Old Bryce

Alabama · United States · Hospital

Writing covers the walls on all three floors and in the basement. This hospital gave American psychiatric patients their legal rights, by failing them.

Bryce was Alabama's first state psychiatric hospital, and for a time in the nineteenth century it was held up as a model of humane treatment.

By 1970 it held over five thousand patients with a handful of doctors between them, and conditions had become notorious. The lawsuit that followed, brought on behalf of a patient named Ricky Wyatt, produced the ruling that established for the first time in American law that a person committed to a state institution has a constitutional right to actual treatment.

That case came out of this building.

What people report in the abandoned parts is writing on the walls, across all three floors and the basement, along with cold and sounds, and the feeling of being watched from the moment they enter.

More than a thousand patients are buried on the grounds, many under numbered markers rather than names, and the university has worked to identify them.

The site is closed and access is controlled.

FAQ

Where is Old Bryce located?

Old Bryce is in Alabama, United States.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.