Hello and

the present of the past, a weekly series about historical events, people and situations,

from the fascinating to the forgotten.

I'm the aluminati and today we're going to be talking about the Willard asylum.

Every so often I love digging into a creepy paranormal topic to break up the string of bad businesses and MLMs.

So let's get right into it and talk about why this place is known as one of the creepiest places in the United States and let's see if it

really does deserve that title. Let's get into it. The Willard asylum for the chronically Insane, as it was called, was originally supposed to be an agricultural college.

In 1853, that was what the land was acquired for, and in 1860 1860 the college opened.

However, within a few months the president as well as many teachers and students were off fighting in the Civil War.

The college was superseded by the New State University and Ithaca, so it never reopened.

According to asylum projects, soon afterward the site was earmarked for the Willard Asylum

for the Insane, which would represent a second and major step towards transferring responsibility for the care of the mentally ill to the state.

From colonial times, the care of insane persons had been a local function.

Each county operated a poor house or alms house wherein indiscriminately lodged a hodgepodge of

dependent persons, the mad, the feeble-minded, the age, the crippled, drunks, epileptics, and beggars.

The almshouses provided custody and shelter, but treatment was not in their vocabulary.

The first step towards Sait of responsibility was the opening of the

Utica lunatic asylum in 1843. Utica was established as a treatment facility. It was reserved for new acute cases and was was covered within two years. Still condemned to the almshouses were the

incurables who contrary to the unreal expectations of elderly asylum

enthusiasts were the norm among the pauper lunatic class. Dorothea Dix, among others including the underfunded county superintendents of the poor,

drew the legislature's attention to the unspeakable plight of the chronically ill.

In other words, treatment and state responsibility speakable plight of the chronically ill.

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