HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Founded in 1911 as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland — the segregated system's history of lobotomies, pneumoencephalography, and numbered patient graves is now preserved as Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park.
1520 Crownsville Road, Crownsville, MD 21032
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Anne Arundel County Memorial Park; check county parks website for current access status. Campus not yet fully open for public visitation as of 2024.
Access
Limited Access
Historic campus; redevelopment underway. Not fully accessible at present.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1911 · Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland — Third Segregated Asylum in the U.S. · Documented Institutional Racism and Psychiatric Abuse · Numbered-Grave Cemetery and Medical Research of Patients · NRHP-Eligible Campus
The Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland opened in 1911 in Crownsville, Anne Arundel County, mandated by the Maryland legislature as a separate facility for the state's African-American psychiatric patients — reflecting the legally enforced racial segregation of the era. It was among the earliest state hospitals in the country built specifically for Black patients and operated under conditions of severe underfunding relative to the white state hospitals.
The hospital's early decades were marked by overcrowding, poor conditions, and documented abuses. Patients were required to perform labor on the institution's farm. Medical treatments common in American psychiatry from the 1930s through the 1950s — including insulin shock therapy, pneumoencephalography (a diagnostic procedure involving the replacement of cerebrospinal fluid with air), and lobotomies — were performed at Crownsville.
Patients who died without family or resources to claim their bodies were interred in an on-site cemetery with numbered grave markers rather than named headstones. Others were reportedly used for medical research. The 2024 book 'Crownsville' by Antonia Hylton, reviewed in the Washington Post, documents the full history of the institution including these burial practices and the structural racism that shaped them.
The facility was renamed Crownsville Hospital Center in later decades as the name 'Hospital for the Negro Insane' was retired. It was desegregated following the Civil Rights Act and continued operating until its closure in 2004. Anne Arundel County subsequently acquired the campus; it has been designated Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park and is NRHP-eligible. A full redevelopment plan was underway as of 2024.
Sources
Crownsville Hospital Center's dark history is primarily a matter of documented record rather than paranormal legend — the segregated conditions, abusive treatments, and burial practices at the site were real events with real victims whose stories are still being recovered and documented.
The numbered cemetery on the campus grounds represents patients whose deaths were recorded but whose identities were not marked on their graves — a practice that reflected the dehumanizing conditions of the segregated institution. The 2024 research by journalist Antonia Hylton identified dozens of these patients by name from institutional records.
Paranormal accounts tied to Crownsville are modest in the public record relative to the gravity of the site's history. Reports documented in connection with the campus include unease reported by individuals who worked or visited there, and general accounts of a heavy atmosphere. We have treated the site history-first per editorial policy: this is a site of documented harm, and the memorial designation reflects that the historical record — not paranormal framing — is the appropriate lens.
The site is now a county-operated memorial park, not an entertainment destination. Any visit should be approached with the awareness that the patients buried in the numbered cemetery were real people whose stories are still being documented.
Media Appearances
Anne Arundel County has designated the former Crownsville Hospital Center as a Memorial Park. The campus's documented history as a segregated psychiatric facility — founded as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland — is the core of the memorial. Public access is limited during ongoing planning; check county parks for current visitor information.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
New Castle, DE
Delaware's first public psychiatric institution opened in 1889 as the Delaware State Hospital for the Insane at Farnhurst. Hundreds of patients who died at the facility without family to claim them were interred in an on-site potter's field with numbered rather than named markers. Most original buildings were demolished by the 1990s, but the cemetery was identified, restored, and memorialized in 2016 — 777 graves are now documented.
Newtown, CT
Fairfield Hills Hospital opened in 1931 in Newtown as Connecticut's second state psychiatric hospital, built in a Georgian Colonial style across 16 interconnected brick buildings. At its peak, the campus held approximately 4,000 patients. The facility was known for its use of psychosurgery — over 100 lobotomies performed in the first year after lobotomy was introduced — as well as electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy. The hospital closed in 1995; the campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in September 2024.
Aurora, CO
Fitzsimons Army Medical Center opened October 13, 1918, as U.S. Army General Hospital No. 21, established on 577 acres east of Denver to treat soldiers suffering from tuberculosis. Renamed in 1920 for Lt. William T. Fitzsimons — the first American medical officer killed in WWI — the facility grew into the Army's premier medical training center, treating casualties from WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. President Eisenhower convalesced there for seven weeks after his 1955 heart attack. The center closed June 8, 1996, and was redeveloped as the Anschutz Medical Campus.