[movieman64]

OMG, what a coincidence, I've been working on a back story for next years haunt and we have decided to call it Lost Ridge Asylum.

Here's what I have so far, I'm not much of a writer, but it has worked in the past for a Haunted House, maybe somebody can give some suggestions
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In 1829 Dr. Ephriam Pratt, a wealthy and somewhat eccentric Doctor of Psychiatry moved to the recently founded City of Sleepy Lake, from New York City. Dr. Pratt had long dreamed of starting his own Asylum for the housing and treatment of the mentally insane, and was drawn to the region do to its expansive land areas and low prices, along with it’s reasonable proximity to a couple of growing towns. Pratt purchased approximately 600 acres Southeast of a small village that is now known as the city of Carthage.

Construction of Pratt’s Asylum, named Lost Ridge for the long winding ridge on the far northern border of the estate, began in September of 1830. The asylum was designed to house 500 patients with accommodations for approximately 100 staff members. Pratt and his wife Elizabeth had purchased a small home in the nearby village so that Pratt could be close by to supervise construction. From the very beginning the construction process was wrought with delay and disaster. Rumors that the asylum was being built on land, which had once been an Indian burial ground, caused many of the local workers to refuse working at the site. Pratt called in a supposed Indian Medical Man to bless the site to help calm the fears of the workers. Still the construction was plagued with tragedy. Two workers were killed when one of the interior corridor walls they were working on collapsed, they were trapped for several hours and their screams for help could be heard late into the night while their fellow workers tried in vain to save them. Another worker was killed when he fell from the roof and was impaled on a portion of the iron fence, which surrounded the building, it is rumored that you can still here the cries of these men at night waiting for their rescue which never came. Despite all of the setbacks the asylum was completed in May of 1832.

Almost immediately the Asylum began receiving patients from all areas of Indiana. By the spring of 1833 they had reached their capacity of 540 patients and were operating with a staff of 6 Doctors, 74 Nurses and 31 support staff. Dr. Pratt was quickly gaining notoriety as a leading authority of new and sometimes controversial treatments for the insane, which he and his staff practiced. Pratt and his wife had grown tired of their small home in town and he decided on construction of a residence on the grounds of Lost Ridge Asylum. The home was completed in the summer of 1834 and dubiously named Lost Ridge Manor. Tragedy again struck Lost Ridge when one of the night nurses was repeatedly stabbed and killed after a severely psychotic patient broke out of his room, and drug her into one of the lavatories.