HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Nebraska's 1889 asylum for the 'incurably insane,' now a mostly demolished campus of empty buildings and old service tunnels.
U.S. Highway 6 & Marian Rd, Hastings, NE 68901
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No admission. The grounds are a state facility; remaining buildings are best viewed from public roads at the campus edge. Entering vacant or fenced buildings is not permitted.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Open campus grounds along U.S. 6; paved roads and grass
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1889 · Nebraska Psychiatric Institutional History · Hospital for the Incurably Insane (1889) · Campus Demolition 2020 Onward · Adams County Historical Society Documentation
In 1887 the Nebraska legislature appropriated $75,000 for a state asylum for the incurably insane, to be sited at Hastings if the city donated 160 acres. Hastings residents bought the land about a mile west of town, and the institution opened in 1889 as the Hospital for the Incurably Insane. It was meant for patients other state hospitals classified as chronic or beyond treatment.
The institution's name changed repeatedly as psychiatric thinking and state policy shifted. It became the Asylum for the Chronic Insane in 1895, the Nebraska State Hospital in 1905, and Ingleside Hospital for the Insane in 1915, later operating as the Hastings State Hospital and, from 1971, the Hastings Regional Center. Over the twentieth century its mission narrowed and changed, eventually including substance-abuse treatment and youth programs.
The Adams County Historical Society has documented the institution's early records, which list admission causes that reflect the broad commitment standards of the era. Patients who died at the hospital were buried in the adjacent Ingleside Cemetery under numbered markers; the cemetery records were sealed for decades and released to the historical society only after a 2009 court ruling.
The state closed the Hastings Regional Center in 2019. Demolition of the campus began in 2020, and by the mid-2020s the Hastings Tribune reported successive rounds of teardowns, including the most recognizable structure, Building 3. A network of service tunnels once connected the campus buildings. What remains is a thinning collection of brick structures on open ground, documented by the Adams County Historical Society and by abandoned-places photographers.
Sources
The lore around the Hastings Regional Center is the lore of an old state asylum: the original name, the decades of patients, the underground service tunnels, and the emptied buildings standing on open ground. Abandoned-places photographers and writers, including the site Abandoned, Forgotten & Decayed, have documented the campus and noted the unsettling effect of the vacant wards and the tunnel system that linked them.
Unlike the adjacent Ingleside Cemetery, which has a clear and verified history, the Hastings Regional Center has not generated a body of specific, sourced apparition accounts in Nebraska's paranormal literature. References to the site lean on atmosphere — the institutional architecture, the tunnels described by former employees as cold and a little eerie, and the knowledge of how many people lived and died there.
With demolition removing more of the campus each year, the site functions increasingly as a memory landscape. The Adams County Historical Society's records and the cemetery next door carry the documented human history; the standing buildings supply the rest. Visitors should treat the property as a drive-by: the buildings are closed, and entering them is prohibited and dangerous.
Drive the campus edge along U.S. Highway 6 west of Hastings to see what remains of the state's oldest psychiatric institution. Much of the complex has been razed since the center closed in 2019, but several brick buildings still stand. The adjoining Ingleside Cemetery, where more than 1,400 patients were buried under numbered markers, is a separate, publicly accessible stop.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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