Essex County Hospital Center

The Essex County Hospital Center that once went by the name of Overbrook Asylum started out in the 1800s as a general hospital and later turned into a psychiatric center in the mid-1920s. Its campus sat in Cedar Grove with 34-buildings, many of which were used to house patients. It served as a new hospital to address the overcrowding that was occurring at Newark Hospital.

Unfortunately, it appears the hospital was destined to tragedy and the patients within it where faced with horrifying levels of neglect. In December 1917 the building’s boilers failed to operate, causing as many as 24 patients to freeze to death in their beds in the span of 20 days, according to reporting from NJ.com. Some other patients faced frostbite. Then when the hospital faced overcrowding after World War II, as many as 150 patients went missing, according to Complex reporting on the 10 Craziest Mental Asylums in America. Many patients of that time would go on to suffer neglect, abuse, and suicidal thoughts.

At the time, therapy and procedures performed at the site included hydrotherapy, electrotherapy and prefrontal lobotomies – what many today would view as torture. An estimated 10,000 patients would go on to die in the hospital, according to Ghost Stories. Then in 2007, it abruptly closed.

Today the grounds where the old Overbrook Asylum property serves as a county park while the other half of the campus continues to sit with crumbling buildings before it is razed to develop townhomes.

The history of the psychiatric center has inspired endless ghost stories and tales of terror, including that of ghost roaming the buildings.