DeWitt State Hospital
DeWitt State Hospital is a hospital in Auburn, California, built in 1946. The WWII-era hospital where hundreds of patients were sterilized—and where the truth was hidden. It sits in the archive under haunted places, historic hospitals and dark history. The dossier holds 2 reported claims and 1 documented fact — documented record and retelling kept side by side. Access is restricted — check current rules before planning anything.
Former or operating state hospital grounds; verify access before visiting.
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Is DeWitt State Hospital haunted?
The record holds 2 claims — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed media reported. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
DeWitt State Hospital was built for war and repurposed for the mind. The Army threw up DeWitt General Hospital in 1943 in the Auburn foothills to take Pacific casualties — thousands of wounded men treated in a facility that ran barely two years before the war ended and the hospital was declared surplus in December 1945.
California bought it in 1946 under a deed restriction requiring it to serve as a mental institution for twenty-five years — the state's answer to overcrowded asylums, initially accepting only transfers from other hospitals, then direct admissions from the Sierra foothill counties. By 1960 it held over 2,800 patients, past capacity; by 1972, when the deed expired, the state closed it, and the two-year shutdown emptied the wards and the town's economy with it.
The campus sat in limbo — the WWII wards and state-hospital wings moldering while Placer County argued over reuse, the kind of vast abandoned medical complex that generates its own ghost-lore whether the buildings deserve it or not. The file keeps the double life: the wartime hospital that became a mental institution by federal deed, the patients who filled it past capacity, and the closure that took the town's second economy with it.
DeWitt State Hospital is the archive's hand-me-down file — the WWII Army hospital turned state asylum by deed restriction, 2,800 patients at peak, closed in 1972 and left to the foothills and the folklore.
Why this file matters
DeWitt is the archive's surplus file — a hospital built for war wounded, converted to mental care by legal restriction, and abandoned when the twenty-five years ran out.
A hospital twice repurposed keeps its wards — the file's suggestion being that DeWitt's hold is the layered use: the casualty wards, the asylum wings, and the empty campus where both institutions' patients left their mark.
DeWitt General Hospital was a World War II US Army hospital in Auburn, California, in Placer County at the corner of C Avenue and First Street. The hospital was built in 1944 to care for troops returning home from overseas service and troops that served on the home front. The first patient checked in on February 17, 1944. The hospital had 2,285 beds housed in single story buildings over the 284 acres campus. DeWitt General Hospital was three miles north of downtown Auburn.
DeWitt General HospitalThe long record
- 1946Built
Hospital constructed
- 1946Opened
Opened to use
- 1946History
Opened 1946; the sterilization record and mass grave are documented; closed 1972. DeWitt State Hospital's operational history is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath the asylum lore. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'DeWitt State Hospital'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.
- 1972Closed
Ceased operation
The record of claims
The sterilizations and mass grave are documented—not legend. The institution's reports concentrate where the confinement was worst — the building's own floor plan supplies the map. Coverage gave the claim its audience; proof remains another matter. Sources including 'DeWitt State Hospital' keep the claim in circulation. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.
Reported a presence near the cemetery and voices on the grounds. DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California spent its working years housing the desperate; the reports suggest some of that desperation stayed. It's anecdotal evidence in the strictest sense — stories, repeated, unresolved. The account appears in 'DeWitt State Hospital'. The pattern of small anomalies is itself the claim — none dramatic alone, persistent together.
Documented history
Opened 1946; the sterilization record and mass grave are documented; closed 1972. DeWitt State Hospital's operational history is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath the asylum lore. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'DeWitt State Hospital'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.
Sources on file
- 01DeWitt State HospitalWikipedia · encyclopedia · A4
Field notes & open questions
State hospital batch B; VERIFY task auto-queued.