Peoria State Hospital - The Man Who Cried at His Own Funeral

Four thousand people are buried on a hill outside Peoria, Illinois, and most of them don't have names — just numbers, pressed into small flat stones. For eight years, every time one of them went into the ground, a man was there to cry. He couldn't speak. Nobody ever learned his real name. The staff called him Old Book, after the only thing anyone knew about his past, and they loved him. He dug the graves of strangers and then wept for them under an elm tree at the edge of the field, because no one else was coming. Then in 1910 they buried him — and roughly four hundred people watched him cry at his own funeral. This week on Destination Terror, we're going to Peoria State Hospital, and it isn't the asylum story you're expecting. There were no cruel doctors here. No barbaric experiments. The man who ran this place took the bars off the windows and fought the Illinois legislature over the word "incurable." The horror on this hill isn't cruelty. It's grief — thousands of people who died unclaimed in a place that was genuinely trying, and went into the ground under a number anyway. The Graveyard Elm. The coffin that came up empty. And a hospital superintendent who risked his entire scientific reputation to write down what four hundred people saw, for one reason: so somebody would remember the old man who cried at every funeral. #DestinationTerror #Eeriecast #TrueHaunting #HauntedHistory #PeoriaStateHospital #BartonvilleAsylum #OldBook #GraveyardElm #HauntedIllinois #AbandonedAsylum #GhostStories #Paranormal #TrueGhostStories #HauntedPlaces #Illinois EXPLORE MORE SPINE-CHILLING CONTENT: Freaky Folklore: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/freaky-folklore Carman's Crypt (Original Horror): https://www.carman-carrion.com/ Deadly Intent (True Crime): https://www.carman-carrion.com/ Destination Terror: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/destination-terror ________________________________________ SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/carmancarrion ________________________________________ CONNECT WITH CARMAN: Website: https://www.carman-carrion.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarmanCarrion Twitter/X: https://x.com/CarmanCarrion Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmancarrion/ ________________________________________ SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0uiX155WEJnN7QVRfo3aQY iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freaky-folklore/id1550361184 Your support helps bring you more terrifying tales. ________________________________________ DISCOVER MORE HORROR: http://eeriecast.com/ https://www.carman-carrion.com/ ________________________________________ MUSIC CREDITS: Music and sound effects provided by: ElevenLabs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices