Dreemit's World: Willard Insane Asylum 'Cemetery'- A Sea of People Buried in a Field of Unmarked Graves

Lawrence Mocha
June 23, 1878 - October 26, 1968
In his half century as a Willard patient Lawrence dug over 1500 graves of his fellow patients, who are buried in this cemetery, that they might have a final resting place long after the world had forgotten them.

Placed by some of his admirers in May of 2015

From The Window of my Secret Childhood Fort-Episode One of Dreemit's World

My parents house is located a mere quarter of a mile from here. When I was a kid there was no sign indicating what was up on that hill. There was a chain across that stoned driveway, but the gravel was not there, just tall grass. In fact the only things you will see in these pictures that existed prior to the last ten years, are the grave stones for the veterans, one tree, and the Jewish cemetery sign, all on the right hand side overlooking the lake.

The left hand side was a vast hilly field that gave no indication that beneath the ground more than fifty thousand people were buried. Patients who had lived and died in the Willard asylum for over a century.

Which brings me to a very creepy fact I had to face--my friends and I once played on that field a great deal. It was a perfect spot for all manner of sports- tag, soccer, softball, etc. We even built a fort in the patch of woods overlooking the lake behind the Jewish cemetery. As far as we knew, the only place people were buried were underneath those stones. We had no idea that beneath where we were running, jumping and tumbling was a veritable sea of skulls and bones.

Since my father worked at the Willard Psychiatric center (the final name it was changed to before closing down) you would think he might have alerted me to this fact--err..well he might have, except I'm now remembering he didn't know we were playing up there. The chain that went across it at the time had a posted sign, and trespassing isn't something you go home and tell your folks about.

This sign was here when I was a kid, and I remember wondering why it was not placed in front of the stones-which are located about a hundred feet to the right of this. In fact we thought that this was a Jewish cemetery, we had no idea it was affiliated with the Asylum whatsoever.
It was much much later that I learned the stones were for war veterans and that the Jewish people were buried in the ground behind the sign.

Is it just me, or does that look like a fresh grave? Considering the asylum, or psychiatric center, has been closed for over twenty years I'm a little perplexed (and a touch disturbed) by this.

Here is where things get strange. Apparently when they finally decided to organize this mass burial ground, they found maps indicating that people had been buried according to religion. In the front of this field on the right hand side were the Old Protestants.

Adjacent to and on the left hand side went the Old Catholics apparently.

At some point they put in blue stone as a pathway. Supposedly this is free of bodies since the religions could not be mixed and therefore required a separation.

Somewhere beneath this pretty field is a massive tangle of Old Protestant bones.

Can anyone tell me what the difference between an old Protestant or Catholic and a new Protestant or Catholic is?

It was a long walk to the last sign which simply says Jewish. I would assume it meant New Jewish, as there is an Old Jewish cemetery sign by the veterans...maybe the sign maker just forgot and didn't feel like making a new one?
There does appear to be some significance to the fact that this is way in the back, and I know that it was likely during a time period when the Jewish people were being ostracized. But why then, did the Old Jewish burial site not only get a sign, but a pretty spot overlooking the lake?
Definitely things to ponder.

I know I said this in the beginning, but over fifty thousand people buried beneath the ground.

Do you see that tree in the distance? When we used to play here, I can't remember who it was that first dubbed it this, but irony of ironies we called that The Tree of Life because it looked like something we'd seen in a story book.

For a moment the clouds began to roll in, and until that moment I hadn't really felt the impact of where I was.

It really does look like every picture I've ever seen of The Tree of Life.

Impenetrable storage buildings with iron bars on the windows and doors that I'm almost certain are made of oak. (Not that I ever tried to break in, but I might have known some neighborhood hoodlums who did)

They've been abandoned for at least as long as my family has lived here, so going on thirty years, and no one seems to know what's in them.

Okay, that's not entirely true, the story is that nothing is in them. But you don't lock things up tighter than a nun's unmentionables for 'nothing'.

As kids our theory was that spirits were trapped in here, evil, ax wielding psychopath spirits, never ever to be let out.

What do you think?

mass burial video

If you enjoyed this post, here are some others you might also like:
dreemitsworld: Secret Childhood Fort
dreemitsworld: Childhood Home
dreemitsworld: Amish Paradise
dreemitsworld: Abandoned Insane Asylum

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