Most Haunted Places in America: Essex County Hospital

The Essex County Hospital is an infamous mental institution located in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The eerie location was once beautiful and majestic, but the past century has shrouded the massive series of facilities with ghostly mysteries and paranormal phenomenon.

In 1896, the city of Newark New Jersey purchased a large landmass in Cedar Grove, choosing this location to house the new Overbrook mental institution (later termed Essex County Hospital). Over the next several years, foundation after foundation was erected to house the mentally ill and criminally insane.

The trouble started in in 1917 when the hospital’s boiler systems stopped working properly. According to historical records, 24 people died over the next 20 days, some having froze to death in the very beds they slept. There were also 32 reported cases of frostbite within the same time frame.

During the Great Depression, when so many Americans found themselves destitute, the population levels at mental institutions like the Essex County Hospital became terribly overcrowded. Government funding was reduced due to WWII and food rationing dropped to near starvation levels.

Patients were subject to torrential conditions and often violent treatment by the staff. Electro-shock therapy, pre-frontal lobotomies, diathermy and hydrotherapy were extremely common. By the 1960′s and 70′s, anti-psychotic drugs became popularized, and the Essex County Hospital’s patient population began dropping significantly. In 1990, the building was near empty of patients.

Finally, in 2007, the Essex County Hospital was closed and the grounds converted into a county park spanning 90 acres. A number of the buildings were demolished but the main structures stand to this day. The level of paranormal activity at the Essex County Hospital is incredible, though such information comes as little surprise when historians have reported in excess of 10,000 human deaths having taken place in the mental institution since its establishment over a century ago.

The most common reports of spiritual activity include the sound of a squeaky-wheeled gurney being rolled about the halls, ghostly apparitions appearing in various locations, audible if not loud footsteps coming from locations where no living being could be found, and voices ranging from faint whispers to spine-tingling screams.

Just recently, the TAPS team from Sci-Fi’s Ghost Hunters series visited the Essex County Hospital and the results were not only immediate, but astonishing. As soon as the investigation began, unidentifiable noises began to occur. The lead investigators, Jay and Grant, went down into the tunnels below the hospital and heard the rolling gurney noises that had been described in so many reports.

The activity continued throughout the episode, catching undefined heat sources on the thermal camera, disembodied footsteps on audio devices and many other unexplained noises. A couple of the other investigators, Steve and Tango, heard strange noises and decided to set up a directional microphone on top of bi-pod. Just a few moments later, they decided to move to another area, but when they turned to retrieve the mic, it was now off the platform and laying near parallel to it on the floor. There was no video footage to explain this, either.

Just before rounding up the gear for the night, Steve and Tango had another interesting occurrence in the way of EVPs. They both climbed into adjacent morgue drawers (yes, where the dead bodies were kept!) and see if they could get any voice recordings. They heard nothing at the time, but the EVP recordings picked up what the team believed to sound like a woman’s voice saying “children” during the research-of-evidence phase.

Though much of the evidence gather during the paranormal investigation cold be chalked up to natural or man-made instances, there were simply too many unexplainable occurrences, and the Essex County Hospital was deemed most definitely haunted. Too bad it is slated for to be demolished in favor of a park.

Related posts:

1. Burlington County Prison Museum Ghosts
2. The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum Hauntings
3. Ghosts at Northern State Mental Hospital
4. The Paranormal at Metropolitan State Hospital
5. Essex County Penitentiary Hauntings