Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, West Virginia – Shadows Move
Past the broken gates where grass has grown through stone
The asylum rises–gray and endless, skin and bone
Every window blinks with memory, every shingle cracks with ache
The air thick as accusations, the chill too sharp to fake
Inside, the hallways buckle with the weight of years gone wrong
Cries still coil in corners,
old as the bricks, bitter as any song
Here, pain lingers in the paint, agony drips from every sill
The walls have listened to more secrets than a priest ever will
Footsteps echo heavy in the dark, ghosts pacing to their tune
Long coats and madness haunt the air, the sun dies by afternoon
Whispers climb the ceilings, stains spread in the gloom
Every door a question, every room another tomb
Shadows flicker on the staircase, tracing out old fights
Fingers tapping walls, tracing scars from countless nights
Here, shame and sorrow breed, thick as dust on every file
Unseen watchers press their faces to the glass, eyes wild
Despair is an infection, it lives in every breath
The spirits roam the corridors, never learning death
No comfort in the silence, no warmth in dawn’s brief light
Only the hush of history smothered by the night
Phantoms circle in the ballroom, laughter sharp as glass
Nurses’ shoes click slow and soft, echoes from the past
A shiver runs the length of you, skin alive with dread
Every patient’s lost confession, every word they never said
Treatment meant torment here, ice baths, leather straps
Electrodes burning memories, wrists tight with iron wraps
In the attic’s choking heat, women wailed for sons
Men stared through barred windows, cataloguing the runs
Some tried to flee the darkness, some sank into the floor
Others carved their stories in the plaster near the door
Their whispers outlast diagnoses, their pain not just a phase
Every hallway tastes of ether, every window blurs with haze
Nighttime here is savage, full of things the sane don’t see
Figures gliding through the wards, a twisted family
You feel their hands brush past you, the sigh of longing near
Their tragedy unending, repeating year to year
Step lightly through the patient wards, let the horror in
Every step is borrowed time, every shadow wears a grin
The past is never buried here, it rides the wind and rain
The building drinks the sorrow, spits it out as pain
Some souls are locked in fever, some can never rest
Bound to the beds and bathtubs, forever failed the test
You’ll hear the cries that pierce the night,
taste the copper sting of fear
And realize that at Trans-Allegheny, the lost are always near
Silence is a prison, history the cell
Inside these rotting chambers, every angel fell
Not all ghosts are gentle, not all tears can dry
Sometimes the only answer is a name that will not die
Trans-Allegheny’s shadow stretches far beyond the yard
A monument to madness, its memory scarred and hard
If you come to visit, come with reverence, come with dread
The living cannot linger where the dead are never dead
A requiem of footsteps, a waltz of ancient pain
Inside these haunted hallways, only the shadows remain