In 1999, urban spelunker Brittany Loughry has an unusual encounter while trespassing in the Weston Hospital, now known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. Desperate to re-enter the shuttered mental health facility, Brittany blackmails local law enforcement, who are themselves under investigation for crimes within the facility.
A GHOST CHASES THE HORIZON braids Brittany’s story with those of others, whose lives have intersected with the hospital over the course of the twentieth century: Henrietta Tidewater, a Black patient falsely detained at the facility in 1905; Eugene Spangold, a ne’er-do-well farmer who self-commits to the hospital in the 1930s and develops the delusion that he must raze the building on orders from the U.S. President; and Neil Hutchence, who tries to uncover Henrietta’s identity after seeing her name in a serial killer’s diary. These interconnected stories meditate on love, loneliness, and how the splashes of an individual’s life create tidal waves in the future.
In 1999, urban spelunker Brittany Loughry has an unusual encounter while trespassing in the Weston Hospital, now known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. Desperate to re-enter the shuttered mental health facility, Brittany blackmails local law enforcement, who are themselves under investigation for crimes within the facility.
A GHOST CHASES THE HORIZON braids Brittany’s story with those of others, whose lives have intersected with the hospital over the course of the twentieth century: Henrietta Tidewater, a Black patient falsely detained at the facility in 1905; Eugene Spangold, a ne’er-do-well farmer who self-commits to the hospital in the 1930s and develops the delusion that he must raze the building on orders from the U.S. President; and Neil Hutchence, who tries to uncover Henrietta’s identity after seeing her name in a serial killer’s diary. These interconnected stories meditate on love, loneliness, and how the splashes of an individual’s life create tidal waves in the future.
The departing sun slurped the last drop of pigment from the clouds hanging low in the western sky, leaving only tufts of gray to linger on the edge of night. The days stretched to their furthest limit at the precipice of pure solstice. In the blackened hour, Brittany Loughry came down from her hillside home on McGary Avenue and into the municipal blocks of Weston.
The humid air carried the aroma of fresh grass clippings from front yard lawns and fresh-tilled soil from backyard gardens. The symphony of scents built to a crescendo in Brittany’s olfactory and reprised summer smells, already holding the nostalgia of seasons past. The feeling was like a recording; the return of those senses stenciled new memories into the margins of her mind. There was comfort in the self-awareness, and she proceeded feeling like there were many nights yet to record.
In contrast to the pleasant smells, the lingering tinge of diesel exhaust sliced through the pleasant aromas as teenage boys rip-roared through tight streets. They revved and rattled their engines as a de facto mating call to the eligible females within earshot. It played companion to the local brood of cicadas, who emerged after seventeen years underground to scream and rattle endlessly into the abyss of night.
Brittany did her best to eschew both the revving and trilling of males in heat and trekked with purpose, nearing the social commons of the small town.
Dressed in all black with a matching JanSport backpack, Brittany’s hair was a common shoulder-length brown with bangs already out of style near the decade’s end. She debated dying or styling her hair, but the effort did not feel worthwhile. The slender frame she kept was out of fear it was a product of adolescence. She was much stouter in her childhood. Her mother, Glenda, warned rotundness was hereditary and would return without strict adherence to a diet, though Glenda never carried much weight on her, either. Brittany dismissed the warning signs for now. Walking to town provided enough exercise to offset a teenage appetite.
The curfew siren wailed at ten o’clock as it had every night for decades. The alert was as much a relic as the curfew. A repurposed World War II air raid siren, the horn blared a single tone for thirty seconds before dissipating with faint echoes. The sound was loud and long enough to garner the attention of the Weston teenagers who were to return home. They often did not and looked for defiant ways to prod and spit in the face of the law without outright violation. Law enforcement was indifferent anyway. They were one of the few agencies left that held the task of imposing bedtime. It was a weeknight, but summer break was in full swing, and there was little else for youth to do once they separated from their pals to return home. Still, the town officers would make halfhearted sweeps of the shops and alleys where the teens tended to loiter and shooed them back to their respective dwellings.
Brittany didn’t have to obey those rules now that she was a full-fledged adult. For five days, she strutted confidently about the evening with documentation showing she had outgrown the restriction and never hesitated to flash a driver’s license where applicable.
The fewer crimes, the better on this night. Being nabbed for an archaic scofflaw would seem trivial when trespassing was on the agenda.
The Weston Hospital sat on a far corner of town for generations and had recently marked its fifth year of abandonment. The longer the property sat empty, the more galvanized its status as a crown jewel of urban spelunking became.
It was an activity that had first piqued Brittany’s interest in a lark with friends during their junior year. Brittany and her curious classmates broke into an abandoned home south of Weston, a rotting carcass of a structure. Holes in the roof allowed wet leaves to enter the premises and blanketed the floor with fermenting vegetation. The classmates made the excursion based on unsubstantiated rumors it was the site of human sacrifices. The teens’ investigation came up empty, and many in the group caught colds from the October chill. Brittany escaped sickness, but the adrenaline-producing experience sparked her love for old, derelict structures. Over time, the love evolved into a hobby that wandered into passion. It was the perfect combination for a teenager. The sense of danger and the defiance of trespassing were two great thrills combined to create an illicit sport.
The following year, Brittany spent many weekends sneaking into abandoned homes. She kept her activity a secret from everyone, including those who introduced her to the hobby. It would take little for the teens to tattle on everyone if they were exposed for their crimes. Brittany would still explore with friends when invited, but most often struck out on solo expeditions.
Despite the many excursions, law enforcement only caught her scent in two incidents. The first involved vandalism already perpetrated by the time Brittany arrived on the property. A tertiary friend knew she had been there and would not have hesitated to identify Brittany as a suspect had it not been for the real culprits admitting the crime.
The second time was in late winter. Law enforcement could trace tracks through light snow near the Loughry home, but they had insufficient evidence to bring charges. Her case was helped by her father’s steadfast belief Brittany had been in her room all night. The defense itself was flimsy. Law enforcement had only to check the soles of her snow boots to prove guilt. Her father’s insistence was enough to prompt city police to relent.
Brittany suspended her nocturnal hobby while pining for the ultimate structure ripe for exploration. The Kirkbride would have been the obvious choice for Brittany to hone her exploratory abilities if not for a catch. Unlike the forgotten buildings dotting the Lewis County countryside, the hospital grounds were neither forgotten nor condemned.
She made plans to explore the hospital in late spring and began sizing up the security and seeking out classmates who had accomplished the feat.
According to Brittany’s sources, it was effortless to sneak past the guards on any attempt. The security detail was a contract job by the State of West Virginia and left with little supervision or direction other than to keep the building standing. The whole property was almost seven hundred acres, and a decent percentage of acreage was inside the Kirkbride. It was too comprehensive a sweep for three guards, but they managed to keep rabble-rousers at bay–or at least those who left an imprint.
Brittany’s first attempt to enter the asylum was a failure. It was on May 22, 1999. A date committed to memory a decade later when she stumbled upon an archived story deep within the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website. The article referenced the night. Looking back, Brittany was surprised her first and second attempts to enter the building were so close together.
“Where you going on this fine evening?” Jennifer Sampson called from the corner of the convenience store. Jennifer had a three-month head start over Brittany on being an adult and displayed the badge in the form of a lit cigarette. She held a large convenience store cup in the other hand and took intermittent sips from a curled straw.
Brittany’s lip began to curl in response to the question. She could not deny an involuntary smirk. She molded the expression into something more sheepish and returned a lie. “It’s a nice evening. Figure I’d wander around the town for a bit.”
Jennifer had been with her in the early days of urban spelunking and was part of the group during Brittany’s inaugural expedition. Jennifer was also one to contract a nasty cold for the effort.
The young woman whipped her head around to command strands of dark hair behind her shoulder. She flicked the ash off the receding cigarette with one hand, and the other rattled the ice in the white Styrofoam cup. She took a last noisy sip of her drink, followed by a long drag from the smoke. The ritual lasted some time, and Brittany questioned if she should move on from the rite, bored by the intermission. But Jennifer looked out of place, and Brittany took the time to remain and marvel. She wore flip-flops and frayed shorts that rode high on her pale thighs.
“I see which direction you’re going,” Jennifer accused and nodded toward Second Street, which led to the empty hospital. “I call bullshit on your wanderings.”
Brittany turned her eyes in the same direction. Two blocks of downtown were still obscuring the view of the hospital, but Brittany was already busted.
“You’re going to have a hard time getting inside,” Jennifer continued without receiving an answer. “Didn’t you hear about the paintball incident?”
She had, but feigned ignorance to gather more information. “No. What happened?”
Jennifer took a final puff and let the butt drop to the ground. There could have been enough tobacco left for two or three more takes, but she was excited to tell the story to the uninformed.
“Bunch of police officers, local and state guys, all broke into the hospital and had a paintball war. This apparently happened two weekends in a row. They completely wrecked the inside. We’re talking thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.”
Brittany found her first failed attempt to enter the Kirkbride odd. She was not turned away by the normal security guards but by a town police officer cloaked in tactical gear. Stuart Prince, or Officer S. K. Prince, as he preferred, seemed nervous as he gleaned her intentions.
She stammered to explain that she was passing through. Some shortcuts intersected the property, but not so close to the building. Still, Officer Prince allowed her to continue without incident, which was both fortunate and suspicious.
Brittany exhaled with frustration. “I reckon security is going to be tight then?”
“Maybe,” Jennifer answered. She swaggered a bit and approached Brittany. Jennifer’s leaning posture indicated she had secret information to pass. When she spoke, it was with a whispered rasp that remained at an average volume.
“If you’re trying to get into the main building, the inside of the closest wing to Second Street has a broken door in the back. It’s a white wooden door, and the hinges are rusted. Turn the latch and lift on it; it should slip off the lock and open. There are extra guards on patrol, but no one goes inside. They’re too chickenshit. Guards don’t watch the street from that side, either. It’s supposed to be the town police’s job.”
Brittany snickered. “You mean the ones who caused the problem to start with?”
Jennifer backed up and tapped on the side of her nose. “They would love for someone else to cause trouble in there. Take the heat off them. If you make it inside, just tell me how bad they fucked up the place.”
“Thanks for the tip. I owe you a pack of smokes,” Brittany said. “That’s a thing I can buy now.”
Jennifer gave an apathetic nod. Brittany returned it with a halfhearted salute and rounded the corner to the front of the store. She had intended to buy a bottle of water or SoBe fruit juice, but Jennifer held her for too long, and Brittany did not want to be wrangled into the herd of teens who were being led from social pasture.
As she passed the large window, Brittany caught sight of Samuel Beck at the magazine rack. He held the exact fruit drink she craved. She further weighed the possibility of entering the store. She liked Sam. She found him pleasant in humor and temperament. He had been in the party during her first urban excursion as well. She was not aware if he had participated in similar activities before or after that night. She did know that he maintained a humorous outlook throughout the entire event. Brittany would have loved for him to be on other group journeys if he could stay silent when the situation grew heavy.
Sam had charm, though Brittany did not find his round face or sturdy frame attractive. The young man’s personality and physicality averaged out to an okay. She stared through the glowing window a moment more but declined to enter. Though she craved a quip from his always keen insight, there were more pressing matters. She raised a goodbye hand to no one and disappeared into the night.
Brittany was never a lonely girl, but reveled in lonely places. Her long-term status as an only child accustomed her to introversion. She made it a skill to turn her social dial higher or lower as needed, but kept the default setting low. If she wanted to talk to someone, she would not hesitate. Shyness was not a factor in the choice to interact, nor was it a reason to remain in solitude. Brittany preferred silence to a loud, blustering world.
She connected with Second Street two blocks down and traversed the short bridge across the river. Though trees blocked most of the view, the outline of the Kirkbride took shape in the night. Light from Weston illuminated the facade, but the far-reaching monolith stretched into the dark. The northern end of the building stretched close to the street, save a tree and several yards of turf.
A joyous tingle jolted through Brittany’s core, but focus returned when she remembered the most treacherous part of the trek was upon her. After crossing the short bridge, Weston City Hall sat on the opposite side of the roadway. It was once a rail depot, later converted into offices for town officials and the Weston Police Department. The police department was what worried Brittany the most. She kept a side eye on the empty lot while passing. The parking area was clear except for personal vehicles and a retired cruiser. The officers were likely in the thick of the teenage wilderness, haphazardly herding high schoolers home.
Lewis County Emergency Services was the last hurdle along the path. The squad bay sat another block away behind the Kirkbride. She did not fret about them as much as she had about the town police. Someone was likely on call inside the facility, but would not concern themselves too much with the exterior. Only an active call or a scheduled smoke break would bring someone outside. Brittany cut a path between the rescue squad building and the Kirkbride, keeping an eye on the closed bay doors.
The fluorescent light brightening the lot emitted a loud hum. A collection of insects danced around the blue glow and provided the area’s only movement.
The buzzing faded in the distance, replaced by the cicada trill. Brittany made one last turn towards the space between the wards that jutted east to west. Though it was dark, the residual glow of the squad bay produced enough illumination for Brittany to discern a white door along the limestone exterior.
The splintered and rotting door left Brittany wondering if it had been that bad while the hospital was still open. The nightmare of maintaining security in such a large and decrepit place had to have been as exhausting as it was impossible. The door handle had a bike pedal shape but with a hollowed center for a hand to grip. She grabbed and twisted. Flecks of rust scraped free from the mechanism, but the door allowed nothing. Brittany tried again and took Jennifer’s advice by pressing upward on the handle as she rotated. Brittany placed her free hand under the torquing wrist to provide extra pressure. The handle still did not turn, but the combination of pressing and twisting caused the lock to slip from its groove and come loose against the frame.
Brittany sighed in amazement. She spun her body inside and scanned the outer perimeter for voyeurs. Nothing. She gave a pleased nod and pulled the trick door firmly to the frame.
A corridor bejeweled with glazed tile spirited Brittany from the dark rear of the Kirkbride into friendlier halls illuminated by the red glow of EXIT signs at their respective outlets.
She made minimal use of her flashlight, shining it only when she detected an obstruction—an old wheelchair left to deteriorate, a bed frame pulled partway from a room, folding chairs, open and closed. The obstacles were few compared to the vast stretches of halls that reached inward, but Brittany took time to marvel at every item as if they had been relics.
Each burst of her light revealed thick motes of dust that shuffled in front of her, giving the appearance that they were leading Brittany to her destination.
There was already abundant evidence of the paintball war. Sporadic specks of red, white, blue, pink, and green appeared throughout the first-floor corridor, leaving color spots and splintered plastic casing caked on the walls. They were too interspersed to suggest the site of a great battle. A minor skirmish may have occurred on the way to the frontline.
Brittany heaved through a final metal door and saw a perpendicular hallway ahead. She had arrived at the center, the hall where patients would enter on their way to admittance and captivity. They either exited the front when they achieved acceptable wellness or were removed through the back to a waiting hearse.
A sense of despair still lingered in that corridor, and Brittany took a chill while she gazed at objects illuminated by the outside light. The night watchmen would be canvassing nearby, and she couldn’t risk giving away her game of hide and seek by using the flashlight here. Brittany padded and kept close to the wall. She listened for the possibility of a guard lurking inside the building, but all was quiet. There did not seem to be any sound for the acres of building surrounding her. Not even the usual sounds of creaking and settling. It was unusual, especially for a cool night after a simmering June day. The quiet was more startling than door slams or footsteps. It gave Brittany the sudden desire to leave the main hall. Two staircases sat on opposite sides, twisting upward into the structure. Brittany stepped softly as she began to climb. The oak groaned as it shouldered her weight, but quieted after the first few steps.
Brittany took her time on the flight but chose not to stop on the second floor. If a watchman decided to enter the building, they would hear her footsteps on the floor above. Moving to the third floor would leave a buffer and give Brittany more opportunity to flee should she hear someone ascend the oak staircase.
The third floor had many escape possibilities. The center section had an exit to a balcony at the front of the building. To the rear was a large room that Brittany could not examine without shining a light, but it echoed her movements from the entrance. She had heard stories of school dances held in the hospital, including her father’s prom. She dismissed the claim as a tall tale until parents of other recent graduates corroborated the story.
A closed door on the far side led to the southern wing, but Brittany remained north. The wedged door made for a faster retreat to the rear exit.
The entrance of the northern wing led to an incline opening to the first ward. Brittany felt it safe to flash her light.
Brittany assumed it was a women’s ward based on the pink trim and flower patterns painted on the white walls. A closer inspection revealed the flower pattern interspersed with sprigs of olive branches, an emblem of peace likely lost on the patients. Brittany ran a finger over the flowers and felt their raised surface against the wall. She looked at the next flower design and realized they were not identical.
Painted?
The third bouquet Brittany found only had a partial replication. What remained was eroded by chipped plaster and paintball markings.
Brittany gasped and shined her light down the corridor. The rows of doors were open and pocked with oily red, blue, and green paint marks.
Battlefront found. The Kirkbride was already in disrepair, and the remains of the war zone did not improve its position. Paint slathered the walls, destroying what may have been hand-painted floral replications. Brittany’s stomach turned at the carnage.
Affected more than expected, Brittany closed her eyes and sighed to dispel her raw emotion. Cops did this. The people who arrested such offenders were now the vandals who levied careless destruction upon another’s property.
Remembering Jennifer’s request, Brittany removed her backpack to extract a disposable camera. As she did, the metal clanking of a pipe rippled throughout the hall. She paused and waited for the reverberation to cease. The building was awake. It seemed to yawn. A guttural groan roared from deep in its bowels. Brittany was unsure if she was the one who had roused it. She moved faster and wound the camera for the first snap.
The first pictures were of the patterns. The pristine replication, followed by the one damaged by police. She traversed past three doors and pointed the camera into the black of the deep hall. After two snaps, Brittany realized the camera’s flash was not up to the challenge and focused on the paintball-damaged doors.
Brittany stepped into the center of the hall and snapped the interior of a room. The number 668 was on a black label above the door. The number immediately prompted Brittany to check the doors around it, curious if there had been a room 666, but the number was not there. A blackboard with the final patients’ names scrawled in red chalk hung where the portal of the damned would have been. The next room down from there was 664.
Brittany returned to 668 after checking. Something had caught her attention inside the room.
Paintball marks are everywhere.
Splatters of paint and plastic were so thick that they bled together and mixed, forming new colors. The pigments were a mix of reds and whites, but some blues blended into purple and brown, depending on where they landed. This was the best example of the vandalism Brittany could condense into a single snapshot, so she began documenting the room, snapping first the barred windows and then the walls.
A flash of white lit the room as Brittany snapped a picture. She knew immediately the light had not come from the flash. More disheartening, it did not subside after the flash. Brittany lowered the camera—the glowing image of a human body floated before her.
Brittany first screamed in a low pitch, but her voice intensified to a screech as she jerked toward the door. She reached the hall’s center and screamed again, this time in a shrill voice at peak volume. The building felt like it was tightening around her, the void of walls forming an esophagus to swallow her into some hellish pit. Panic overcame her, and she cut toward the center rather than look for an exit in the northern wards.
Brittany opened her mouth to exhale but screamed again. She could not help it. Fear expelled from her with every curdle. Back in the center hall, she rounded the oak stairs and lumbered downward, not caring for the sounds she was dispensing.
In the lobby, she considered bursting through the exits and running like hell, but the idea shattered when something grabbed her.
Brittany screamed once more, the loudest she could muster.
“Ah geez, my ear,” a male voice groaned. “You did that right in my ear!”
Brittany shook loose from the man but grew faint and toppled to the floor. The jingle of keys and authoritative stride confirmed his employment as a night watchman. The door to the front of the building was ajar, and another shadow spilled inside.
“I told you I thought I saw a flash of light upstairs,” the second guard boasted.
The first watchman ignored his colleague. “Are you here alone?”
Brittany hesitated to answer. She thought she had been alone. The encounter on the third floor made her consider otherwise.
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is most famous today as an allegedly haunted location where ghost-hunting teams look for evidence of the supernatural. In A Ghost Chases the Horizon, the psychiatric hospital is indeed shown to be haunted, though perhaps not in the traditional spooky sense. Instead, it is given a voice of its own to tell of the various people who lived and died within its walls - stories of human tragedies and failings that imbued the buildings with a strange kind of sentience and energy.
The stories of four main characters from different timelines are told in alternating chapters, each finding its fit in the puzzle of what the hospital was, is, and will be.
In 1999, eighteen-year-old Brittany Loughry spends her last summer before college trespassing on the property, trying to make sense of the mysterious figures she sees in the old wards.
In 1905, young Black woman Henrietta Tidewater is falsely committed by her brother-in-law and repeatedly exploited and violated by a system that cares little that she is not mentally ill.
In 1935, farmer Eugene Spangold self-commits after an incident at the funeral parlor that involves urinating on the floor and a mission from the U.S. president.
In 2019, depressed divorcé Neil Hutchence agrees to help a writer friend with research on a Black female serial killer who spent time at the hospital.
Each story is engaging in its own right, full of mystery and the quirks and misfortunes of its protagonist. But the timelines also bleed together in a fascinating way - their arrangement in the prologue in a non-chronological order feels deliberate, showing that everybody is connected, and what year it is matters little. There is also balance in the perspectives of the various characters, with Brittany and Neil being explorers drawn to the secrets of the hospital, and Henrietta and Eugene as patients.
Various true events from the history of the hospital are seamlessly interwoven with the fictional accounts of the characters' lives as the story explores the very real and gruesome history of mental health care, including invasive non-consensual surgical procedures and the effects of terrible overcrowding, staff incompetence and lack of adequate care. The story also explores the social stigma of being a mental health patient and the treatment of Black patients, especially poignantly in the case of Henrietta, who is not only a Black woman whose parents started their lives as slaves, but she also has a child by a white doctor at the hospital. The way the character of Silkie Le Margaux connects Henrietta and Neil and his friend Demetry who research her life is also very interesting.
Eugene is probably the quirkiest and most enigmatic character - he talks like he swallowed a thesaurus and sharply observes the other patients, while questioning his own sanity in light of the special objective he feels the President entrusted him with. And the way Brittany and Neil find their way to each other through time is fascinating and exciting as they bring a new sense of purpose and joy to each other's lives.
One small thing that doesn't quite land in the intended way is the way Dr. Felix Koenig speaks - the native German that finds its way into his English does not always hold up and some words are not used correctly.
Each timeline stands strong on its own, but the actual magic happens in the way they intertwine, with the main building of the hospital, the Kirkbride, standing as the real main character who has seen it all happen. The various stories are handled with care and compassion, the writing is beautiful and deeply immersive, fleshing out and humanizing each character. The book reads like a monument to lost stories and destinies, giving a voice to the voiceless and allowing their stories to be told.