Inside abandoned sanatorium where patients wrapped up like mummies then drenched in water

St. Albans Sanatorium has seen many untimely deaths on its grounds and was originally the site of a massacre before becoming a boys’ school where bullying was encouraged

There are many abandoned places across the globe allegedly teeming with the undead following disturbing pasts.

But one building complex in the US has an especially tortured history that some paranormal investigators say makes it one of the most haunted sites on the East Coast.

St. Albans Sanitorium in Radford, Virginia closed its doors for the last time in the 1990s.

Before it was constructed, though, in 1775 the land was reportedly the scene of bloody massacre against the pioneer community of Drapers Meadow.

A group of indigenous Shawnee men attacked the settlers and murdered at least five people, including children, while a handful were taken as prisoners.

One captive, Mary Inglis, managed to escape and walked back home for more than two month for hundreds of miles and it is believed that some of the ghosts of those murdered never left the land.

In 1892, the buildings of what would become the sanitorium were erected and opened up as a Lutheran boys’ school.

However, education seemed to take a back seat as the facility gained a notorious reputation for ill-treatment of its students as well as actively encouraging bullying between them.

The staff placed great store in athletics and students could be punished for not winning games against rival schools.

Rumours spread that a few students ending up killing themselves due to the unbearable environment, although no official such deaths were recorded in the school’s record books.

The place closed in 1911 where it remained abandoned until it reopened in 1916 as a psychiatric infirmary.

The new sanatorium’s owner Dr. J.C. King had good intentions of providing patients with an alternative, better hospital compared to others in the US and even had a small farm, rooftop garden and bowling alley.

Progressive treatment using the latest technologies and experimental techniques were implemented – but these had been largely untested at the time and some vulnerable patients died there after being given lobotomies.

Others were left in comas from too much insulin or permanently disabled from the inhumane treatments they were subject to, including excessive electroconvulsive therapy.

One unsavoury method saw some patients wrapped completely in towels like mummies before being soaked in ice-cold water.

Another cruel treatment involved leaving its sick residents to soak, immobile in a tub for days on end in what was classed as routine hydrotherapy sessions.

St. Albans Sanitorium was desperately understaffed and by 1945 there were just 48 workers compared to more than 6,500 patients.

More suicides were alleged to have occurred on the site during the following decades before it was abandoned around 30 years ago.

These days the dilapidated building is visited only by paranormal investigators and those brave enough to risk disturbing the many spirits from its tortured past said to haunt the grounds.

One particular hotpot for ghostly activity is the ‘suicide bathroom’ where four people are believed to have taken their own lives.

While two female ghosts are rumoured to roam around the bowling alley in the basement – the young daughter of a former patient and a lady who was murdered in 1980 on a road close to the hospital.

Many people also claim to have felt the touch of someone or something brush past them while there as well as seeing floating objects and hearing disembodied voices.