SPRING CITY, Pa. — Since the last residents left more than 20 years ago, Pennhurst State Hospital has been vacant, its sprawling complex of buildings crumbling, overcome by brush in the suburban Philadelphia countryside.
The old asylum may not be still much longer.
It’s being filled with fake skeletons, hanging torsos, coffins, exam tables and other frightful things as new investors plan to begin redevelopment efforts by turning it into a haunted house set to open Friday.
The plans have stirred more than old ghosts.
The mental-health community, which has long fought to preserve the hospital as a relic of the bygone era of institutionalization for people with mental disabilities — a reminder of a history not to be repeated — is infuriated by the plan.
“I don’t want to relive the hell that I went through of living in an institution,” said Jean Searle, co-president of the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance, who grew up in similar institutions but now lives on her own. “I want to try to forget.”
In addition, a lawyer representing several neighbors filed a lawsuit Monday, saying organizers don’t have proper zoning approval. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Built shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the institution was closed in 1987 after a lawsuit alleged years of abuse and neglect.
In 2008, a group of investors led by businessman Richard Chakejian bought the site. The haunted house will not incorporate the idea of an asylum or mental patients into its story lines, Chakejian said.
There will also be separate rooms in which people can learn the history of Pennhurst and the pain that was endured there, he said.
