Saturday Adventures: Letchworth Vllage

Indy-Anna Bones is an adventurer, explorer, street art expert, cryptozoologist, and friend to woodchucks.

On a cold Spring day, Indy-Anna took a ride up the Palisades Parkway.

Ghosts of Letchworth Village

Thiells, NY

She stopped at a small visitor center on the border between New York and New Jersey.

Here she found a fantastic From there view of the cliffs lining the Hudson River overlooking New York City.

Her goal was north though, through the twisting, forested roads, to Rockland County, and the little Hamlet of Theills.

There she found the ruins of Letchworth Village, which opened in 1911 as an institution for "segregation of the epileptic and feeble-minded."

The 2,400 acre campus once consisted of more than 130 buildings, but the few that remain are in poor condition. This was an ominous place with a dark and scandalous history.

Several acres remain open for recreation. Indy-Anna passed joggers and dog walkers all along her walk through the grounds.

In it's first decade of operation, Letchworth was already notorious for the neglect and cruel treatment of the patients.

Many residents were children, some as young as five. Indy-Anna hoped to contact them, and ease their troubled state of mind.

Patients were divided into three groups. "Morons" and "Imbeciles" could be taught to work, but "Idiots" were considered beyond reach, and were turned away from the facility.

In the 1950's, the reputation of Letchworth was restored after successful tests of a polio vaccination.

Still, the facility was massively overcrowded with more than 4,000 patients in deplorable conditions.

Indy-Anna heard ghosts whispering around her walking those sad grounds past broken windows, burned buildings, and boarded doors.

At least one person took a realistic view to the place.

In a wide field, Indy-Anna came across a mangled grate.

Nearby was the hole it once covered.

It reminded her of a dream, but when she looked inside, it did not lead to another dimension.

For generations Letchworth was a fashionable place to abandon mentally challenged family members, who were not even bequeathed a name on their gravestones.

In 1972, Letchworth was included in Geraldo Rivera's investigation on treatment of mental patients in New York and California.

He found naked patients in overcrowded conditions. Letchworth Village was not closed until 1996.

Between buildings and across the manicured lawns their ghosts lingered at the corner of the eye.

While the history of Letchworth was plagued with scandal, there had been a time that Letchworth was a self-sustained community, with patients performing important tasks and growing their own food. The inmates also made toys and sold them at Christmas.

Crops were cultivated and cows, pigs, and chickens were raised at the facility.

What now remains is the husks of stone dormitories, floors collapsing, and roofs lost to arson.

But in the rusty beams, Indy-Anna was able to find a smile, watching a pair of buzzards resting and grooming each other.

The sadness is gone now at Letchworth, and the physical location won't remain long. Much of the campus has been rebuilt as a golf course. Indy-Anna hoped the ghosts of Letchworth would soon find their rest.