***NOTE*** The Sanatorium is on private property and trespassers have the potential of being prosecuted.

The immense Sanatorium in San Haven stands eerily hovering on a hill in the Turtle Mountains, quickly beginning to wither away from the elements and severe vandals. According to Troy Larson, who explores and writes about his experiences with abandoned buildings on "The Ghosts of North Dakota," it was founded in the early 1900's, originally for tuberculosis patients(there were no antibiotics to cure the disease at the time). Several years later, the building transitioned to house the mentally disabled, and was eventually closed down in the 1980's. It is questionable whether or not the patients were treated unfairly there, the reviews from previous patients and family members of patients varying significantly. Nevertheless, it has a rather mysterious history and supernatural presence, which is what drove me and my friend to investigate.

As we approached the immaculate building, our mouths dropped open at the initial site of graffiti overwhelming the interior and exterior brick walls, no single window being left unscathed, and overgrown shrubbery covering the paths and buildings. There were at least a dozen abandoned buildings, forgotten children's toys, desks, and chairs scattered around the hilly scene. It was impossible to enter every building since there were so many in extremely poor condition, but we saw a majority of the larger buildings that were still intact.

Immediately as we started diving deeper into the abandoned ruins, the weather shifted from sunny to a cloudy overdraft and the temperature dropped a few degrees, raining off and on. An eeriness and uneasy feeling hovered over me and my friend as we explored. Since it was tucked back around in trees, there was not a single gust of wind, providing for a completely dead silence; so silent we could hear our own breathing, hear the cracks of glass under our feet, and hear birds flying outside above us. We spoke in whispers for fear of disturbing the silence, potentially intruding on spirits of past patients.

The first building we entered put us the most on edge, constantly hearing the sound of pigeons cooing around us, but never actually seeing any birds. Shocking both my friend and me to the core, we both suddenly heard children giggling and talking two stories above us. It seemed to be an unmistakable sound; we stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other, did we both actually just hear that correctly? After leaving the Sanatorium, I discovered Troy Larson's writing which verified the building we thought we heard voices was in fact where children lived decades prior. Larson wrote, "in the children’s pavilion, birds cackling two floors above can sound amazingly similar to the voices of children." So were they pigeons, or was it actually the spirits of children calling out to the visitors in their home?

There were several of these spooky and unnerving instances throughout our exploration, another notable one being a door slamming shut directly next to us as we walked down a rocky path. With no gusts of wind around, it seemed unnatural and as if there was someone else there. We stepped gingerly around debris and gaping holes just begging us to make a wrong step and crash through the floor to the level below. The site resembles something right out of "American Horror Story," and it is definitely not a destination for the faint of heart.

Check out a full video of my experience here!