Agnews Insane Asylum

Built around 1918 after the original structure was destroyed in 1912. Workers have witnessed apparitions, strange laughter, screaming, cold spots and freezer doors flying open violently along with the ejection of the contents. Agnews developmental center was torn down and became the new site of the SUN Microsystems Santa Clara Campus.

But The Ghosts Decided To Stay On. Still Haunting The Area Today

But even today after the buildings have been torn down and new ones built people report screams on foggy nights and strange things happening in the new dorm rooms just built there. Doors open , lights are turned on and off and horrible smells just seem to come up out of the floors of the new buildings. The smell has been described as smelling like horrible rotting meat and rooms will fill with smoke for no reason. A old lady known as the lady in yellow because of the yellow dress she is wearing begs people to help her find her children. When you look close or start to question her she simply vanishes. So it seems that even though the old buildings were torn down to make room for new ones the ghosts are refusing to move and may even be angry because of the destruction of their former home.

Agnews Developmental Center is a psychiatric and medical care facility, now located in San Jose, California.

In 1885, the center, originally known as "The Great Asylum for the Insane" was established as a facility for the care of the mentally ill. The main structure, a red brick edifice, was located on land near the village of Agnew, which later became part of Santa Clara.

During the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the center became infamous as the site of the Santa Clara Valley's greatest loss of life resulting from the quake. 117 patients and staff were killed and buried in mass graves on the site. The main building and some others were irreparably damaged. Those graves are still there to day beneth the buildings of the new SUN Microsystems Santa Clara Campus. And it appears the ghosts of those people are haunting the new buildings the same as they did the old ones.

Following this disaster, Agnews was reconstructed in the so-called Mediterranean Revival style, resembling a college campus of two-story buildings; it re-opened circa 1911 as Agnews State Mental Hospital. The facility was a small self-contained town, including a multitude of construction trade "shops", a farm which raised pigs and vegetable crops, a steam generating power plant for heating the buildings by steam, and even a fire department.

At the time, it boasted the largest population in the South San Francisco Bay area, and was served by its own train station which stood at the west end of Palm Drive across Lafayette Street; the station building remained until vandalism and fire precipitated its demolition in the 1990s.

In 1926, Agnews was expanded to include a second campus a couple of miles to the east in San Jose.

During its heyday the center was renowned for progressive and compassionate treatment techniques for the mentally ill.

Individuals with developmental disabilities were first admitted to a special rehabilitation program in 1965. Many programs for the mentally ill were discontinued statewide in 1972, as a result of controversial legislation promoted by then California Governor Ronald Reagan. Since then, the center has been utilized exclusively for the care and treatment of "clients" with developmental disabilities.

The original west campus was closed in 1998 as part of a plan to reduce and eventually close the center.