By Elise Bechtel
As many students at CI know, our university was originally built as the Camarillo State Hospital. Because of this history alone, many students speculate that CI is haunted, and some have even reported paranormal experiences.
However, before you decide whether you think CI is haunted, we will take a walk down history lane to see why these hauntings may occur and how the history ties into the alleged paranormal happenings on campus.
The buildings that make up much of CI were erected between 1932 and 1936, but the land is much older. According to CI’s news release “Road to Restoring Sat’wiwa,” before the mental hospital occupied the land, the Chumash would gather at Round Mountain “for the winter solstice and set up shrines to celebrate harmony, healing, forgiveness and compassion.” However, as mentioned in that news release, this tradition last took place about 200 years ago.
John Spoor Broome Library hosts a collection of records about Camarillo State Hospital. According to the homepage of this collection, California acquired 1,500 acres to build the mental hospital in 1932. Upon its initial completion in 1936, it “was designed to house 7,000 patients and over 700 staff.”
As mentioned in an article by Sarah Moore for ABC News entitled “A brief history of mental health care in California,” many mental hospitals of the era have reputations of abuse and neglect, and the Camarillo State Hospital is no different. There are also rumors, and some proof, that the staff at the hospital were neglectful and abusive to patients.
According to a 1976 Los Angeles Times article by Ellen Hume, incoming patients were often drugged with “mixed shots of Thorazine, Stelazine and Hyoscine, or Serentil, Stelazine and Hyoscine,” a practice which was later discontinued due to a jury inquisition into suspicious patient deaths.
A grand jury report investigated the mistreatment of patients and found that there were many ethical and medical areas in need of improvement. The report stated, “The omission of real nursing care has been noted time after time during this investigation. We attribute that to lack of knowledge and skill on one hand, and to indifference, neglect and poor administration on the other.”
Based on the history of the buildings at CI, it may not be hard to believe the school could be haunted. Within the paranormal community, it is believed that mistreatment of a person at or before death can cause a person’s spirit to stay on Earth. To do what, is debated; some think the person has unfinished business, while others believe that they are stuck or that they choose to stay in a place they are familiar with.
Whether or not CI is haunted, I am a firm believer that negative activities and emotions leave a type of energy that stays in the area. It is like when you are in an empty building and feel like something is watching you. The ghost stories I have heard about CI range from children looking out the windows of abandoned buildings to a dark shadow watching students sleep and, of course, the infamous screaming lady in Bell Tower.
The history surrounding the campus is complicated and, at times, dark. There were reportedly many suspicious patient deaths and unethical practices that took place at the Camarillo State Hospital. Students are divided as to whether they believe in the stories of paranormal happenings on campus, but I think most of us can agree that CI can get pretty creepy at night.
So, do you believe in ghosts?
For more information on the history of CI, you can visit the Broome Library archives to find general information regarding CI’s history, as well as photos and documents from the mental hospital. You can also access the grand jury report at https://repository.library.csuci.edu/bitstream/handle/10139/6164/CSH0019$.pdf?sequence=1.
