Gov Surplus

West Virginia Sold Its Giant Stone Asylum on the Courthouse Steps for $1.5 Million. The Ghost Stories Came With It.

By UX Auctions Editorial Staff

On a Wednesday in late August 2007, more than a hundred people gathered on the steps of the Lewis County Courthouse in Weston, West Virginia, to watch the state auction one of the largest hand-cut stone buildings in the United States. Up for bid was the Weston State Hospital, a Gothic Revival giant of blue sandstone with a 200-foot clock tower and 242,000 square feet under its roof, known in the nineteenth century as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. Bidding opened at $500,000 and closed at $1.5 million, and the man who raised his hand last gave reporters one of the great auction-day answers of all time. At UX Auctions, where we cover government auctions across the country every day, this remains one of the most unforgettable sales a state has ever held.

A castle built for 250

Virginia lawmakers authorized the hospital in 1858, and Baltimore architect Richard Snowden Andrews designed it on the Kirkbride Plan, a layout of long, staggered wings meant to give every patient fresh air and sunlight. Stonemasons from Germany and Ireland cut the blue sandstone by hand from a quarry at Mount Clare, and the clock tower was finished in 1871. The work stretched on until 1881, and the result was a building so long and so grand that it still looks more like a castle than a hospital.

The asylum was built for 250 patients, and the first of them arrived in October 1864. The population kept growing for nearly a century, from 717 patients in 1880 to more than 1,800 in 1949, and by the 1950s the hospital held about ten times the number it was designed for. After West Virginia became a state, it was renamed the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, and in 1913 it became Weston State Hospital. The old hospital closed in May 1994, when patients moved to the new William R. Sharpe Jr. Hospital nearby, and the great stone halls fell quiet.

The hand-cut stone and clock tower seen through an original window, and a long ward hallway lined with open doors.

A ghostly figure at the end of an empty asylum hallway beside a wheelchair — Happy Halloween from the empty wards.

The Civil War payroll

The building has a Civil War story worthy of a movie. When Virginia seceded in 1861, the Confederate state government wanted the hospital's unspent construction money, but soldiers of the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry reached the local bank first and carried the funds to Wheeling. That money went to the Union-loyal Restored Government of Virginia, which used it as a starting treasury on the road to a brand-new state, West Virginia. Union and Confederate troops both occupied the grounds at different times during the war, and Confederate raiders made off with building supplies.

A brightly painted hallway with red doors inside the asylum — Red doors and painted tile along one of the hospital's ward corridors.

Sold on the courthouse steps

For years after the hospital closed, the state looked for a use for the massive campus. A plan in 1986 to turn it into a prison was set aside, and in 2007 the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources took it to public auction, held the old-fashioned way, outdoors at the county courthouse. The winning bidder was Joe Jordan, a Morgantown contractor who made his living removing asbestos from old buildings. When reporters asked why he wanted it, Jordan answered, "Stupidity probably had a lot to do with it," and then explained that he loved custom stone buildings. "I'm a cut-stone collector and I wanted to build a custom stone house, but never did," he said. Now he owned one of the biggest ever built, and he cheerfully admitted the renovation would cost "a little more than it cost to buy."

Jordan restored the original name, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, and opened the doors to visitors in March 2008. The first-floor museum displays patient artwork, a straitjacket and a hydrotherapy tub, and the tour schedule grew to include historic tours, flashlight tours, an annual Fall Festival and an asylum ball.

Visitors gather at the front entrance beneath the clock tower, and a restored Victorian parlor inside the main building.

Antique wheelchairs, a violin, a harmonica, a convex mirror and other pieces from the asylum's collection.

A crumbling brick asylum under storm clouds — Halloween at the asylum, where the ghost tours run all night.

The ghosts on the guest list

It did not take long for the paranormal world to come calling. Visitors and investigators have reported footsteps, voices and shadowy figures in the empty wards, and the asylum has appeared on Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Portals to Hell, Destination Fear and Expedition X. Its paranormal tours and overnight ghost hunts run all year, and gamers know it too, because the building appears in the video game Fallout 76 as the Allegheny Asylum. Whether you come for the history or the ghost stories, the attraction's 2026 season opened on March 28 with a grand reopening, and it welcomed families to a festival on the grounds in early October.

Visitors explore the empty wards on tour.

An illustration of the asylum under a full moon with fog drifting across the lawn — An illustration of the asylum on a foggy, moonlit night.

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Government buildings like this one still come up for auction, from old schools and armories to courthouses and hospitals. A search on UX Search checks GSA Auctions, the federal real estate site and the other government auction platforms at once, and UX Search Analytics shows what government property actually sold for. Our UX Auctions stories cover the finds worth knowing about, and the free workspace at UX Console lets you save your searches and follow every bid.

Joe Jordan went to the courthouse steps looking for a stone house and came home with a castle full of stories. Your next great government auction find is waiting at uxsearch.app.

Photo & Resource Information Credits: Photos via Wikimedia Commons