West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum: Haunted History of Stanley Royd mental health hospital - From an old asylum to ‘haunted’ new flats on the site

Since the hospital, previously known as the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, opened in 1818 and closed in 1995, it has been converted into apartments to accommodate young professionals. Stanley Royd used to have its own chapel on the grounds but that burned down in 2012. The bell tower of the former “lunatic asylum” looms over what are now state-of-the-art flats.

“Believe what you want but I’ve seen two orbs,” said the caretaker Michael who watches over the grounds of what was Stanley Royd Hospital. “People think it’s haunted but it depends on what you believe.” Michael who has been a caretaker on the site for six years said: “We spotted torchlights on CCTV and nobody was there other than the torchlights”

A taxi driver who often picks up residents also said he refused to go in “those corridors” after hearing a few stories. The hospital is also home to a blue plaque dedicated to a former patient who spent the last 41 years of her life locked up for accusing a vicar of lying after he didn’t pay her. Mary Heaton - aka “the tragic patient” - became one of the first to introduce what is now known as “art therapy” to the otherwise draconian mental health care system.

Sarah Cobham, who campaigned for the plaque through her Forgotten Women of Wakefield project, suspects that spirits may live on at the grounds. She said: “That amount of pain and unhappiness in life would be hard to rest in death.”

Ahead of Halloween later this month, our reporter Sophie Mei Lan went to find out more.

I was intrigued to venture underneath the otherwise stylish looking apartment buildings, with only the famous bell tower nodding to this building’s iconic history. On entering the cellar with what now is an empty bike store, I immediately felt drenched in an atmosphere like no other. This historic cellar had been one of the wards at Stanley Royd and you could really feel it.

Perhaps I know so much about the history of this place that it resonated more. Since the hospital closed, patients have been moved to nearby Fieldhead Hospital which itself has been running since 1972. Stanley Royd’s iconic museum, formerly known as the Stephen G Beaumont Museum set up in 1974, has also moved to Fieldhead since Stanley Royd’s closure and is now known as the Mental Health Museum.

Stories about the hospital vary from it being “revolutionary” in mental health care while being draconian compared to today, to a scary place where any of society's so-called misfits were locked away for indefinite periods. The friendly caretaker Michael directs me to the dusty corner where an old bicycle is stationed. It was here he and the cleaner saw the orbs, the floating balls of light.

I didn’t see anything but I felt it. “Some people can sense it, I can’t but I know what I’ve seen,'' said Michael. Once we’d come back out into daylight, Michael pointed out a tunnel at the other side of the building but I’m told that’s just pitch black. I was drawn to the iconic bell tower where Mary Heaton’s plaque is sharing her story.

It reminded me how important it is that we remember the individual voices in hospital’s and society which rarely get heard. Whatever you believe about the former hospital grounds being haunted, the incredible heritage of this place lives on.