Plan B Forum

Critics argue that a haunted house on the grounds of an asylum where great pain was endured is an affront to the many tens of thousands of people released from similar institutions nationwide since 1969.

Every year around this time, mental health advocates say they find themselves contending with a bevy of groups wanting to turn old asylums into haunted houses.

Even though most organizers don't intend to offend, such events reinforce old stereotypes and make a mockery of serious health problems, said Mike Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based National Alliance on Mental Illness.

"We don't do entertainment projects like that for cancer or heart disease," Fitzpatrick said. "This whole sort of trend to have haunted asylums is both discouraging and very, very inappropriate."

At Pennhurst, advocates say they think it's important that the site and its history be remembered — but not like this.

"When we closed Pennhurst, we were trying to end abuse and mistreatment and the stigma," said J. Bruce Hulick, executive director of ARC of Philadelphia, an advocacy group for people with disabilities. "Make it a dignified remembrance, not an amusement."

But Chakejian, who's had a relative treated at an institution in Philadelphia, said his project will help bring the site back to life. He estimates his group will evenually pour at least $2 million into preserving the buildings at Pennhurst.

He's also tried to address at least one of the concerns by changing the name of the haunted house event from "Pennhurst Institute of Fear" to "Pennhurst Asylum."

The event, with an admission price of $25, is slated to start Friday and run on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights through Nov. 7.

Designed by John Haviland and opened on October 25, 1829, Eastern State is considered to be the world's first true penitentiary, despite the fact that the Walnut Street Jail, which opened in 1776, was called a "penitentiary" as early as 1790 . Eastern State's revolutionary system of incarceration, dubbed the "Pennsylvania System" or Separate system, encouraged separate confinement (the warden was legally required to visit every inmate every day, and the overseers were mandated to see each inmate three times a day) as a form of rehabilitation.

The Pennsylvania System was opposed contemporaneously by the Auburn System (also known as the New York System), which held that prisoners should be forced to work together in silence, and could be subjected to physical punishment (Sing Sing prison was an example of the Auburn system). Although the Auburn system was favored in the United States, Eastern State's radial floor plan and system of solitary confinement was the model for over 300 prisons worldwide. The original goal was for prisoners to want to open up to God, thus seeking penance.