Haunted Hospital in St. Anthony blends local history with spooky stories

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho (KIFI) – For the last twelve years, a family in St. Anthony has transformed a historic 1920s building into a seasonal Halloween attraction known as Idaho's Haunted Hospital. The property was purchased by Doug Olsen and his family 13 years ago and blends local history with ghost stories.

The building was originally constructed in the 1920s as a state reform school for youth placed in state custody. Children sent to the facility were bunked together in large rooms, regardless of whether they were orphans or held for behavioral reasons. Matrons who worked at the facility lived in the attic, which was sealed off after a series of tragic events.

“We didn't know we bought a haunted house,” Olsen said.

Over the years, various stories of ghost sightings and unexplained incidents have circulated about the building. Olsen recalled a visit several years ago from a medium with the television show “Ghost Hunters” who claimed to see a violent scene inside the facility.

“I bring her in. She says, ' Oh my gosh, I can see something,' Olsen said. 'She says, 'I see a woman with a head wound and blood's running down the drain,'"

One week after the medium's visit, a visitor whose mother had stayed at the reform school as a child arrived at the house and offered a chilling story from her mother's time there: a group of young residents, pushed to their limit by an unkind matron, confronted her in the shower area.

“The girls got together and made this plan that they were going to kill the matron," the visitor told Olsen. "And so they smuggled one of those big, heavy, old-fashioned irons, then they lured the matron into the shower and then they bashed their brains out with this iron and left her for dead with blood running down the drain."

Other accounts connected to the building involve its third floor and attic space, which were eventually sealed off following a series of tragedies.

Olsen said former residents attributed several unexplained events on the upper floor to ghosts.

“One girl jumped out the front window and splattered herself on the front stairs, and all the other girls said there's no reason for her to do that,” Olsen said.

"Then, there was a matron that got pushed down the stairs when no one was there. And so they blamed that on a ghost. Everyone's so freaked out about the ghosts on the third floor that no one would go up there,"

The state of Idaho decided to shut the area off during its remodel in the 1950s.

Today, brave visitors can tour the historic facility or navigate the haunted maze. For more information, click HERE.