Saturday, April 3, 2010

An Update on the Creepy Find (Industrial School for Colored Boys)

I found a web site that gives some information about the creepy buildings I found on Google Earth (see post before last to see what I'm referring to). Compared to what I've gleaned from speaking to people who've grown up here the web site makes it sound much nicer. The fact that an "Industrial School for Colored Boys" even existed in a town that even today remains largely a white population seems strange.

One woman I know informed me that her mother worked at the Industrial School in the 1960s and '70s. She said that at one time one of the buildings was used as a "Syphilis House," in which people from other parts of the country afflicted with the disease were sent there to be quarantined. I can't find any record of that online, but I'm not surprised.

I had two people I go to school with mention to me that Walter Freeman, father of the "ice-pick lobotomy" and subject of the PBS documentary The Lobotomist, spent some time working there. Scary.

I won't be getting any pictures of the creepy old buildings. It turns out they they were demolished just a couple of years ago. It's probably best that they were.

2 comments:

Chelle said...

Whoa.

jenny said...

you didn't know about the industrial home? it was later a mental hospital. you should be able to find tons of information about it online because i know a lot of people that have personally been there to ghost hunt but also a lot of local paranormal groups.

i am so sad i never got to go there, but i had driven by there a few times before the buildings were demolished and you could see it from the road, it was probably about 50 yards back from the road directly across from the prison.

there are lots of ghost stories about the place and there is some crazy guy in point pleasant that looks like bruce campbell and i went over to his house once and he showed us video he had taken there and evp. i think the later name was just lakin state hospital.

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