At the Willard Asylum almost 6000 patients were buried in unmarked graves on the property with very few records remain to prove these patients even existed . By its closure, most patients were eventually integrated back into society, but in the early days “people didn’t leave unless it was in a box.” What really happened behind the thick walls of the Willard hospital during its 126 years of existence?
Experimental Treatments
It is hard to speculate. Locally, rumors have circulated that experimental psychiatric drugs, and procedures like lobotomies and electroshock therapy were exercised on patients there in the later years of operation.
Utility company 10 years ago the local power company sent in an employee into the attic of one of the Willard Asylum’s abandoned buildings. In that Attic he discovered around 400 suitcases belonging to patients from the 1890 through the 1930. They were cataloged and recorded and eventually displayed in an exhibition in the New York State Museum.
Suitcases
I attended this exhibit and while there and being someone who “asks too many questions” I asked one of the docents if all of the cases found were in the exhibit.
She told me that there were a few cases that with contents that were considered too controversial to be displayed for the public.
Really too controversial for the New York Public?!
Alice Potterroth
Ashley and Alice Potter -were identical twins born in a Central New York town called Geneva.
Their mother died while giving birth and their father tried to raise them to the best of his ability – giving the little girls everything he could.
One Christmas their father working as a shoe maker took on an extra work load so that he could afford a set of matching dolls as gifts for the girls. The Girls were very close and did everything together. They almost were never separated – and in a letter to family, his father once wrote that he believed that the girls were “linked” in an unusual way.
The Girls were literally inseparable and always together but ironically the one night that Alice went to visit her grandparents – their house burnt down taking the lives of her father and her sister Ashley.
Dolls
Before Ashley had been told of the accident she was found screaming hysterically and in pain – but she didn’t know why.
For a short time she lived with an aunt and uncle – but she demonstrated troubling behavior.
She claimed to always want to talk on behalf of her sister Alice.
She claimed that Alice and she were still “linked”.
At the time this behavior from a little girl was not acceptable and she was eventually sent to the Willard Asylum for the Insane.
Once in the Asylum – Ashley entered a severe state of depression.
She stopped talking and the only way she would communicate would be with Chalk and Slates.
She quickly contracted tuberculosis and died shortly after.
The Spirit Cabinet
This is SPIRIT CABINET – used in the Victorian Era to channel and amplify ghostly energies. In a moment – We will place the belongings of Alice and Ashley Potteroth in the cabinet – along side our Medium Juliana Fay and see what kind of answers will come forth.
After I acquired the suitcase – I contacted the Asylum that is now a prison – and asked if there were any other items from the time period of the Potteroth girls – I got a these items from a Nurses station. A call bell – a book case – and an old chair. There is more – when I received the suitcase – I also got this – I had no idea what it was – but when I opened the left side – I was in awe to find Alice’s Porcelain Doll. When I opened the right side I gasped to find – Ashley’s Doll that was recovered the from the burning building that she and her father died in.
Lets set up the items and then conduct our Asylum Seance. But there is a very important detail – She will be channeling energies from the items of the Asylum – and we hope that is might be that of Alice Potteroth – but there are other residents of the Asylum that were tied up and restrained – and no with out cause. So as a precaution – if one of the restrained residents of the Asylum come through Juliana Fay – the situation will be more “manageable”.
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