The Ridges (Athens Lunatic Asylum)

The Ridges, the former Athens Lunatic Asylum, opened in 1874 on a hillside above Athens and treated thousands of patients until it closed in 1993. Today the Victorian Gothic campus belongs to Ohio University and houses the Kennedy Museum of Art. TourismOhio lists it among the state's haunted places. The best-known story concerns Margaret Schilling, a patient who went missing in December 1978 and was found dead weeks later in a closed ward; a stain on the floor is often called her outline, though a university study found it came from her decomposition. Her story, and the lives of the patients buried on the grounds, deserve to be remembered with care.