REDDING HOUSE MENTAL HOSPITAL

Location: Alternately known as the Redding House Asylum, the Redding House Mental Hospital is located at the end of a large veranda at Camden College in Mansfield, Connecticut, a 350-acre university located at the junction of Route 32 and Route 44, five miles north of Willimantic, Connecticut. 

Description Of Place: Resembling the ruins of a two-story Southern mansion with four columns on an elevated front porch, an iron-wrought balcony over the front entranceway and a grand staircase and balcony in the front entryway, Redding House is now a derelict old structure surrounded with weeds, long grass and wild bushes growing wild and blocking the entrances. The abandoned structure includes facilities for over 350 patients and includes three surgery rooms, patient cafeteria, all-purpose areas, an in-door swimming pool, gymnasium and a crematorium on site. The wide spectrum of equipment gathering dust in the structure includes wheelchairs, gurneys, old medical files, surgical specimens, shock therapy equipment and even unclaimed cans of cremated remains in the cellar. Although security guards regularly patrol the grounds, the area is strewn with trash and cigarette butts and scorched metal bins left over from nighttime bonfires.  

Ghostly Manifestations: Why is it so many college and universities are often credited as being haunted? Most of the time, the story is pure fiction... a piece of fiction created by a bored fraternity member in order to haze new students. On the other hand, college is often known to frustrate and overwhelm young students dealing with being away from home for the first time. However, many of these tales of suicides and deaths by hazing rituals could have a kernel of truth to them.

Rising from the east end of the campus of Camden College in Mansfield, Connecticut like a huge ugly obstacle on the world's worse mini golf course, the old Redding House Mental Hospital is a surviving remnant of the years when mental illness was often hidden from society. Unfortunately, some secrets do not allow themselves to be hidden away so eloquently. Witnesses passing the structure have reported seeing the figures of people staring down from the windows and even lights flickering in windows. Students claim spirits of the former patients follow them home to their dorm rooms, and can be seen leaning over them in the monitors of their lap top computers.

"If the structure was still being used, I'm sure there would be far many more stories." Camden College alumni Emma Birckhead responds. "But the few stories that come from the hospital are from trespassers who shouldn't be in there and obviously don't want to talk about trespassing inside the place."

Even Birckhead confesses to having prowling around in the structure once or twice back when she was a student here in 2013. On the other hand, security guard Clyde Calvo who monitors the grounds doesn't have any reason to enter the dusty dark halls of the old mental hospital.

"Oh yeah..." He mentions casually. "I've caught kids racing out of there claiming they're being chased, but when I take a look see, no one is there. You'd think they'd have better things to do than wander long dusty shelves and poke through out of date files and rotten equipment, but something about the place intrigues them. I guess if I was twenty again, I'd be curious to explore those dark halls and corridors myself."

"Have you?"

"Not for all the money in China."

Unfortunately, Clyde doesn't keep the names of every student he has caught inside the old sanitarium or running out of it at peak human speed, and efforts to find current and former students that have explored the interior labyrinth have not been forthcoming. Fortunately, Emma has been willing to talk about her experience exploring the structure as well as naming a few friends who were with her.

"I attended Camden College in 2013." She begins. "At the time, my closest friends were Gabby Broderick, Dylan Richert and Kolt Hannaford, and it was not unusual to end up at the end of the campus in front of the old hospital and sit around a bonfire in one of the steel drums in the field there with around fifteen to twenty others. For some reason or another, we decided to explore the hospital. I recall that although we entered it together, I ended up upstairs passing by the old doctor's offices and Gabby, Dylan and Kolt headed down to the basement looking for the morgue. I'm not sure if I would have preferred following them because all the time I was alone I felt as if I was being watched. Call it an irrational sense of dread or hysterical paranoia, but I just couldn't escape the feeling. It actually stayed with me for months afterward."

Following that night, Emma confesses she had trouble sleeping nights and the continuing sensation of something having followed her from the hospital to her dorm. On at least one occasion, she turned off her computer and was startled by the presence of a man hovering over her in the darkened screen. Even Gabby, her room mate, was starting to act increasingly neurotic, a pattern of behavior that lasted for almost a week or two. 

While Alex isn't aware of anyone who has prowled through the Redding House Asylum looking for the ghosts, she is aware of several students who had similar problems in the dorms which she was believed was connected to the old edifice. Allyson White, a schoolmate, reportedly went screaming out of the student laundry room because she was touched by something she couldn't see. Another girl named Carolyn Montgomery was returning from class, and as she was pushing the door into her dorm room, something on the other side stopped it, and pushed the door closed against her. Thinking it was her roommate messing around, Carolyn tried again, and discovered the room was empty.

Allyson is friends with two more girls, Christine Moorehead and Blythe Rogers, both of whom have had experiences, although Emma hasn't been privy to the details of what they have seen or heard.  

In search of more stories from Redding, CGS reached out to urban explorer and amateur ghost hunter Alex Wraith who has spent much of his life exploring deserted and abandoned locations around New York City. Although he has never personally explored Redding himself, he linked the group up with photographer Teddy Murphy, whose books include photography from within Danvers Mental Hospital, Athens Mental Hospital, Roosevelt Mental Hospital, Pennhurst Asylum, Taunton State Hospital and Vannacutt Sanitarium.

"Are you guys poking around in Redding?" Murphy asks. "You know that place is haunted, right?" By his own accounts, he has heard voices, whispering, footsteps and the sounds of creaking like wheelchairs being rolled around on the top floor. Clyde Calvo has chased him off campus at least ten times from prowling around the old edifice. 

"There's something definitely off around the place." He continues. "In an ideal setting, the places I visit and photograph are usually one with nature, but at places like Redding and Vannacutt, I can't help but get the feeling I'm being watched. I'm always looking over my head there, and I'm always getting the feeling things are being moved on me. I mean, I once recall pushing a chair out of my way when I ascended the stairway, but on my way back it seems as if the chair was moved over against the railing. I've heard doors slammed suddenly in the middle of intense quiet. I've had the sensation of someone hanging over my shoulder as I was taking a shot, but no one's there. I've been spooked to open doors because some how.... some how.... I know someone will be standing there when I open it."