The Lakin Industrial Home for Colored Boys
West Virginia · United States · School
A reform school for Black children across the river from Point Pleasant, and what stayed in the building.
Across the Ohio River from Point Pleasant, in Mason County, West Virginia, stood the West Virginia Industrial Home for Colored Boys at Lakin. It opened in the early twentieth century under segregation, one of a pair of institutions that separated Black children from white ones, and its purpose was the reform of boys sent there by the courts. Lakin also held a segregated state hospital nearby. What went on in institutions of this kind is now reasonably well documented, and it is not a mystery why the buildings are remembered the way they are.
The main house is large, three storeys, and people describe the change on entering rather than anything they see. Cold pockets that move. The certainty of not being alone. On the second floor, a heavy smell that visitors reach for the words smoke and death to describe. Footsteps follow people up and down the stairs at their own pace, doors close in rooms nobody has entered, and several accounts include being touched.
A bluish haze is reported around the property, low and slow moving, seen in daylight as often as at night. Point Pleasant itself is better known for the Mothman and for the Silver Bridge, but Lakin is the older wound. The buildings are not open and much of the site is posted.
FAQ
Where is The Lakin Industrial Home for Colored Boys located?
The Lakin Industrial Home for Colored Boys is in West Virginia, United States.
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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.
Image: Charles Johnson, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons