Continued from Oddsconsin 19.

We’re halfway through a three-hour paranormal investigation in the Sheboygan County Comprehensive Health Care Center, colloquially known as Sheboygan County Asylum. After leaving the morgue, we take a bathroom break. There’s a porta potty in front of the building’s main entrance doors. It’s about 8:30 pm and pretty dark. I wonder if the porta potty is home to any spirits, and what kind of spirits would find that an attractive home.

After the break, we visit the third floor (drug and alcohol rehab) and the second floor (“for every kind of mental illness you can imagine”). The operating facility is off-limits. Too much water on the floor. Apparently at least one botched lobotomy was conducted here. That’s possible, since lobotomies were popular during the 1940s and 1950s (see Oddsconsin 5). 

The tour guides set up the equipment and then one of them plays a Patsy Cline song (Walkin’ after Midnight) on her phone. “Do you want to party?” she asks. “There’s no nurses here.” One of the guests agrees to put on headphones and stand at the end of the hallway. He tries to tell us what the spirits are saying, but his voice echoes so badly against the glazed tile that I can’t understand him. Several guests see shadows flitting in and out of the doorways. One of the cat balls goes off next to an empty room. A tour guide turns on her ghost box but all we get is static.

It's almost over, except for the nurses’ chambers and the living quarters. The nurses’ bedrooms are bigger than those of the patients, and they have hardwood floors. The roof is leaking badly and some of the rooms are filled with overflowing buckets full of water and wet plaster. It reminds me of oatmeal. We are told two nurses committed suicide here, one by hanging and one by suffocation. There’s a rumor that the second nurse was murdered by a doctor, although the motive isn’t stated. The nurses’ break room has an offering on the floor – cigarettes, coffee, fruit, flowers, cookies. 

The Sheboygan Press on April 21, 1967, does mention a suicide at the facility, but it was the dining room supervisor, not a nurse. The woman, aged 64, was found in her room with her head encased in a plastic bag. There’s no mention of murder. 

No photos are allowed in the living quarters. It appears someone lived here in the recent past. There’s antique furniture everywhere. Refinished doors are propped against the wall. This was the administrative wing of the building, with offices for the superintendent and staff, as well as a laboratory. Apparently, the superintendent lived on-site with his family, including his children. They must have had interesting childhoods.

On the way out, the guides field questions from the guests. They emphasize that trespassing is not allowed. Several urban explorers have been arrested in the past for entering the building. (1) And in 2021, three people were accused of stealing thousands of dollars of World War Two memorabilia from the facility. (2) 

Why would the asylum have artifacts from World War Two? Probably because the 1882 Sheboygan County Insane Asylum (the one in the City of Sheboygan) served as a German POW camp starting in 1944. (3) Due to space limitations in Britain, and fear that the Nazis were planning to liberate captured German soldiers, over 400,000 POWs were transported to the United States during the war.

As detailed in Stalag Wisconsin by Betty Cowley, there were dozens of POW camps in Wisconsin with tens of thousands of prisoners. In addition to the Camp Sheboygan (the 1882 asylum), there was also a camp on the county fairgrounds in nearby Plymouth (Camp Plymouth). With so many able-bodied men overseas, the POWs assisted with local crop harvests and canning. There are plenty of stories of fraternization between the POWs and the local German-immigrant population. 

The World War Two memorabilia probably made its way to the 1940 asylum when the 1882 asylum in Sheboygan was demolished in 1960.

We leave the asylum at 10:00 pm. I can’t help but think the real stories of the patients and staff who lived and worked at the asylum might be more haunting than the spirits we searched for. What was it like to be a patient here in the late 1940s, when the best doctors could offer were warm baths and lobotomies? We still have a lot to learn about mental illness, but at least the medical profession came to its senses about the value of surgically destroying the prefrontal cortex. What about the nurses, doctors and other staff? It must have been challenging to deal with the mentally ill day after day. Not everyone is equipped to do that. 

We’re tired and hungry. It will take us until midnight to get home. There’s a Kwik Trip nearby in Plymouth, so we stop in for a late-night snack.

Sources:

(1) Four Search for Ghosts, Find Criminal Trespassing Charges, 58 News Milwaukee, May 14, 2016. 

(2) Rory Linnane, Thousands of dollars worth of WWII memorabilia and other property taken from former Sheboygan County hospital, Sheboygan Press, Dec. 31, 2021.

(3)  Beth Dippel, In WWII, Sheboygan hosted German POWs, Sheboygan Press, April 29, 2016. 

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