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Summit County's former TB sanitarium, demolished 2017, where 246 patients were buried on site and a children's wing generated decades of paranormal reports
330 Broadway St, Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public grounds; no admission fee
Access
Accessibility not stated
Former institutional grounds; building demolished 2017; former cemetery area on site
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1915 · Summit County Tuberculosis Sanitarium · Sunshine Village Children's Wing (1922) · 246 Confirmed On-Site Burials · Demolished 2017
Edwin Shaw Hospital began as the Springfield Lake Sanitarium in 1915, established by Summit County to isolate and treat patients with tuberculosis at a time when the disease killed tens of thousands of Americans annually. At peak capacity the institution housed roughly 200 patients, drawn from across the county to the Broadway Street campus in what is now Cuyahoga Falls on the edge of the Akron metro.
The Sunshine Village children's wing, added in 1922, housed young TB patients separately from the adult population. It was this wing that generated the most persistent paranormal accounts over the decades: investigators described hearing ghostly humming, the sounds of meals being served in an empty mess hall, and spectral footsteps moving through vacant corridors.
The facility's cemetery, located on the grounds, holds 246 confirmed burials of patients who died during treatment. That cemetery remains the most tangible physical record of the sanitarium's history on the site. The main hospital complex was demolished in 2017, leaving the grounds as the principal draw for visitors interested in the location's dark history.
Paranormal investigators documented the Edwin Shaw campus extensively before demolition, with the Ohio Exploration Society among the groups that published accounts of their findings. The site attracted investigators primarily because of its combination of a documented death count, an institutional history of isolation, and the children's wing whose former function added an additional layer of reported activity.
Sources
Before Edwin Shaw's 2017 demolition, the campus had a well-documented reputation among paranormal investigators in northeastern Ohio. The Ohio Exploration Society and others documented investigations that produced consistent accounts: unexplained sounds concentrated in the Sunshine Village children's wing, including humming, footsteps, and what investigators described as the sounds of meals being served in an empty mess hall.
The combination of a population of dying children, the institutional isolation of the sanitarium model, and the on-site cemetery of 246 burials gave the site a documented dark history that grounded the paranormal claims in verifiable institutional tragedy rather than legend alone. Reports of cold spots and apparitions in the children's ward corridors were among the most commonly cited experiences from investigation visits.
With the building gone since 2017, the former grounds and cemetery site are what remain for visitors interested in the location's history.
Walk the former grounds of Summit County's tuberculosis sanitarium. The main building was demolished in 2017, but the site retains historical significance as the location of a cemetery with 246 confirmed burials of TB patients who died on the grounds between 1915 and the facility's closure.
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