Ice-pick Lobotomies * Straight Jackets * Seclusion Cells * Ice Water Baths Sound like a scene from a horror movie? Welcome to the 19th century asylum located in Weston, West Virginia. It held the demented, the insane and the unfortunate. Come explore ghosts and haunted history with author Sherri Brake.Built in the 1860's to house 250, the asylum in Weston was overcrowded with 2,400 patients by the 1950's. Barbaric treatments, unsanitary conditions coupled with scandals, murders and suicides made for a nightmarish situation. To some it was a haven from the streets, to others it was hell on earth.