My Paranormal Experience: Indiana State Sanitorium (Part 1-3)

B.M. Scott

21 August 2025

My Paranormal Experience: Indiana State Sanitorium (Pt. 1)

I have not shared this story with anyone over the last three months, owing to its extraordinary nature and the depth of personal impact it has had upon me. The magnitude of these experiences is difficult to articulate without risking skepticism or derision—yet, in the interest of intellectual honesty and reflective inquiry, I feel compelled to share the record and experiences here.

Montague James - the distinguished Victorian antiquarian and storyteller - famously insisted that the past is seldom concluded but merely lies dormant. In his tales, the re-emergence of spirits and unresolved histories mirrors the ways in which previous generations continue to impact the present. Today, someone (or something) had the kindness to share a significant work with me I’ve only had the opportunity to give a synoptic overview. In Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Avery Gordon offers an incisive conceptual framework for understanding such phenomena in lived experience.

She writes:

“In order to write about invisibility and haunting requires attention to what is not seen, but is nonetheless powerfully real; requires attention to what appears dead, but is nonetheless powerfully alive; requires attention to what appears to be in the past, but is nonetheless powerfully present...”

For Gordon, haunting (and its anomalous-synchronic effect) is far from mere literary conceit; it is a methodological imperative. She compels us to attend to the invisible forces—trauma, memory, and injustice—that are at once spectral and transformative. By acknowledging these occurrences and the presence they occupy, we permit the unseen past to inform the ethical and affective trajectory of the present.

What emerges from these connected explorations—biological, phenomenological, cultural, and preternatural—is not closure, but complication. In Gordon’s language, these are not mere statistics but the spectral workings of history - that is to say, material traces that continue to unsettle and reverberate through the present space in time. The Sanitorium - and the past - does not yield its secrets easily, but the strangeness of this experience adds merit to our capacity to pause and reflect.

In May of 2025, I was undertaking research for a broader academic study examining the convergence of spatial elements between curative spa retreats, hotels, and hospitals in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries America. This micro-historical approach was intended to shed light on the broader implications of popular culture within the context of the era. In other words, my research was centered on the symbiotic relationship between healthcare institutions and hotels—instances in which regional hospitals borrowed architectural elements and comforts from hotels. Conversely, I was interested in structures which originated as hotels repurposed to meet medical demand, and the gradual transformation of health spas into luxury resorts. This study - structured around a series of detailed case studies - proved intellectually rewarding and led me to visit the Indiana State Sanatorium—later the Lee Allen Bryant Psychiatric Hospital—on both April 29th and May 1st, 2025. At this time, I had taken a week of PTO from professional obligations to fully immerse myself in both archival research and on-site observation. My interest in these first two visits was strictly academic and humanistic - unprompted by paranormal association. My attention was dedicated to photographic and written documentation of architectural features, patterns of spatial organization, and the likely routines governing institutional daily life at the peak of its occupancy. Initially, the tuberculosis history of the sanatorium was tangential to my primary concerns - but as I delved deeper, I came to view the hospital’s subsequent transformation into a psychiatric facility as a logical extension of its former role.

However, my interest in the research changed markedly and soon subsided during my 2nd visit on May 1st, 2025. While carefully surveying a ward once dedicated to tuberculosis patients, I encountered something distinctly unsettling - a green curtain near a corridor entrance of the Tuberculosis hospital lifted abruptly, as though grasped by unseen hands. Expecting a rational explanation - perhaps a youthful prank - I advanced only to see the fabric settle back in place without anyone present. Though not prone to superstition, I found the remainder of my time at the site curiously disquieting. Whispered sounds, phantom footsteps, the dull closing of unseen doors—all persisted, accompanied by a lingering sense of being watched. Fleeting shapes teased the edge of my periphery as I stayed until closing - unsettled; and half-wondering if something (perhaps dust or mold) could be causing visual distortions or hallucinations.

That evening, still troubled, I instinctively turned to my notebook some may call a reflective journal or an observational journal—a tool I use to order my thoughts. I was exhausted. Initial, aimless scribbles soon gave way to discernible words and shapes. I closed my eyes and began writing words and shapes that came to mind. The name: “Josephine Sulava” surfaced repeatedly, which I initially dismissed as a figment of a restless mind. To humor myself (considering it perhaps a creative exercise of the subconscious), I began formulating direct questions—“Where are you buried?” The response became striking in their clarity:

“Riverside. Riverside. Riverside.”

Skeptical, but now intrigued - I kept these notes and began reading about the phenomenon typically termed “automatic writing," from which I began.

This same evening, I began to search for other methods of communication - and as curiosity would have it, I decided to purchase a so-called “ghost radio," arriving the following day. The ghost radio is a simple analog (or digital) device rewired; continuously sweeping radio frequencies to create word patterns - based on the Estes Method; essentially enabling sensory isolation so that verbal responses can be relayed aloud in real time without influence from the questions being asked. Determined to avoid influencing the results, I initiated a new session without reference to my earlier notes. My first prompt—“If someone is here, make yourself known”—elicited a reply almost at once: my own first name, “Brison,” neither common nor easily explained away. Pressed for further identification, I asked: "Who is here?" The reply came:

“Josephine SULAVA...Riverside."

After a few hours of transcription, the final message before I turned off the device was enigmatic in the extreme:

“Palliative serum lost… dangerous substitute.”

From these uncertain beginnings, my involvement was strongly compelled - eventually [over the course of 3 months] filling 3 binders with notes, transcriptions, and automatic drawings.

Taking all of my compiled notes, drawing, and information from these first few days following my last visit on May 1st, local cemetery records in Rockville returned nothing. Casting a wider net, I looked to neighboring Clinton, Indiana.

A record appeared:

Josephine Sulava, born March 10, 1910 in Clinton, Indiana.; Died August 21, 1926 in Rockville, Indiana. 

The record did not reveal her cause of death—nor did the obituary transcripts—but, in my heart, I felt the riddle was solved. 

I was very wrong. As subsequent developments would indicate to me - what seemed a conclusion was merely the prelude to a narrative far stranger than I could possibly have anticipated.

(To be continued)

Invitation for Reflection

The foregoing account invites readers to reflect on the complexities of interdisciplinary research, the limits of rational explanation, and the personal dimensions of encountering the extraordinary within the ordinary. As you consider my experience, you might ask yourself:

- How do our scholarly or professional frameworks shape the way we interpret experiences that fall outside expected boundaries?

- To what extent should we privilege skepticism or open-mindedness when confronted with anomalous events for which there is no immediate explanation?

- How might personal narrative and auto-ethnography (or automatic writing) serve as valid tools for exploring experiences that challenge standard academic methodologies?

- What responsibilities do researchers have when sharing extraordinary or potentially controversial experiences; particularly when the risk of skepticism or ridicule is high?

- Can interdisciplinary inquiry—bridging architecture, social history, psychology, and the study of anomalous experience—allow for new insights that would be missed within a singular field?

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As mentioned in my previous discussion, things became very strange—and quite rapidly. The clustering of events—some concrete, objectively verifiable—left me with no doubt that what I was experiencing was real, though a quiet skepticism lingered between May 2nd and May 5th. All my original research aims fell away. Looking back three months, research ceased to be simply an intellectual exercise and became something far more precarious—a negotiation between evidence, experience, and the limits of my own belief. My former interests lost their grip; in their place grew a pressing need to understand what was transpiring. At the same time, I questioned how anyone manages to share such experiences without succumbing to deep self-doubt or a painful sense of isolation. Even now, at the point of writing this, I have wanted to tell everyone—and yet, tell no one. In a profound sense, it is isolating. Sufi scholar, mystic, and philosopher Idries Shah believed that the highest development of the human intellect—what he called “real intellect”—arises from a union of careful critical analysis and intuitive perception. Over the course of the last 3 to 4 months, I’ve gleaned more from this principle and whether the pursuit of knowledge - grounded in objectivity to shed light on how the subjective-experiential - calls upon us to embrace uncertainty.

During the first weekend of my last visit, information I gathered on the Sulava family through cemetery records led me to this brief synopsis:

“The Sulava family arrived at the port of Ellis Island on the SS Carpathia on June 26th, 1907 with three daughters. The three sisters are Maria, Anna, and Frances. Josephine Sulava appears to be the second child born in the United States. I found information on Anna’s naturalization in 1938—twenty-one years after immigration. Birth records of siblings are confusing—Anna was born in Yugoslavia, while Frances was born in Hungary; I was unable to locate Maria. Julia was born in 1908, while Josephine—the spirit in question—was born in 1910 in Clinton, Indiana. The father, Joseph Sulava is - at least by cemetery index records - identified as Slovakian, while the mother (Frances) is identified as Austrian.”

These details proved confusing, prompting me to investigate further into the history of national boundaries—even consulting a professor and searching for ship records to determine the family’s origin point, to my initial disappointment. Gradually, a small thread of inquiry became a major undertaking, one I could not ethically abandon without being left to wonder or regret. Little did I know, this effort would not come easily. 

The obituary for Frances Sulava, linked through the cemetery database, clearly identified the mother’s cause of death:

“Mrs. Frances Sulava, aged 38 years, died at her home on North Eighth Street, Sunday evening, after an illness of two weeks for pneumonia. She was the wife of Joseph Sulava, and came with her husband from Austria to this country three years ago. The funeral will be conducted by Rev. Father Keefe, from Sacred Heart Catholic Church at 4 o’clock tomorrow morning. Interment will be at Riverside cemetery.”

– Daily Clintonian, 20 January 1913

On the evening of May 4th (a Sunday), I was lying on the couch in the living room, questioning whether I was losing my mind or simply losing touch with reality, when a strange sensation came over me. With my back to the room, I felt what I can only describe as static electricity, a tingling at the back of my neck that quickly moved down both arms—almost spider web-like, yet distinct. As the sensation travelled, I suddenly heard a loud, whispered voice very clearly in my right ear:

“SLEEP…”

That night, my dreams were strange and violent, if difficult to recall in detail. But what remains vivid—and is written multiple times in my dated records—is the presence of a kind, young woman with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, instructing me to look to the constellations and saying, with crystalline clarity:

“Do not let darkness impact the eye.”

This blurring of dream and waking reality unsettled me deeply, challenging the boundaries between critical detachment and subjective experience, and making me wonder how much of research is ultimately shaped by events we cannot explain. In Josephine Sulava’s case, nothing beyond her birth and burial could be found; only a brief obituary noted an extended illness, but no underlying cause. With hindsight, I see more clearly how stigma and parental grief might have led to this lack of information—challenges for any researcher, and ones that would only grow more pronounced.

It is worth noting here that I wrote and reflected on this phrase—“Do not let darkness impact the eye”—often, whether by automatic writing, sketch, or note. Upon awakening, I realized my narrative was no longer fully my own; it seemed to belong, in part, to those whose stories have never before been heard. I was certain that this presence was from the Sanitorium, though why she reached for me rather than the hundreds or thousands of others who visit, I could not say. My goal was research; I am not a ghost hunter, nor am I enamored by public spectacle or sensationalism. Further, I had no way of knowing, then, whether she had died of tuberculosis - I felt it strongly, but could not prove it - and therefore, I could not even voice these notions.

The following week, on May 8th, at around 12:48 AM, I closed my book (Greek Civilization and Character, by Toynbee) and lay down to sleep. Suddenly, I heard footsteps—six or seven in rapid succession—on the floor above me, followed by the sound of a pen or small object flung across the upper hallway. When I checked, all was quiet; the fans and televisions were off, and the house stood still, yet I felt that same static electricity tingling at my neck and along my right arm, as if someone were silently behind me. I returned downstairs, tried to rest, but soon heard two clear whistles coming from the stairs, just feet away from my place in the living room.

At this point, I was certain this was not imagined, so I reached for my journal and closed my eyes, beginning my usual exercise. I had drawn a person wearing a headdress and some sort of mask. Initially I thought it depicted a nun—possibly a sign of my own anxiety, but definitely not connected; or so I thought. Still unsettled, I consulted the ghost radio again. The messages received were:

“Nurse.”
“Matewan.”
“Coal.”
“Strikes.”
“Labor.”
“Coal.”
“Coal.”
“Cathartic.”
“Kulpa.”
“Guess.”
“Get it right.”

What I found astonished me. A basic image search of the “nun” drawing with the face mask in the picture—which I nearly discarded—revealed a remarkable resemblance to early twentieth-century tuberculosis nurse and physician attire. Where at first, I thought it immaterial, the same detail (the word, "nurse") appeared in the Estes method transcript. By then, approaching 3 AM, I decided I had enough - I would sleep and research details the next morning. The convergence of the nurse image, the historic placenames, and ghost radio messages kept me invested. As I continued down the list, “Matewan, West Virginia” emerged—a major mining town marked by the Matewan Massacre, a deadly clash between union miners and the detectives hired to protect corporate interests. The word “Kulpa” led me to a river in Europe dividing Croatia and Slovenia - pointing to broader histories of struggle and migration. “Cathartic,” “Guess,” and “Get it Right” all seemed to suggest a narrative in need of resolution.

Without any previous interest in Clinton, Indiana, I soon came across articles and presentations on the Palmer Raids and the Red Scare of 1919-1920—years during which Clinton stood out as a significant mining city. The Daily Clintonian discussed its “melting pot” of ethnic communities - describing the perils of allowing ethnic mutual aid societies to flourish. In that era, mutual aid worked much like insurance - for illness, absence, and bereavement—sometimes extending even to those who could not otherwise afford it.

By this time, I knew that Josephine wished—or rather, needed—her story to be told. Even as information arose that I could not have anticipated, the absence of proof regarding tuberculosis as her cause of death continued to trouble me. At least, for the time being. Perhaps, in striving to validate the past, we become witnesses not only to history, but also to the persistence with which memory—personal and collective—insists on being known.

That Sunday, I again returned to the Sanitorium. Upon arriving, I approached the pleasant woman at the reception desk - whom I had spoken with during my initial two visits - and inquired, tentatively but with measured curiosity, whether she was aware of the region’s historic mining towns. “I’m doing some research on coal mining in the area and was wondering if you might know anything, or could point me in the right direction,” I said, careful to remain noncommittal, adding, “It’s somewhat connected, but somewhat distinct from my primary research.” She replied, “I’m not extremely familiar, but I do know there was a railroad that ran nearby.” I pressed a bit further: “Do you happen to have any death certificates from the tuberculosis era?” She shook her head. “No, unfortunately—we don’t have any of that information. The only records we maintain are primarily from the psychiatric era.”

It was clear to me then that this was a deeper historical enigma: the past would not yield its secrets readily, and I would need to dig considerably deeper, allowing information and clues—however inexplicable—to emerge in their own time. Each visit brought new revelations, each one not only extending the mystery but also drawing me further into lines of inquiry I could not have anticipated. With every return, I found myself compelled to accept that answers were not just possible, but perhaps, inescapable.

The anomalous phenomena and mysteries long-buried by time seemed increasingly intent on resurfacing. This peculiar triangulation of events and information—linking the Rockville Sanitorium; Clinton’s immigrant mining community; the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and my own unfolding experience—would not only persist but deepen. The territory between past and present, and between personal encounter and micro-history, was being continually redrawn before my eyes.

(To be continued)

Invitation for Reflection

- Throughout history, spirituality and epiphany have often been intertwined; whether through the oracles, the intellectual fervor of the Renaissance spurred by religious humanism; or the synthesis of science and mysticism during the Islamic Golden Age. How might experiences like those described here echo or depart from these traditions of intuitive knowledge and inquiry?

- Idries Shah believed that the highest development—what he called “real intellect”—arises from a union of careful critical analysis and intuitive perception. How does this balance, flow, or openness appear - and for what purpose does it serve?

- To what extent can spiritual or anomalous experiences become legitimate catalysts for asking new questions in the humanities, philosophy, or history?

- How might the spirit of inquiry—be it mathematical, philosophical, historical, or experiential—inform or be informed by personal, subjective experiences dismissed as paranormal or unexplainable?

- In what ways can attention to these kinds of mysteries serve not as ends in themselves, but as openings to deeper narratives—both individual and collective—about meaning, memory, and experiential embodiment?

- Reflecting on antiquity, what role did epiphany, oracular guidance, or revelation play in the formation of knowledge? Is there space in contemporary scholarship for these modes of insight, and if so, under what terms?

- How does the impulse to seek, record, and interpret the inexplicable relate philosophical and humanistic inquiry? 

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B.M. Scott

28 August 2025

My Haunted Experience: Indiana State Sanitorium (Pt. 3 - Final)

My personal experience resists confinement to the deteriorating wards of the Sanitorium or archival documentation. In the quiet of my own home, the presence of Josephine became increasingly insistent—not merely a spectral appearance, but an embodied presence interlaced with the drapery of daily existence. The subdued echo of footsteps in unseen corridors, the muted yielding of a door, and the subtle disarray of familiar objects each conveyed the unmistakable weight of unfinished business. It was as though aspects of her journey, unresolved amid the rituals of admission and departure, were continually imploring recognition.

The trajectory of my inquiry led inexorably back to Clinton—a central node wherein Josephine’s return established a threshold at which personal sorrow converged with matters of public health. In this sense, intimate struggles within the domestic sphere were mirrored by the institutional choreography of loss, meeting on terms that neither domain could determine independently. Her existence, formerly obscured by the anonymity of bureaucratic recordkeeping and the passage of years, gradually began to resonate in the most inconspicuous details. The clay soil beneath immigrant feet, the lattice of hardship and resilience found in neighborhoods beset by poverty and illness, and the modest artifacts—letters, a sepia-toned portrait, a solitary name in a burial register—all surfaced as if summoned by a memory not entirely my own.

During the early twentieth century, Clinton, Indiana, found itself deeply embroiled in the labor unrest that characterized much of industrial America. The city’s mining and rail sectors were significantly affected by nationwide strikes, most notably the Illinois Central Railroad shopmen’s strike of 1911–1912. During this period, Clinton narrowly averted violence when tensions between striking workers and armed railroad guards threatened to spill over into open conflict. This outcome was averted only through measured intervention by local police. The strike’s prolonged nature exposed the inadequacies of union support and resources. As funds dwindled and national coordination faltered, the movement began to fragment. When the Red Scare and Palmer Raids swept the country in the wake of World War I, Clinton’s labor organizations, already weakened by strike fatigue and internal dissension, faced renewed scrutiny and suppression. These government crackdowns, in the name of anti-radicalism, undermined the fragile solidarity among workers. They dampened the effectiveness of collective action and cast a pall of suspicion over immigrant and labor communities alike. The direct impact on mutual aid societies was striking, especially when considered alongside the 1917 Indiana State Board of Health report. The legacy of these events left a lasting imprint on Clinton. Organized labor’s local influence was constrained, and anxieties about surveillance, loyalty, and belonging deepened in an industrial town marked by both resilience and precarity.

The era of D.C. Stephenson was profoundly consequential for Clinton, as for communities throughout the state. In the early 1920s, under Stephenson’s leadership, the Ku Klux Klan reached the height of its political and social influence in Indiana, counting nearly a third of all white men in the state as members, including many in Vermillion County and the Clinton area. Ultimately, this would culminate in the 1924 anti-immigration act. The Klan’s ideology, with its emphases on nativism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-immigrant sentiment, reverberated strongly through Clinton’s tight-knit ethnic neighborhoods. Italian, Slovak, Croatian and other immigrant populations made up a sizable portion of the mining workforce. The Klan’s campaigns of intimidation, social exclusion, and public spectacle fostered suspicion and division, casting a long shadow over civic life, labor relations, and even church and school governance.

Guided as much by intuition as by archival method, my research throughout August was marked by a strong, reiterative haunting. Josephine’s influence appeared not as linear prompts but as a constellation of invitations and interruptions. Each fresh encounter—whether in overlooked documents, conversations with local residents, or subtle experiential impressions—seemed to echo and elaborate the original disturbances, suggesting new avenues of inquiry precisely when a line of investigation seemed to coalesce into certainty. The interaction between affective phenomena and scholarly pursuit became mutually reinforcing. In essence, moments of uncanny presence or symbolic resonance at home or in the field did not distract from research, but instead recalibrated its direction, prompting a re-examination of sources and encouraging openness to materials or voices previously considered marginal. Thus, the month unfolded less as a planned progression toward definitive knowledge, and more as a process in which haunting itself became methodology—inviting, as Gordon counsels, an ethical attentiveness to the unfinished, the overlooked, and the persistently insistent within both the historical record and lived experience.

Upon reflection, the phenomenon surrounding this haunting was revealed as a profound invitation: to bear witness, to document, and to pay homage—to Josephine, her community, and the structures that simultaneously shaped and outlasted them. Within the prevailing stillness of my residence, in the dust-laden streets of Clinton, and amidst the dispersed records of those lost to bygone epidemics, Josephine’s narrative—and, indeed, the ghostly legacy of the Sanitorium—remains incomplete yet no longer unacknowledged. As Avery Gordon articulates, haunting manifests where repressed histories and unresolved losses persistently press upon the present, refusing erasure and resisting closure. They demand not exorcism, but principled hospitality and an ethical attentiveness toward what endures.

As I continue to experience vivid phenomena and striking synchronicities associated with Josephine, I am often confronted by disturbances that might easily provoke apprehension. Nevertheless, I have chosen—quite deliberately—to accept her presence as a guide. She is, in effect, has proven an active collaborator in my reflections (and research) rather than a source of uncertainty. Ultimately, what remains is the measured gravity of responsibility. This is not an imperative to completely resolve or dismiss, but to remain alert. I strive to address the reverberations of unfinished histories and to permit the present - however seemingly stable - to be unsettled once more by the very reckonings that preceded it.

Note: Josephine Sulava was an American by birth, the daughter of Josephine and Frances Sulava. Her parents immigrated as children from Slovakia to the Cepin region of Croatia – their parents seeking refuge from nationalist unrest. Similarly, the hardships endured by her parents in Croatia prompted them to seek something more - immigrating to American in June of 1907 with family and three young children. Looking ahead, I will present a strictly academic, scholarly analysis of these intertwined histories in my forthcoming publication, A Phenomenological Analysis of Spatial Confinement, Immigration, and Disease.

Invitation for Reflection

- What forms can “ethical attentiveness” to the unfinished business of the past take, both in scholarship and in everyday life?

- How does the experience of “haunting”—whether through archival research, lived synchronicities, or material traces—challenge our assumptions about linear time, closure, and historical finality?

- What is the role of the researcher as a witness: to whom, or to what, are we ultimately accountable when documenting marginalized or spectral histories?

- In considering Josephine’s story, what parallels arise with the experiences and migrations of your own family or community?

Further Reading

Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. University of

Minnesota Press, 2008.

Jones, James H. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

Free Press, 1993.

Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society.

Oxford UP, 1980.

Madison, James H. Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana.

Indiana University Press, 2014.

McVeigh, Rory. The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics.

University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Satter, Beryl. Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920. University of California Press, 1999.

Snowden, Frank M. Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present.

Yale University Press, 2019.

Stoesz, David W. Vermillion County, Indiana: People and Places.

Vermillion County Historical Society, 2002.

Tilly, Charles, and Leslie J. Moch. “Emigrants and Immigrants: Western Europe.” Annals of the American Academy of

Political and Social Science, vol. 510, 1990, pp. 13–27.

Zelizer, Viviana A. Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States.

Columbia University Press, 1979.