Here's an email I received in reference to the post: Questions, referring to the Ridgecliff Psychiatric Hospital
hi- my name is rich and i gotta share this with you.
an old acquaintance of mine named Todd just added to your site today because of me. I am writing you as to hold testimony to his truthful credibility.
the way this whole thing started was earlier in the week i was telling a female musician friend of mine who lives in Euclid about the nutziest / craziest Halloween party that ive ever been to in my life. I tried to tell her about where it was but i had to go on a personal scavenger hunt to find. I even called the city and the old timers couldnt place the building. they even referred me to the historical dept which supposedly actually has pictures of it so i am told. so I hunted down todd on the web. (scavenger hunt #2 as for i havent seen or talked to him since 1980~ish. ) he briefly e-mailed me the name of the place and then i found your site surfing. then after reading it i just had to pass it along to todd as f.y.i.
I am happy i did cause he added an entry to your blog . he e-mailed again briefly saying he will add more to your blog. he said some of the spook stories other than sounds was there were things/ objects that he saw physical move and said stuff got moved when he wasnt looking !
take care rich z.....
I am 49 yrs old now but this party was as mentioned ~1982~ish. I worked with Todd ~1980 at a gas station. He was a young (extremely awesome)musician. As mentioned his dad's company hired him to live and take care the abandoned Ridgecliff. He invited a few dozen of us friends to a party at this building he was living at. It was a costume Halloween party. His bed was centered in the the recreation area. He had like the worlds largest bedroom lol! Since he is a musician he also had his band set up in the rec room for this party. So for fun he turned us loose on a hide and go seek venture on the upper 2 or 3 floors. that was creepy cause the only lighting on those floors was from the parking lot lamp posts shining thru the windows. He also had a few strobe lights in the stair wells- holy smokes what a trip! I remember most of the rooms were all gutted with their hospital stuff removed. I remember the nurses stations and also the pharmacy vaults too. I remember there were a few shower type (hose down) rooms that looked like they would strap the patients down and hose(or shower) them down. Most of all i remember what i called the solitary confinement rooms. yes the proverbial rubber rooms! there was a single bed in them and the whole room was only about 2 feet wider than the bed. the walls were padded(not really rubber!) oh yes the beds were bolted to the floors. The only window in the room was in the door at the foot of the bed. It was a square 6" inches of safety glass (with wire mesh in it).Gosh you could only just imagine the horrors in that HaHa Motel! To the folx working there this was an every day thing.
Ridgecliffe psychiatric hospital is now known as Laurelwood behvioral health center and is a building attached to the back of Lake West Hospital in Willoughby, Ohio. It has never been closed or abandoned since its opening there fore no one could have had a halloween party on the grounds. PS I am a psych nurse and "padded rooms" look nothing like you are describing.
ReplyDeleteBefore Laurelwood, there was Ridgecliff in Wickliffe, across from the City Hall, on 84, Ridge Road. It was a beautiful old mansion with gorgeous gardens. It was knocked down sometime in the mid-late 70s and the patients moved to the new Laurelwood.
DeleteAt one time it was used as a haunted house!
DeleteWrong. My mother was a patient at the old Ridgecliff and it was NOT located near Laurelwood. And yes, she described those "padded" rooms that "dont" exist
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DeleteI was a panient there in the 7o's and yes those padded rooms sucked I was strapped down a few times, and in solitary
DeleteWould have like to continue reading more about Ridgecliff.
ReplyDeleteI grew up across the street and can remember watching the abandoned building on the hill and hearing all of the stories. As a young teen, along with a couple friends, we were able to gain access to the building when they began the demolition process. I remember being completely freaked out by the "padded rooms". Which, by the way, were as described...beds had been removed by that point.
In 1978 the City of Wickliffe let us have our haunted house there.We had the total run of the place.We were even allowed to use everything in there.Me and the people setting up the "haunted house" spent about 2 months there.It was a real freaky place.I found these letters in a office talking about patients and what was done to them.I sure wish I would have kept some stuff from there!We would hear noises all the time.We had very limited electric set upIt would just shut off and we all be in the dark!!LOLIt was strange there.We loved it!I saw the padded rooms too.I have a picture of me and a friend of mine in our haunted house room.I have my leg thu ahole we made in one of the beds.We were each in a old hospital gown we found in a storage room.It sure was great to be able to spend so much time there.I'm 50 years old now.I have nbever forgotten it!!
ReplyDeleteHi, This Janine Sechler, I used to work at Ridgecliff, as a nurses-aid, I used to try to heal some patients, but some were on so many meds, it was so hard to see them in so much pain. I know my email: but prefer my mail: jis447777@yahoo.com worked there in 1967 to 9-68. My husband got me pregnant had to quit.
DeleteJanine, I grew up in Euclid & it Ridgecliffe Mental Hospital was on Euclid Avenue on top of hill up a long windinding driveway in Euclid,Ohio. I remember once a patient escaped and was hit by a train on Babbitt road that was in early 70's
DeleteI remember going to the Ridgecliff haunted house when the Jaycees allowed it to be there before it was demolished. I was 18 years old and it scared the bajezes outta me!!! I distinctly remember the 4 x 4 ceramic tiles in the 'treatment' rooms....they had sprayed a blood-like looking substance on those white tiles and it was horrifying. Years later, as a new bride, my husband and I bought our starter home. The first thing to GO were the 4 x 4 white ceramic tile in the kitchen. Every time I looked at them, I saw those blood streaked walls at the RIDGECLIFF ASYLUM! Those rooms were just as described above...a bed bolted to the floor in a very narrow room with a door with a small observation window in it. There were a lot of people that saw this FIRST HAND. Good times!
ReplyDeleteSorry, folks. That hospital was sold and razed ca. 1972-5. There were no blood soaked walls. Many of the patients were chronically ill. Some were not. Much of the population was geriatric. It operated from 1932 to roughly 1970. Ridgecliff was founded in 1932 and located directly across from the Wickliffe town hall on Ridge & Bishop Roads.
ReplyDeleteThe original house was built in the 1920's by a man who lost his fortune in the 1929 crash.
The city of Wickliffe did not have any rights to the property. It was privately owned, then sold to a rest home outfit which built a nice facility still operating.
anonymous,
DeleteDo you know anything about any medalions the hospital used to have? I found one metal detecting and on the back side is a number, 146. It also says "drop in any mailbox. Return postage guaranteed". If you ever see this post again, please respond to oneid98@yahoo.com thank you.
I grew up in my grandparents home on Ridge Rd just down the street from the original Ridge Cliff Sanitarium. We always heard stories of screams heard in the night from the property, so naturally as teens, we had to explore it. The hospital had long since been moved to 260th and Euclid ave location and then yes,to Willoughby as Laurelwood. I can attest to the cells in the basement and beds bolted to the floor. I can also say by the time we walked from the basement to the upstairs main floor, the hair standing on the backs of our necks, none of us wanted to stick around. That site was never razed. In the late 90's it was renovated into a physical therapy building. I had a cousin who worked there who said they were plagued by cold spots, unexplained noises, "presences and odors. They moved out in a few years time and it was then a day care center and is now listed as a driver's ed center.
DeleteI can confirm the screams in Ridgecliff Hospital since I was once a patient there when I was 11 or 12, and there are padded rooms down in the basement where the held the more volatile patients, remember one guy sitting on a bed only in his underwear in a straight jacket, seen a few go through shock therapy while I myself was given a chemical lobotony 1,000 mg of thorazine a day was a zombie
DeleteI was a patient at Ridgecliff in the early 70s. I am not nuts, nor were the other patients. Most were going through depression from things going on in their lives, divorce, deaths, etc. At that point in my life I was going through a divorce and I was suicidal because I was severely depressed, and hence the hospitalization. No different that the people at Laurelwood. It was a beautiful home/building and was sorry to learn that it had been torn down. In my stay there, I never experienced any hauntings.
ReplyDeleteI was there in the early 70,s as well do you remember a girl named Wendy?
DeleteMy mother was too, not exactly sure when but it definitely was the early '70's.
DeleteAs a student of SW doing my field placement from KSU for the Willoughby PD, I worked with a juvenile that at least monthly was admitted to Ridgeview for suicidal issues. I was never upstairs, but I remember the lobby/entrance was beautiful and most impressive. My client talked about the bowling alley in the facility and she actually enjoyed going...actually created situations that would get her admitted and stayed as long as each admission was covered by insurance. She had free reign of the place and I never got the impression that this was "chained-up/lock down, hose down" described by some above. Actually the opposite, more "resort" type of care. That was many years ago and the attitudes about mental illness care have gone through many changes, but because of stigma about the "scary" images is why there are not enough facilities to treat those that need short term care and not beds other than in ER's and detention centers.
ReplyDeleteSo much of what I've read is wrong. Ridgecliffe Psychiatric Hospital was at 260th and Euclid Ave. at the top of a hill. in Euclid, OH. I believe it was an old mansion converted to a hospital. I worked there in 1975 and 1976 as a Social Worker. They did have a locked unit in the basement. Patients ranged from young to old. Not a nursing home, but a short term psychiatric hospital. When it closed, it did move to Lake West campus and became Laurelwood. I worked there a year, no sightings of hauntings, but it was a creepy old building!
ReplyDeleteMost of what is being referred to in the comments is the original building located across the street from Wickliffe City Hall on Ridge Road, in Wickliffe. The location you are referring to is the one that opened AFTER the original location closed. The Euclid Ave. location was eventually renamed as Laurelwood and moved to the Lake West Hospital location. I too attended the Jaycees haunted house at the original Ridgecliff site. Scariest thing ever and haven't been to a haunted house since.
DeleteI was a patient in 76 for 3 months. DR. Wallace was my doctor.
DeleteMy band practiced at Ridgecliff Mental Hospital after it closed...still have pictures of it...it was a spooky place. It was in Euclid...the old Glenn Mansion.
ReplyDeleteI remember the Halloween haunted house in the building on Ridge. Best haunted house ever!! Anyone have pictures?? There is still a stone tower structure on the property.
DeleteI cannot speak of the history, but my family lived on Hazel Ave in Wickliffe directly below Ridgecliff between 1956 and 1964. As children, we played in the field and explored the gardens. Though often quiet, the periodic screams would always send us running home. Even in the daytime, it was a scary place for young imaginations.
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ReplyDeleteResearching genealogy, this place came up in a 1940 census for the man I was looking for. I 'googled' it & this site came up. Interestingly, the census not only lists families, but row after row of Patients, followed by again, families. Could it possibly been some type of TB sanitarium? The enumeration sheet I was looking at was dated 5/2/1940, Sheet #28A , SD25 , E.D.No.43-41. That's for any of you genealogy buffs.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was in Ridgecliff when I was about 3 (1969). I have a VAGUE memory about a visit there, but I still see all white walls, some patients in straight jackets, and a man talking/fighting with himself, and I ask my mother who he was talking to, and she replied "Demons. Nothing for you to worry about." O_O
ReplyDeleteI was a patient at Ridgecliff Hospital when I was 11 or 12 years old can't recall the exact age, and yes there were some padded rooms in the basement area, where they kept the one who needed restrained remember seeing one guy sitting on the bed in his underwear with a straight jacket strapped to the bed flailing about, witnessed some to who went through shock therapy, even though I was only 11 or 12 at the time they still gave me 1,000 mg of Thorazine a day, I was a zombie for a long time, had no emotions just stood and stared or walked around aimlessly was a Thorazine for, but to this day I kinda miss being there weird I know but.
ReplyDeleteAnd it was on the hill
DeleteI remember hanging out in the building that was left After tear down of Big main side of building. 80-83, abandoned and creepy, still have pictures in photo Album with dates...the good 'ol days
ReplyDeleteI remember hanging out in the building that was left After tear down of Big main side of building. 80-83, abandoned and creepy, still have pictures in photo Album with dates...the good 'ol days
ReplyDeleteI worked there briefly in 1978. The patients ranged in age from early 20’s to geriatric. ECT (electric shock therapy) was used for about 10% of the pts. Some of the patients improved after meds were adjusted. It might have seemed a depressing place, but probably helped some of the patients cope. I’d say an updated version needed today.
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