of funding, and it became a playground for everyone from urban explorers to graffiti artists to local occultists, who the Moscow Times reports were rumoured to use the hospital for meetings. The fact that from above, the complex resembled a biological hazard sign didn’t help – nor did reports that several people died falling from the 11-storey structure. The somewhat gloomy complex was demolished in 2018, making way for a new apartment building.

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Location: Morisset, New South Wales, Australia

By the early 1900s, the two psychiatric asylums in Sydney, Australia, were beyond capacity, so the government decided to open two additional facilities, including one on the shores of Lake Macquarie in the town of Morisset. Known pointedly as Morisset Hospital for the Insane when it opened in 1909, the asylum was an industrial farm colony and a closed community for men living with mental illness. In the hospital’s early years, dormitories couldn’t be built fast enough to accommodate the influx of patients, so many lived in tents and other temporary structures as construction continued into the 1920s and ’30s.

Morisset Hospital’s first female patients and staff arrived in 1934. Another major milestone in the hospital’s history took place in the 1930s with the construction of a separate walled compound called Wyee Bay Gaol, containing two maximum security wards (Wards 21 and 22).

By 1980, the population had declined and wards had closed, and the once manicured grounds were overgrown. Ward 21 closed in 1990, and since then the complex has been home to both abandoned hospital wards and buildings still used as a psychiatric facility.