Dorothea Dix Hospital

Have you ever wondered about the souls of patients who died at Dorothea Dix? Or wondered if it was or was not haunted? Perhaps you have a family member who has been there, or who is there now pending the big move. Maybe you need to know the names of the people who were placed in the Dorothea Dix Cemetery. Whatever your reason for reading this article, I hope you will find your answers here. I will be addressing the history, haunted and not, of this very old hospital for the mentally handicapped.

Attitudes toward the mentally ill were very different in the 1800s than they are today. The actual process of thought for a "lunatic asylum" started in 1825 when a resolution was accepted to request information required to plan for a building. Naught happened, however. Again, around 1838 or 1839, minds were stimulated to action, but nothing happened.

In 1844, Governor Morehead pushed to build an institution for the "unfortunate insane, blind and deaf", but the issue somehow stood still with Delaware and North Carolina remaining the two states of the original 13 that did not have housing facilities for the "insane". In December of 1848, the bill which began the funding process to build a state hospital for the mentally ill was finally passed.

Originally, the hospital was called the "Insane Hospital", but was named "Dix Hill". The hospital was named after Dorothea Dix's grandfather, Dr. Elijah Dix. Dorothea was the most instrumental person in the founding of the institution, but she refused to have it named after herself.

A site was chosen outside of Raleigh about a mile west of the city on a hill near Rocky Branch. Raleigh was not as large as it is today. The site had a view of the city that was believed to be "perfectly healthy". 182 acres were purchased from Maria Hunter Hall and Sylvester Smith. The two tracts of land were originally a plantation owned by Col. Theophilus Hunter in the late 1700s.

The first structure to be built in 1851 had two wings with a large center. It was designed by Alexander T. Davis in a Romanesque style. Soon two additional buildings were added. One was for a steam boiler, gas manufacture and laundry. The other building was a bakery and kitchen. It had apartments above it for the staff. Apartments for the main building staff were on the second floor of the original structure.

In 1856, a patient suffering from "suicidal mania" was the first to be admitted. In the first nine months, 90 patients were placed in the hospital.

In the 1800s, the prevailing thought was social conditions caused mental illness. Madness cost a person dearly. "The insane" were removed from their homes, family, friends and community and placed in the "the Insane Hospital". Most, if not all of the patients, never left during this period. They died on the premises.

A hospital farm was established to feed the patients and staff. Dix Hill became a closed, self-sufficient community with few people leaving and mostly admissions coming in.

Just prior to the Civil War in 1859, the cemetery was started on the asylum grounds and the first body was laid to rest. Marble posts were placed at each end of the cemetery and a chain passed along the line of graves. A tag was hung above the graves with the name of the person who had died. A carpenter who worked at the hospital made the coffins of wood. For those looking for information on the gravesites at Dorothea Dix Hospital, please visit rootsweb.com which has as much information as is available on the graves there. For those wishing to honor their beloved, I suggest visiting findagrave.com.

There are 900 graves at Dorothea Dix cemetery. Approximately 250 of them were badly damaged and may still be unmarked. Trucks drove over grave plots to arrive at the landfill next door. The weight collapsed many graves, breaking some wooden coffins and leaving depressions in the ground. As a result, boundaries of graves have been hard to identify. Until 1991, the only gravesites with tombstones were of those persons whose family could purchase or provide them. For close to a century, only stamped numbers and a cross marked most of the graves.

Some of the older stones in the cemetery were unreadable or badly damaged. They were constructed into a memorial wall. For more information on the restoration of the cemetery and the Memorial Wall, please read the Keynote Address given by Chief Justice Burley B. Mitchell, Jr., Supreme Court of NorthCarolina. Some history and a dedication of the cemetery are included in the address. The dedication and address can be found at www.nccourts.org/News/Documents/dix.html.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Dorothea Dix hospital had 193 patients. In the spring of 1865, the Union Army occupied Raleigh and the soldiers camped on the hospital grounds. Every effort was made to keep the mental hospital running smoothly, but the difficulties presented themselves. The army tore down fences and burned them for firewood, and confiscated grain and livestock for food. It can be left to speculation as to other damages and offenses against the hospital and the patients.

In the early 1900s, patients, nurses and male attendants gathered two times a week to dance and listen to music. The music had such a positive affect on the patients that the superintendent of the hospital claimed in a report that music should be considered as a potential remedy for the insane. Was it the music, the release or the social contact?

Not long after this remedy was practiced, the flu epidemic struck Dorothea Dix. In 1918, as the flu ravaged the patients, symptoms of delirium, agitation, violence, and fear of persecution began to present more insanity. One patient was reported to have turned his bed over on himself and moved backwards up the hall on his back. The patient died shortly thereafter. Before the epidemic ended, 18 patients and 2 staff members died. Hauntings are reported that are somewhat backed up by these details.

Throughout the land, corpses were uncollected in homes and on the streets. The hospitals and morgues were overrun with the unrefrigerated dead.

Dorothea Dix hospital was especially affected during the depression of the 1930s because it had the only refrigerated morgue at the time. Bodies of the dead were housed there until they could be claimed.

With these facts in mind, do you think there are souls that haunt the grounds and buildings of Dorothea Dix Hospital?

When the unwanted, the poor, the forgotten, the sick, the imprisoned, and the deranged in our societies are mistreated, the souls of their ancient history may haunt the living. Their message rings in their whispers and screams: "Remember me."