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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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A 1900 stone hospital in Salamanca, forced into tuberculosis care by the state in 1923, now restored for history tours and overnight ghost hunts.
71 Prospect Avenue, Salamanca, NY 14779
Research updated June 2026
Age
Minimum 13
Cost
$$
Public ghost hunts and private investigations are ticketed; see the venue site for current event dates and rates.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-story historic stone building with stairs; roughly 3,600 square feet across several floors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1900 · Early Osteopathic Infirmary · 1923 State-Mandated Tuberculosis Sanitarium · Salamanca Railroad-Era History · 2017 Restoration as a Paranormal Site
The building at 71 Prospect Avenue in Salamanca began as a private stone residence completed in 1900. In 1903 it was purchased by Dr. John Henderson and Dr. Carol Perry, both osteopaths, who developed it into a small holistic private hospital. By around 1909 they were treating roughly a dozen residential patients with therapeutic baths, light therapy, and early electro-therapy, assisted by a small nursing staff.
The operation changed against the doctors' wishes in 1923. As tuberculosis spread across the country, New York State required the facility to convert into a sanitarium for TB patients. Salamanca, a railroad city in Cattaraugus County, had the population and rail traffic that made such a facility necessary. The building served that role through the following years, housing patients, nurses, and the two founding physicians who continued to run it.
Both Henderson and Perry died in 1941; Perry was fifty-six. With the founders gone, the building's medical era ended. By the early 1950s it had been divided into apartments, and it remained residential for roughly three decades.
The property was purchased and restored in 2017 by a local family, who reopened it under the Wildwood Sanitarium name and began running history tours and ticketed paranormal investigations. Local newspaper coverage of the ghost hunts has documented the venue's growth as a regional dark-tourism stop.
Sources
Since reopening in 2017, Wildwood Sanitarium has drawn paranormal groups who report a consistent set of phenomena: shadow figures moving through doorways, doors opening and closing on their own, balls left on the floor rolling without a clear cause, and recorded EVPs and spirit-box responses. Some visitors have reported unexplained scratches.
Two named locations anchor the building's reputation. One room is associated with a young boy who is said to have stayed at the sanitarium; investigators report child-sized shadow figures and faint, distant voices there. A second room is linked to a former patient who had been burned, and is described as the spot where motion sensors and REM-pods trigger most often. The owners frame the activity as the lingering presence of patients, nurses, and the two founding doctors from the building's hospital decades.
The local Salamanca Free Press has covered the venue's ghost hunts since at least 2019, reporting the same belief that patients and staff from the sanitarium era remain in the halls. The claims are tied to ongoing public investigations rather than a single dramatic incident, and the building's documented run as a tuberculosis hospital gives the lore its grounding.
Notable Entities
Themed public investigations run through the restored sanitarium, with access to the rooms patients and staff once occupied. Investigators report shadow figures, doors moving, and EVP captures; some sessions focus on areas the owners associate with former patients. Equipment is provided.
Daytime walk-through covering the building's run as an osteopathic infirmary, its 1923 conversion to a tuberculosis sanitarium, and its restoration by the current owners.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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