Formerly known as the Overbrook Insane Asylum, the facility has been a source of eerie fascination for many, and the site of ongoing alleged paranormal activities.
The subject of TV shows Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters in 2008, the 90-acre ground is said to be haunted. According to Weird New Jersey, which has written extensively on the hospital’s history, Overbrook suffered a major catastrophe during the winter of 1917. The failure of the hospital’s boilers during particularly cold weather resulted in the death of 24 patients in 20 days, with patients freezing to death in their beds. The New York Times featured the tragedy on December 21 of that year.
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Overbrook was a central facet of Essex County’s history throughout the 20th Century. The hospital was laid out at the bottom of a hill atop which sat the Essex Mountain Sanatorium—a facility used at various times to treat tuberculosis patients, wayward children, and drug abusers. The two facilities and the many abandoned buildings associated with them became Essex County’s most legendary location, home to escaped lunatics, troubled ghosts, and roving gangs of ne’er do wells. For a generation of North Jersey teens, a visit to the Overbrook site was a rite of passage— going to “The Asylum,” “The Bin,” or “The Hilltop”—was a surefire way to test your mettle and impress your friends. The thousands of tales that made their way back from the site via these adventurous teens have long cemented Overbrook as a vital part of the tapestry of New Jersey’s local lore. - Weird NJ
Recollections of the hospital complex:
“I still remember using the road through there as a short cut and the patients literally hanging out of windows screaming and carrying on during a summer full moon. We rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and never used it again.
Later, I had a friend that worked the boiler room at night while going to college…The buildings are all connected by tunnels that carried steam for heat and their own generated electricity. One night, the door to the tunnel flies open and this voice booms out ‘It's you!’
Well, he runs over, shuts and barricades the door and calls security. The guards that came tell him not to worry, then go and open the door and call into the tunnel ‘Hey, Frank.’
A minute later a small, meek voice says, ‘Yea.’
They say, ‘We got a job for you.’ After a minute of silence they say, ‘A real important job.’ Another minute passes and then this little guy—maybe five feet tall— comes out and says, ‘OK, I'm ready.’
The friend always made sure the door was blocked first thing when he got to work after that.”Escaped Inmates from Overbrook. - Y.A.D
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I was born and schooled in Essex County, New Jersey. As I recall, there was a mental institution named "Overbrook" that was in Cedar Grove and the Essex County Sanitarium that was in Caldwell.
Growing up, I lived in Cedar Grove very near the Verona line. Our eighth grade had graduation exercises at Overbrook in 1944 before the new school, and before Cedar Grove had a high school. We were shipped to Bloomfield High School to complete our education through grade twelve. I always laughingly said that I graduated from a mental institution.
A few years later, when I was a young mother, we lived near Overbrook. One day I was in my yard sunning myself along with my infant son when I heard my neighbor call to me in a loud whisper. I was near to her side of the house. She said she observed a man acting strangely, and that I should pick up the baby and hurry over to her house. I did. We called the police who later identified the man as an inmate who wandered off from the mental institution. Needless to say, I was scared to death. We moved soon after that incident. - Charlotte Springer
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from 8/2008
Anjelica Huston's Latest Movie Set Was Haunted
The set of ANJELICA HUSTON's eerie new movie CHOKE was haunted!Director Clark Gregg, who adapted Chuck Palahniuk's novel for the big screen, opted to film scenes in an abandoned New Jersey psychiatric hospital, where one crew member saw a ghost.
Gregg recalls, "This hospital was a collection of maybe 70 buildings, built in 1910; it was a city for the insane called Overbrook. It's now down to five buildings and they were all abandoned.
"We had these very tough guy cops who were there training police dogs while we were shooting and they were so matter of fact that there were two ghosts in two different buildings. One was kind of a sexy turn-of-the-century Florence Nightingale nurse ghost, but the other wasn't so friendly.
"Building five had this unspeakable satanic dark energy. The crew member who walked into that building and had this experience with a ghost was not even capable of speaking about it - still isn't."
Infamous Overbrook Asylum / Essex County Hospital Center To Be Razed
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