Continued from Oddsconsin 18.

We’re in the tunnels of the Sheboygan County Asylum, hunting for spirits. A matrix light throws tiny green dots over the tunnel walls, to detect movement. Suddenly, the green dots flicker on and off. “Did you see that?” someone asks. 

But it’s only a bat. Everyone shrieks as the bat flutters around their heads. A tour guide mentions that bats can carry rabies. The guides offer to buy the spirits a case of beer if they talk, but there’s not much happening. We take a detour into the boiler room. There are three massive water tanks and two big diesel engines, possibly for pumping hot water to the hydrotherapy room. Nearby is a large boiler encased in brick. It must be fifteen feet high. It looks older than the building itself. The boiler was made by the Optenberg Iron Works in Sheboygan, which began operating in 1893. (1) 

The building we are touring is actually the third Sheboygan County Asylum. The first building, the Sheboygan County Hospital for the Insane (2), opened in 1876 in Winooski, once a small community about a mile south of Plymouth. There’s little left of Winooski today. Only a few residential properties remain. The hospital was small, with about 22 patients. Unfortunately, a few years after it opened, a fire destroyed the building, killing four of the patients. The superintendent of the facility also died a few months later from injuries.

A new hospital opened in 1882 in the city of Sheboygan. An 1891 Sanborn Map shows the building in pink, meaning it was of masonry construction and thus more fireproof than its predecessor. The building is labeled, “Sheboygan County Insane Asylum.” A 1903 map shows an ice house, hay pen, granary and implements shed. Cultivated fields lie to the south. The patients were expected to work, both to provide food for themselves and to generate revenue for their care. 

The asylum sat between Superior and Erie Avenues, in line with today’s 21st Street and Saint Clair Avenue. An alms house (or poor house) was nearby, on the west side of today’s 23rd Street. The facilities were shut down in 1940. Today the old asylum site is home to a small parcel of land with a pond, owned by the city, and a Wisconsin Power and Light facility. The poor house is now the parking lot of the Aurora Health Center. 

The current Sheboygan County Asylum – where we are on our tour – was actually known as the Sheboygan County Comprehensive Health Care Center. It opened in 1940 to replace the asylum in Sheboygan. The new building served as a hospital for the mentally ill, a nursing home for the elderly and a facility for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. (2) In 2002, the center was shuttered following new state policies and the relocation of services to other facilities. It has been uninhabited since that time and is now under private ownership. 

After the bat scare and the boiler room, we enter the morgue. It’s not as spooky as I’d hoped. The walls are made of concrete blocks. After the guides lay out the equipment – including a cat ball in front of each guest – they turn out the lights. They talk about a spirit who leaves bare footprints on the floor. She’s not a contented spirit, apparently, sort of like Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter, but the real thing. A few minutes later, the dead bell dings loudly. Then a cat ball lights up. “They want to speak to you!” exclaims one of the guides. Lots of questions are asked, but the spirit does not respond. Someone’s stomach rumbles. “That was me,” he says. The main tour guide reminds everyone, “If you belch or fart, call it out, so we know it’s you and not a spirit.”

Sources:

(1) Gary C. Klein, Optenburg fabricated boilers, machine bases and even wheels for the Navy in World War II, Sheboygan Press, March 28, 2024. 

(2) Tara Jones, From a devastating fire to holding German WWII POWs, the Sheboygan County asylum facilities hold a rich history, Sheboygan Sun, Oct 28, 2020.    

(Continued next week) 

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