Est. 1873 · Utah Medical History · Tooele County History · Paranormal Tourism
The building at 140 East 200 South in Tooele began in 1873 as a home constructed by Samuel F. Lee. For much of the 20th century, it served as Tooele County's primary medical facility — providing inpatient care, surgery, and, in its later years, elderly residential care. The hospital's extended operational history meant that significant numbers of patients died within its walls under the normal course of medical care and aging, a fact that its subsequent operators have leaned into heavily.
The hospital closed in 2001 following the opening of the Mountain West Medical Center, which offered modern facilities that the historic building could not match. The old hospital sat empty for five years.
In 2006, the building was acquired and converted into Asylum 49 — a haunted attraction and paranormal investigation venue. The operators have since built one of the more elaborate paranormal tourism operations in Utah: a staged haunted experience with multiple contact levels, a Museum of Horrors housing serial killer memorabilia, human bones, early medical equipment, and artifacts from the building's hospital period, and a formal ghost hunt program that runs year-round (with the haunted theatrical attraction running seasonally in October).
The building appeared on Ghost Adventures in 2017 (Season 13, Episode 3). IMDB rates the episode 7.8/10.
Sources
- https://www.asylum49.com/
- https://paranormalunknown.com/old-tooele-hospital-ghost-history-and-paranormal-evidence/
- https://www.abc4.com/news/local-news/utahs-most-haunted-restless-spirits-that-wander-old-tooele-hospital/
- https://www.slugmag.com/arts/art/interviews-features/haunting-living-dead-asylum-49/
- https://usghostadventures.com/haunted-places/americas-most-haunted-hospitals-and-asylums/the-most-haunted-and-terrifying-asylum-in-utah-49/
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7078424/
- https://usghostadventures.com/haunted-places/americas-most-haunted-hospitals-and-asylums/old-tooele-hospital/
ApparitionsCold spotsEVPShadow figuresPhantom footstepsEquipment malfunctionBattery drain
The paranormal accounts attached to Old Tooele Hospital reflect its decades of service as a medical and care facility. Nurse Maria is the most specifically described entity — a female presence reported in the basement, characterized by staff and investigators as purposeful rather than distressed, moving through the lower level as if still attending to duties.
Jessica is described as a child on the third floor, though no historical documentation of a specific child death in that location has been published by the venue or its investigators.
The more unusual account involves a patient identified only as 'Wes' — an elderly man who lived at the facility during its period as a nursing home and suffered significantly from Alzheimer's disease. Multiple investigators and staff members have described a quality of confused agitation in the building's upper floors that they attribute to whatever residual presence Wes may have left behind, distinct from the more passive presences associated with other reported entities.
The building's operational history as an extended care facility, where patients sometimes lived for years before dying, creates a different category of haunting claim than a hospital where acute tragedies predominate. The accounts here describe a heaviness of accumulated ordinary suffering rather than the dramatic incidents typical of acute care narratives.
Notable Entities
Nurse MariaJessicaWes
Media Appearances
- Ghost Adventures S13E3 (2017)
