Central State Hospital

Georgia lawmakers authorized a "Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum" in 1837, and it opened in Milledgeville in 1842. It grew into Central State Hospital, about 200 buildings on 2,000 acres that held as many as 13,000 patients and was widely called the largest mental institution in the world. By the 1950s there was roughly one staff member for every 100 patients, and treatments included lobotomies, insulin shock and electroshock therapy. Atlanta Magazine reports that a 1959 Atlanta Constitution investigation by Jack Nelson, which won a Pulitzer Prize, found only 48 doctors and no psychiatrists on staff. The hospital stopped admitting new patients in 2010, and the white-domed Powell Building and many others stand boarded up.

About 25,000 patients are buried on the grounds. In Cedar Lane Cemetery, roughly 2,000 cast-iron markers carry numbers instead of names, and advocacy groups are working to identify the people beneath them.

Georgia travel and ghost writers say visitors and staff have long reported disembodied voices, unexplained footsteps, cold spots and apparitions in the halls, and an older listing for the site describes strange noises and the figure of a man standing in a hallway. The Haunting History Tour, run by Georgia's Old Capital Heritage Center and Seeking Asylum LLC on select October evenings, is a walking tour of the hospital's history and its past treatment of mental illness that stays outside the buildings.