Established in 1880 as the Asylum for the Colored Insane — the only mental health institution for North Carolina's entire Black population for 85 years — the original Goldsboro campus has two on-site cemeteries and a documented history of electroshock therapy and patient caging.
201 Stevens Mill Road, Goldsboro, NC 27530
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The original campus is now operated as an agricultural research station by NC State. The new Cherry Hospital opened in an urban Goldsboro location in 2016. The original campus is not currently open as a public attraction.
Access
Limited Access
Agricultural research station on former campus; access is restricted to the active research facility operations.
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1880 · Asylum for the Colored Insane — Sole NC Mental Health Facility for Black Patients 1880–1964 · Electroshock Therapy and Patient Caging Documented Through 1956 · Desegregated 1964 Following Civil Rights Act · Two Patient Cemeteries Remaining on Campus
The Asylum for the Colored Insane opened in Goldsboro in 1880, established by the North Carolina legislature to provide psychiatric care exclusively for African-American patients. For the first 84 years of operation — until federal desegregation enforcement following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — Cherry Hospital was the only public mental health facility in North Carolina available to Black patients, regardless of where in the state they lived.
The institution's documented practices in the mid-20th century included electroshock therapy and the physical restraint and caging of patients deemed unruly. A nursing history record preserved by Appalachian State University's program documents these practices; caging was used at the facility until at least 1956. These practices were not unique to Cherry Hospital — they were common in American state psychiatry of the era — but the segregated funding and oversight structure meant that conditions and oversight at Black-serving institutions were consistently inferior to those at white-serving counterparts.
The hospital was renamed Cherry Hospital in 1959, shedding the original designation. After desegregation in 1964 it continued to operate as a state psychiatric facility. In 2016, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services opened a new Cherry Hospital facility in an urban Goldsboro location, and the original Stevens Mill Road campus was transferred to North Carolina State University for agricultural research.
Two patient cemeteries remain on the original campus grounds. Patients who died at the institution over more than a century of segregated operation were interred there. The Southern Spirit Guide has documented the site's history and its ghost accounts in detail.
Sources
The Southern Spirit Guide has documented paranormal accounts from the original Cherry Hospital campus in Goldsboro. The most specific report in their coverage involves phantom band music — the sound of instruments heard in buildings that had been vacated, without an identifiable source. The account was documented in connection with the hospital's former facilities on the Stevens Mill Road campus after the patient population was transferred to the new facility in 2016.
The cemeteries on the campus grounds are the center of most accounts. Patients interred there over 136 years of operation represent a substantial burial population at a site that was, for most of its history, a segregated institution with limited oversight and documented abuses. Investigators and visitors have reported unease, temperature anomalies, and in some accounts EVP near the cemetery areas.
Access to the original campus is currently restricted due to its operation as an agricultural research station. Direct investigation is not possible for independent visitors. The historical record — documented by Wikipedia, the Appalachian State nursing history archive, and the Southern Spirit Guide — provides the substantiated foundation for any paranormal reputation the site carries.
The former Cherry Hospital campus in Goldsboro, NC, operated from 1880 to 2016 and is now an agricultural research station. Two on-site cemeteries for patients who died at the facility remain on the grounds. The site is not open for public visitation; historical interest should be approached through the substantial documentary record and the Southern Spirit Guide's research.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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