South Carolina State Hospital
My special guest tonight is author William Buchheit, here to uncover the chilling history of the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, later known as the South Carolina State Hospital, founded in 1821.
For nearly two centuries, this massive institution loomed over Columbia, South Carolina, housing and treating thousands of patients—many trapped within its overcrowded and underfunded walls. At its peak in 1961, the asylum held more than 6,600 patients, far beyond its intended capacity, earning a reputation as a place of captivity, horror, and chaos. By the mid-1990s, the population dwindled to under 700, but the asylum’s dark legacy remained.
Buchheit brings this history to life through interviews, firsthand accounts, and archival research, exploring the lives of those who worked and lived inside its haunting campus. From the asylum’s origins as one of America’s earliest psychiatric hospitals to its downfall as a crumbling symbol of neglect and suffering, this story sheds light on a hidden chapter of Southern history.
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Start your free seven-day trial and unlock this episode plus hundreds more, all ad-free when you become a Mysterian on Patreon. Um, because I was losing the sun was going down and I was losing light.
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And, um, finally I, my sense of direction is terrible, but finally I got the idea to go back through my camera roll, uh, go through my pictures and I was able to kind of backtrack my steps that way.
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And I finally got out of there, but you hear so many weird sounds, man. And there's dead animals everywhere, like dead birds, dead, uh, there's dead squirrels, um,
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uh, everything in the hospital up in Western West Virginia. There's even a dead mummified cat in one of the beds.
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