DEJARNETTE SANITARIUM Former Hospital — Staunton, Virginia Status: Demolished · Access: Restricted access · est. 1932 Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/dejarnette-sanitarium-staunton-virginia/ Staunton landmark with a published haunting reputation. DeJarnette Sanitarium is a former hospital in Staunton, Virginia, built in 1932. Staunton landmark with a published haunting reputation. The archive files it under haunting reports, former hospitals and dark history. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 2 documented facts — documented record and retelling kept side by side. Demolished — only the file and the location survive. The most haunted building in Virginia, by internet consensus, sits beside the interstate at Staunton with its white columns lit by headlights — a boarded-up asylum whose founder appears in the United States Reports. Dr. Joseph S. DeJarnette did not merely run the place that bears his name; he helped write the law that filled it, and the Supreme Court's opinion in Buck v. Bell preserves the movement he led. The haunting file on DeJarnette Sanitarium is unusual in one respect: the documented record is worse than the legend. The ghost hunters bring flashlights. The archive brings the sterilization ledger. THE DOCUMENTED RECORD Joseph Spencer DeJarnette, born 1866, became superintendent of Staunton's Western State Hospital — formerly the Western Lunatic Asylum — in 1906, where he built a reformer's reputation: restraints banned, wards unlocked, buildings expanded. In 1932 he opened a self-supporting, semi-private sanitarium next door for "middle-income" patients the era classified as mental defectives and drug abusers. The General Assembly renamed it the DeJarnette State Sanatorium in 1934. DeJarnette was also a central figure of Virginia's eugenics program — the same man who unlocked wards lobbied for the 1924 compulsory sterilization law, championed the cause that produced Buck v. Bell in 1927, and publicly admired the Nazi sterilization apparatus, remarking in substance that the Germans were beating America at its own game. Virginia sterilized roughly 8,000 people between 1927 and 1979; he claimed the national figure at his urging exceeded 27,000 by 1938. He was forced out in the early 1940s and retired in 1943. THE SECOND INSTITUTION The building's later life complicates the legend. Renamed the DeJarnette Center for Human Development in 1975, it operated as a state-run children's psychiatric facility until 1996, when services moved to a newer site and the old complex was abandoned in place — papers, wheelchairs and all, as the explorer footage reliably shows. Former patients of that second institution have written about returning to it in memory. Their accounts describe an imposing presence rather than a paranormal one — flashbacks converging with a decaying building, which is its own kind of haunting and requires no equipment to document. One former patient describes the structure's columns seeming to glow in the dark, and notes that the ghost-hunt genre has already done the building to formula: someone insists they saw a shadow move, someone else reports a cold draft. WHAT THE LEGEND FILES The paranormal claims follow the abandoned-asylum template with unusual fidelity: shadow figures in the halls, cold drafts, voices, doors that respond to attention. It is reliably listed as the most haunted asylum in Virginia, which the archive files under listicle rather than incident. The architecture does the marketing. The white-columned facade faces Interstate traffic, rows of boarded windows flank the entrance, and the interior supplies the rest — a ruin visible to every driver on the valley's main road, which is exactly where a public haunting needs to be. WHAT REMAINS The complex still stands at Staunton, periodically surveyed, periodically slated for redevelopment, and continuously trespassed. Virginia issued a formal statement of regret for its sterilization program in 2002 — the first state to do so — and in 2015 approved compensation of up to $25,000 for living survivors. The dossier closes on a register note: a building can be haunted by its paperwork. DeJarnette's is — 8,000 documented cases — and the ghost hunters in the dark halls are, whatever else is true, in the right building. FILED CLAIMS — 2 on record, reported not verified · [Documented legend] unspecified haunting: Tourism recounts alleged spirits on the grounds. The site in Staunton, Virginia gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The account appears in 'Staunton Haunted Locations'. The haunting is unproven and unfired: it keeps showing up for work anyway. source: Staunton Haunted Locations (https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/) · [Internet rumor] reported anomalies: Explorers and staff reported voices and figures in the abandoned wards. The site in Staunton, Virginia gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. Digital folklore: the retellings are documented, the original event less so. 'DeJarnette Sanitarium' carries the account. Nothing here would make headlines alone; together the reports make a pattern. source: DeJarnette Sanitarium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeJarnette_Sanitarium) HISTORY — 2 documented facts · Opened1932 as Western State Hospital's special-pay unit; became independent1946. The children's program relocated in1996. A documented history gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that spine. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Commonwealth Center overview and institutional timeline'. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context. · [1932–1975] Opened in 1932 as DeJarnette’s private sanitarium; its founder championed Virginia’s forced-sterilization program. DeJarnette Sanitarium's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'DeJarnette Sanitarium'. The record keeps it — history, not lore. SOURCES — 3 cited · Staunton Haunted Locations — Visit Staunton https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/ · Commonwealth Center overview and institutional timeline — Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services https://dbhds.virginia.gov/facilities/ccca/overview/ · DeJarnette Sanitarium — Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeJarnette_Sanitarium — HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not. Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/