So No Other Human Would Suffer As You: Rhoda Derry and the Ghosts of Peoria State Hospital

Michelle: Before we dive into the eerie tales of the past, I have some electrifying news to share with you. I'm excited to announce that the Haunted History Chronicles podcast now has its very own small shop of the macabre and mysterious. Picture this exclusive merchandise, hauntingly beautiful artwork, spine tingling stickers, s, mugs that will make your morning coffee seem positively paranormal, and prints that capture the ghostly essence of days gone by. Whether you're a longtime listener of the show or a newcomer drawn to the enigmatic allure of Haunted history, the shop is your gateway to the supernatural. Imagine decorating your space with a piece of history, a connection to the spectral past. The merchandise is designed to evoke the very essence of the stories I share, making it an essential addition to your collection of all things eerie. You can find all these hair raising treasures on the website, or simply follow the links conveniently placed in the podcast description notes it's so easy, even a ghost could do it. So whether you're searching for the perfect addition to your Haunted memorabilia collection or just wanting to immerse yourself in the world of the supernatural, the shop is here to provide. Dive into the past, embrace the spook, and let the stories of history's ghosts haunt your space. So why not visit the shop today and remember, the spirits of the past are waiting for you. The Haunted History chronicles exclusive merchandise is just a click away. Happy shopping, and may the spirits be with you. Hi everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles. First of all, thank you for taking a listen to this episode.

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Michelle: And now let's get started by introducing today's podcast or guest. The story of  Rhoda Derry is tragic and disturbing. Her reality was worse. A young beauty, she supposedly lost her mind to love, according to sensational headlines, the mother of her betrothed objected to the romance and cast a bewitching curse that pushed Derry into decades of tormenting madness. According to official records, Derry's insanity went largely untreated amid the lackluster to nonexistent mental health care of the 19th century. She would spend just the last two years of her life in soothing care, thanks to the reform approach of Dr. George Zeller, head of the Illinois Asylum, the incurable insane in Bartonville. Zeller was floored by Derry's forlorn state, as he recalled in his autobiography, for in Humanity, nothing has ever been heard to equal the treatment afforded this poor girl. Newspapers wrote widely of her extraordinary case. Derry seemed nonpluss by the attention, but she would smile at the sound of Zella's voice. When she died on October 1906, one day short of her 72nd birthday, newspapers rehashed her life story. One element of her passing seemed to elude those obituaries. Though the asylum had a profound effect on Rhode, she returned the favor. The nurses who cared for her in life were at the side of the grave when last honours were paid, her seller wrote, and when they returned to their duties, instead of feeling a great burden was lifted from their hands, all were crying. The impression of a humane service dutifully rendered has shed its halo about them. And the institution is better for having cared for her. The state is better for the knowledge that justice was finally done. This long neglected woman, she was laid to rest under a cement marker labeled simply 217. 80 years later. Family put a marble tombstone atop her grave with an epitaph that would have made Zella proud. It read, they built this place of asylum so that no other human would suffer as you. You taught us to love and feel compassion toward the less fortunate. May you find peace and warmth in God's arms. Joining me today is investigator, researcher and author Sylvia Schultz to take a look inside the walls of Peoria State Hospital. The stories of medical staff and patients, including Rhododeri, and Tales of some of the ghosts that remain.

Michelle: Hi, Sylvia. Thank you so much for joining me again on another podcast.

Sylvia Shults: Hello, Michelle. Thank you so much for inviting me back. I had such a great time last time, and I cannot wait to chat with you again.

Michelle: And this time we are talking about something very, very different. We're going to kind of be looking at the location and the stories behind three books, which are fractured spirits, fractured souls, and 44 years in darkness. Do you want to just give a quick sense of what the books are about, the location that the books are about, and what drove you to write them?

Sylvia Shults: Well, when I was working on my first book of true ghost stories, people would come up to me and say, oh, have you heard about the Peoria State Hospital? Now, I did not grow up in this area, so I had no idea about the Peoria State Hospital. And I said, oh, tell me more. And they said, oh, it's a haunted mental asylum. And I said, okay, you have my attention. So I started doing research on this place, and you say, haunted mental asylum, and your mind goes all American Horror story on you, and you assume that there was pain and fear and abuse. And it is my privilege and my joy to tell people this was not the case at the Peoria State Hospital. The history of this place is just as fascinating as the ghost stories connected with it. And it's very, very moving and very compassionate. And it is truly a privilege to share this history. So I started doing research on the history and the hauntings, and people were very generous in sharing their experiences with me. And I had experiences of my own there. It's only about a ten minute drive from me, which just makes things wonderful. So I collected all of those stories and a lot of that history into fractured spirits. And the thing is that when I typed the end on fractured spirits, people didn't stop having experiences. So in a few years, I had enough stories, collected, and learned more of the history. So I had enough material for a second book, which ended up being fractured Souls. Now, in amongst all of this history, I discovered the story of one of the patients at the Peoria State Hospital. And her story was so compelling and so fraught with drama that I knew she needed her own book. And that book became 44 years in darkness. That is about one of the patients at the Peoria State Hospital, a woman named Rhoda Derry.

Michelle: And certainly her story is one that I hope we get the chance to talk about, because these books, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it was such a joy for you to write about a different expectation, something different that people will experience when it comes to a state hospital that are treating people with mental difficulties, with struggles that they're experiencing, and treating them with just real compassion. And I've got to say, the books are so beautiful, tragic, beautiful, so well done that they will stay with people. They certainly stayed with me, and they are. Rhoda's story is a story I hope ever forget. And likewise, the people that came into her life and helped her at the state hospital, it was so moving. And like I said, it's just something that, for me personally, I hope ever forget. It was just wonderful to kind of discover her story, as tragic as it was, but to know about her and to know more about this place that she ended up in.

Sylvia Shults: Thank you, Michelle. I am very honored to share Rhoda's story. And I hope to reach as many people as, you know, we talk about mental asylums and we talk about state hospitals. And yes, they can be very dark, grim places. But here's the thing. The brain, the human brain is the most complex organ in the body, and we think little of it. If someone breaks their leg or if someone develops appendicitis, something like that. And we take it for granted that there are medical interventions for every other part of the body. But here is this wonderfully complex organ that some people, if some people experience difficulty with that or experience trauma to that organ or just a deterioration of that organ, we think it's some sort of mental failing or moral failing. And it's not. It's not anyone's fault. So we should not treat people like it's a moral failing if they have this sort of difficulty. That's what I'm trying to portray here.

Michelle: And I think you do it so well, and I think you just articulated it so well. And illnesses that affect the mind are so complex. There's often so many layers to it and still so much understanding still to be done. It's really been an evolution when it comes to treatment and treating people who have an affliction of that kind. And here is a hospital where it's part of that story. And again, I just think it's so deserving to be remembered because, gosh, that Dr. Zeller who was there, I mean, what a compassionate, kind man who really was in many ways bucking the trend and bucking the system in terms of how people should be treated. And just the way that you wrote about him, he just came alive on the page and I could really understand what he was trying to do and who he was and what he was about. And the way you opened 44 years in darkness with his visit to Washington, DC for the special committee that were investigating hospitals who looked after the insane. And he's there to tell his part of the story. And just the way that you did that with references to things like him explaining to the committee that he phased out and abolished things like mechanical restraint because to him, the presence of a nurse's hands on the patient to soothe and to gentle was so important because they could feel that person. There was connection, whereas something that was made of canvas and hard iron can't feel someone, they can't experience what they're struggling with. And you just see so much compassion in that. And the way that you put it across the reference to trees in winter and how for him, the patients were just like that they were deserving of love. They were deserving of compassion. And they may look bare, they may look empty. They may look less than the full trees in autumn and summer and spring, but they're still alive, and they still deserve human contact and humankindness. And just as I say, you just made him come alive on the page. And I don't know if you want to elaborate more on Dr. Zeller and what he was doing and the history of the hospital, because I just think it's so important that people understand.

Sylvia Shults: It. Yeah, well, I was very, very fortunate to find the material for that first chapter in 44 years in darkness. That is taken directly from Dr. Zeller's visit to Washington, DC and his testimony to the House of Representatives on the subject of state hospitals. And that is word for word, his testimony. So you can really get a sense of who he was like as a person by reading that testimony that has come down to us. Dr. Zeller was very proud of the fact that he was not trained as a psychiatrist. He was a surgeon. His father before him was a surgeon, and they both had practices in Peoria. And Dr. Zeller was very proud of the fact that he was not hidebound by the teachings of current practices in the care of the mentally ill. He felt that he was free to treat the patients the way he wanted to. And his philosophy was, let's just treat them with kindness and see what happens. And what happened was that the Peoria State Hospital became the premier institution for the care of the mentally ill, not only in the United States, but in the world. He considered the patients his children. He and his wife, Sophie, never had children of their own. Sophie had scarlet fever as a child, and that probably left her barren. And they married very late as well, late in life. So they never had children of their own. They considered the patients their children. And the patients who passed away and were buried on the Hilltop, those were our sleeping children. Dr. Zeller felt that he had a mandate to care for everyone. As soon as the Peoria State Hospital opened, he wrote to the other state hospitals and the other asylums in the state of Illinois, particularly the ones up in Chicago, Dunning and the horrible places up in the Chicago area that were already overcrowded. He wanted the worst cases, patients. He felt that nobody was beyond help. And to that end, he went in search of the worst of the worst cases. And he really did a lot of good for a great many people by doing that. It's still a joy to read about cases like this and read about what Dr. Zeller did for so many people.

Michelle: It had so much heart. You could see the heart that was involved in this, the real care and the dedication in terms of training people, paying people appropriately to do their job, really trying to ensure that this felt like a home and not wards, not hospital wards where people were being policed and all the rest of it. It just had that very homely feel to it, which I suppose is what makes this a flagship for how people could be treated, how you could go about restoring some quality of life, but also treatment, compassionate treatment that helped many, many people.

Sylvia Shults: Oh, exactly. Yes. Dr. Zeller, as you said, he was not putting people in hospital wards. He was putting people in cottages. He had a hand in designing the layout of the hilltop, and he insisted on a cottage system. Patients with similar afflictions were housed together. Epileptics were housed together. So they were paired up in a buddy system. So if you started having a fit, help was as close as your buddy was. He insisted on training people himself. He refused to hire what he called bughousers. He would not hire anyone else who had worked in any other institution because he wanted to train people the way he wanted them trained. And he would go to high school classrooms in Peoria, and he would speak to classrooms of young women, and he would say, you want to be a nurse? Come to my hospital. I will train you. You want to be a doctor in your own right. He encouraged ladies to go on to become doctors in their own right. He encouraged them to go on to become lawyers. And all this happened before women had the right to vote. He was very insistent on keeping women in charge of the wards, and for that very reason, because the touch of a woman was so much more compassionate than the hard hand of a man. And Dr. Seller loved women, and I'm not saying that in any salacious way. He had great respect for the quiet strength of women, and that's who he wanted in charge of his institution.

Michelle: I think it's just very clear that he very much had something in mind and was very diligent in trying to achieve what he wanted. This vision of how he wanted his hospital to run, his asylum to run. And, yeah, I think just an incredible person, incredible legacy of what he managed to achieve and the impact that it had on the people in his care is just. I don't think it's something that we can measure in a conversation. I really don't. I think it's something that.

Michelle: You can.

Michelle: Get a fraction of, you can get a sense of, but we will never know just how much of an impact he had on the people personally for whose lives he know. And I think, as I say, I think there's something very beautiful about that. Amongst all the tragedy of what the people were there for, there's still something very, very beautiful and hopeful in what he was.

Sylvia Shults: Yeah. Yeah. And I have never seen him. But I am told that Dr. Zeller is still on the Hilltop, and he is still hanging around in a supervisory capacity. The women who are in charge of the museum on the Hilltop right now have many, many teenage volunteers, and they like to hang out. They like to have fun. They like to have music while they're doing their work days. And Dr. Zeller has been seen standing in a corner kind of overseeing things, and he kind of gives off this air of, all right, yeah, you can have fun. That's fine. You can enjoy your music. Be sure you get your work dOne, too. But, yeah, have fun. That's great. So, yeah, he is definitely still around.

Michelle: Which I don't think would surprise anybody, really would, given the hand that he had and just how much he cared about his hospital, to still be there in that capacity almost overseeing everything still, I don't think that would surprise anyone for that one.

Sylvia Shults: It doesn't surprise me.

Michelle: You mentioned that you'd had some personal experiences. Do you want to share some of those before we dive into some of the other accounts that you've obviously referenced in your books?

Sylvia Shults: Oh, boy. I will try to keep this as Reader's Digest condensed version as I can, but I have become very close to one of the spirits at the Peoria State Hospital. It's a young man by the name of Christopher. He prefers to be called Chris. And his domain is the basement of the Pollock Hospital, which is the former tuberculosis ward. There has been a tuberculosis hospital on that part of the grounds ever since the hospital started in 1902. At first, there were tent colonies. Now, this would have been the time Chris was living there in the very early 19 hundreds. Then there was a bat wing hospital set up for the care of TB patients. And in the 1950s, there was an actual tuberculosis ward set up, and that became the Pollock hospital, which is the building that is standing today. I met Chris several years ago. I was down in the basement of the Pollock hospital, and I could feel someone holding my hand. And with the help of a couple of psychic mediums, I learned the spirit's name. I learned that he was about 22 years old when he passed away. And that I remind him of his sister, which is why he is so attracted to me. I was able to talk to him with the help of an interpreter. And he said something that just broke my heart. When the asylum was a going concern, they would have movies every Friday night. They'd have dances every Saturday night. And Chris told me that he could hear the music coming from the other cottages during these dances on Saturday nights, and he couldn't go and join the dances. He loved to dance, but he couldn't go and join in the fun because he was in quarantine because he had tuberculosis. So the next time I visited the Pollock Hospital, I recorded some ragtime music on my phone and played it for him. And the medium said. She said, oh, he's standing there, and he's doing something with his hands on his knees. And I said, oh, my gosh, he's doing the Charleston. That is hilarious. And after the music was over, after the song had finished, he said, no one's ever done that for me before. So I was so pleased that I was able to bring that bit of life and entertainment back to him. So then a couple of years later, I taught myself a ragtime dance and brought the music down and brought the psychic down with me. And I said, okay, chris, we're going to dance together. So I started the music up, and I took my place, and this particular dance called the Castle Dance. And there was a place in it where the dancers spin. And of course, I was spinning the wrong way. And the psychic called from the corner of the room. She said, he said, you're trying to lead. Oh, my goodness. Yes, I am sorry. It's kind of hard to dance with a partner you can't see. But he was so grateful that I had taken the time to learn this castle dance and dance it with him. He was just very touched by this, and he was very pleased by that. And he told me one of the nicest things I've ever heard from anyone, living or dead. We were talking, and I said, all right, Chris, if this is something I'm not supposed to know, that's okay. But I was just wondering, what is heaven like? Because he had told us that he's not earthbound. He can go back and forth. He can visit his relatives and loved ones in heaven, and he can come back to earth, to the Pollock Hospital. I said, so what's heaven like? And he said, when you get here, I'll be waiting for you. Just look for the tall kid with a shaggy brown hair. Wow. I was just like, okay, that is just way past cool. And to know that there's somebody waiting there for me besides My own loved ones that makes me smile every time I think about it.

Michelle: It's beautifully touching. And, gosh, I'm trying not to let myself become overcome by it because it's so beautiful. But I think it touches on something really important, which is people who investigate the paranormal, if they're going into a location, you can have moments like that, and you can really make an impact, make a difference. And those connections can be really quite profound. And I think that's a really positive example of how interaction can happen when you go into a place with respect and with nothing but kindness and love, with communicating and wanting to know their stories. And, yeah, it's beautiful to kind of have that validation, but also that connection, even after death. And it's just so touching, really touching.

Sylvia Shults: For me, that's what it's all about, is that connection. These spirits that we're all trying to connect with, we paranormal investigators are trying to connect with. They were people just like us. They happened to have passed on before we did and in this particular time frame, but there were people just like us. They had their own hopes and fears and dreams for the future. And why should we treat them any differently just because they happen to have a second date on their headstone?

Michelle: Absolutely.

Michelle: I can't agree with you more. And again, this is what I think is so fantastic about what you're doing, and particularly the two books, fractured spirits and fractured souls, because it very much focuses on these collections of stories. You are giving a voice, you are sharing their story. You're allowing that communication to understand a little bit more, to go a bit deeper, and to know the person behind. And again, I think there's something very transformative and very powerful in allowing other people to connect with their stories, even if it's just in print. If they can't experience that physical interaction by visiting, they can at least know some of that story by the words that you put down on the page. And, yeah, well donE. Hats off. Because I just think it's so important that we don't lose these stories, these accounts, because they were people, and they deserve to have their story known.

Michelle: To celebrate heading into the spookier season, autumn nights. Howling wind and freezing rain. Halloween spookiness in the dark depths of winter. Haunted History Chronicles will be posting daily podcasts on Patreon on all tiers over there, as well as the usual additional items offered. Signing up now will gain you access to these, as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy writing source material and more and know that you are contributing and helping the podcast to continue to put out more content. You can find the link in the episode description notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website or social media. So why not come along to enjoy a rich web of accounts perfect for this season? Dark tales of corpses, ghosts, folklore, Christmas and Halloween, macabre traditions and connections, and a whole lot more. And now let's head back to the podcast.

Sylvia Shults: So one of the spirits at the Pollock Hospital at the tuberculosis ward is a ghost that we call heavy Boots. This is a spirit that likes to trump down the hallway faster and faster and just kind of run up on people and really just scare the paste out of them. He's a well known figure at that building, and he's scared a lot of people that I know of that have shared their stories with me, and that's how he's gotten the nickname Heavy Boots. The historians at the hospital did a bit of research, and they realized that fear is what this heavy Boots's signature move is, to stomp up on people and scare them. And fear is what he's kind of feeding on. He's an aggressive male spirit in the men's death ward in the hospital, and it's usually a very late night experience, so that got the historians thinking of it. Now, the Peoria State Hospital was not only a mental asylum, but it was a working hospital. There were four hospitals on the hilltop, and that meant it was functioning 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Patients had round the clock care, including the overnight shift. Now, in the 1950s, there were a couple of patients at the Pollock Hospital, young men who had both been committed to the asylum. About three years before this incident happened. They had both picked up mild cases of tuberculosis. So they were both recovering in the Mensworth. Their names were James Sparrr and Jesse Bonham. And one night, October 12, in the 1950s, James Sparrr came barreling up behind Jesse Bonham, and for reasons known only to himself, thwacked him right across the back with a broom handle. Now, Jesse was understandably annoyed by this completely unprovoked attack. So he picked up a floor polisher and beat James with it and killed him. He beat James to death. He died at the scene from the injuries Jesse inflicted on him with a floor polisher. So Jesse, after he was examined by psychiatrists, was later removed to a hospital for the criminally insane. He was moved to a much more secure location. So here we have an attack in the wee hours of a night, an attack that ends in a violent death by beating. These were both young men. Jesse was only 25, and James, the victim, was only 33. So the spirit that was left behind after this tragedy might be carrying an immense load of both guilt and anger, which is the perfect recipe for making a ghost. And James probably had a perfectly good reason in his own mind to whap Jesse with the broom handle, but it ended very, very badly for him. So, yeah, we're thinking that heavy boots is the spirit of James because he is so loud and aggressive and just full of that negative energy, which is.

Michelle: So very much that history coming through and replaying, isn't it? That sense of who they were still coming through and making themselves known, even in death, the physicality of it, you can get the sense of who they were in how they are putting themselves across, how they're making themselves known in the haunting. Yeah. Again, it's just a really interesting facet. I think that we have all these different types of accounts and experiences that really speak to the manner of death, the emotions that played into certain parts of someone's life, whether it's at the end of their life or just how they were living certain periods of their life. The emotions attached to that, the significance of all of that. I think it comes back to really understanding and researching and knowing the locations and the people to then be able to make the connections with what's being experienced when it comes to the paranormal. Because here you've got, I think, a very clear, tangible link with the person and how they were in life being portrayed.

Sylvia Shults: Exactly. And I've always thought, as an investigator, that you have to know the history of the place you're investigating because that will inform your questions. And you can get much better evidence that way if you know what happened there.

Michelle: Absolutely. And it's one of those ones that, I think splits people because people have very different ideas. Some people very much liked to go in cold with no information so that they can't be influenced. But I think having something is definitely advantageous because then you can validate. You've got reference points, but you also, I think, are able to connect. You might understand the things that the person you're trying to connect with is going to resonate with, for example, like your encounter and bringing in music that's going to be of that period that might draw someone out. Often that connection can be made through other mediums like music, like certain words, phrases, prayers, incantations, whatever, being used to help that person to come through and to connect. And you only know that by having a sense of the history right when.

Sylvia Shults: I went to Gettysburg, I dressed in Civil War clothing, and there was one time that I was on the battlefield. I was at the high water mark, actually, and I had a thermos of coffee. I had some tobacco, and I had some. It's called sagamite. It's kind of a survival food that the Confederate army used. It's basically cornmeal cooked in oil with a little bit of molasses stirred into it, and they would make a paste, and they would make kind of a gruel out of this sagamite. And I had some sagamite with me and said, hey, I've got some food for you here. I've got some coffee. And just trying to connect with the spirits of the Civil War that way. I just believe in knowing the history, and because I'm such a history dork anyway, I just really feel that I know that there are people that like to go in cold, and that's fine. If that's the way they do it, that's fine. I just like the history. So that's the approach I take, is trying to connect with what they would have known.

Michelle: So, obviously, within the two books that I've referenced, there are so many different accounts, and they're very unique, and rightly so, because they are so varied and they are talking about so many different people. Was there an account that you really enjoyed writing about that you just thought very much, highlighted and kind of brought together what the hospital was about for you in their story and how they make themselves known, if you like.

Sylvia Shults: Oh, my. Well, I definitely feel a connection with Chris, but our most beloved spirit on the Hilltop is most assuredly Rotary. And as I said, her story was so compelling that I knew she needed to have her own book. So if you would like me to share the story of Rhododeri, I would be happy to do that now.

Michelle: Oh, please. Please do tell us more about Rhoda. Her story absolutely deserves to be heard by everybody listening.

Sylvia Shults: Okay, so, the story of Rhoda Dairy is one of the great tragedies of mental health care in Illinois, and it is one of the great success stories of the Peoria State Hospital. Rotary was born in 1843. She was the youngest of nine children, and she was maybe a little bit spoiled. We're not sure, being the baby of the family, she grew up absolutely normal. She wasn't anything special. She didn't really have anything that set her apart from the crowd. When she was 16 years old, she did the most natural thing in the world. She fell in love. She was attracted to the son of a neighboring farm family, Charles Phoenix. Now, we don't know exactly how far Charles and Rhoda's relationship went, but we do know that after they'd been courting for a couple of years, Charles asked Rhoda to marry him, and she said yes. Now, there was one person that was very much against this relationship. That was Nancy Phoenix, Charles's mother. Now, I did mention that Rhoda was the youngest of nine children, and the dairy family was extremely poor. Jacob Derry was a farmer, and he didn't even have land to call his own. He was a tenant farmer on other landowners'farms. Now, the Phoenixes, on the other hand, were rather well off. Charles was the older son of only four children, so he stood to inherit his father Frederick's land after Frederick passed away. And Nancy Phoenix was not about to have her baby boy, Charles, marry one of these dirt poor dairies. So she actually confronted Rhoda on the street one day and said, if you do not release my son from this engagement, I will curse you. Now, talking about witchcraft in front of Rhoda Derry was a really good way to get her attention very quickly. Her grandmother, Mal Derry, was known as the fortune teller of the Revolution. She was a practitioner of Pennsylvania Dutch Hex magic. We're not sure if Rhoda ever met Maul. The dairy family had moved away from that area. So Rhoda certainly grew up hearing stories of Maul and her ability to lift and cast curses. So she was very, very familiar with the process of witchcraft. So talking about witchcraft with Maul Derry's granddaughter, Rhoda, got her attention very quickly. A few weeks after this confrontation with Nancy Phoenix, Rhoda had some sort of break with consensual reality. She would cower in the corner of the dairy cabin, screaming that there were invisible witches swooping down to attack her. She started having hallucinations like that and really severe mental problems. Her mother, racHel, was about the only person who tried to understand what young Rhoda was going through. She did her best, bless her heart. But her idea of helping Rhoda was to keep a pistol in her apron pocket. And whenever Rhoda would start screaming about these witches and having fits, Rachel would whip out this pistol and start firing it around the cabin to drive the witches away, which I don't think was the most helpful thing she could have done. Rhoda was sent to the state hospital in Jacksonville. She was there for two years. Now, the thing about state hospitals at that time was that you had two years to get better. Or not. If you were not better in two years, you were released so that someone else could have your bed, someone who had a better chance of being cured. Rhoda was a very violent patient. She was locked in her room every night at Jacksonville, and every morning, the attendants would find her wandering the grounds, searching for Charles, calling out for him. And the attendants would always say, who let you out? And Rhoda's answer was always the same. Nancy Phoenix, let me out of my room. That's something we've never been able to explain about Rhoda's case. I have my own theory, but at this point, I really don't know one of the mysteries of Rhoda dairy. So Rhoda was released from Jacksonville after two years as incurable. Her family cared for her at home as long as they could. But in 1860, her mother died. Her father could no longer care for her at home. So he made the heart wrenching decision to commit Rhoda to the Adams County Alms house. Now, Alms houses in the middle of the 19th century had the potential to be truly awful places. I mentioned state hospitals where you could go for two years. There were private asylums where you could stay as long as you liked, as long as your family could pay for your care. And then there were poor houses or poor farms or alms houses. If you had $25 for a license at an empty barn in your backyard, you could open up your own alms house. Because the people of that era didn't think that the mentally ill could feel heat or cold or pain or hunger. In some cases, they were treated no better than animals. The Adams County Alms House was not this kind of place. It was a county run alms house, so it had board oversight. It was situated on a very lovely piece of land with a little creek running through it. But the sad fact is that an alms house or a poor farm is someplace where, if you are down on your luck, you can go and get three hots in the cot. They were not prepared to care for the mentally ill. But the sad fact is that the mentally ill suffer poverty as well. The Adams County Alms House was absolutely unprepared to care for someone with Rhoda's depth of mental illness. She developed a condition before she went into the alms house, called pica, which is a compulsion to eat inappropriate objects. So she would crawl around on the floor, and anything she found on the floor, a pin, a penny, a nail, it would go straight into her mouth. It's very possible that she scraped her tongue and developed gangrene on her tongue. By this habit, she would lunge at passersby and try to pick the buttons off their blouse or shirt and swallow the buttons. If you gave her a piece of chicken for her lunch, she would cram it into her mouth, bones and all. So, for her own safety, the superintendent of the Alms house had Rhoda put into something called a utica crib. Now, that is very much like a child's crib. It's exactly what it sounds like. The difference being that a Utica crib has also a barred top, which locks. This was standard issue in mental asylums at the time. Now, the Utica crib was not designed for use any longer than overnight. The usual Utica crib had a thin hospital mattress on the bottom of it. Rhoda's crib was lined with straw. There was a strategically cut hole at about the level of her hips. And there was a tray underneath, just like a rabbit cage. And for the exact same reason, she was kept in the cage for weeks and months at a time. The mice would nest in the straw and run all over her bOdy. When she was let out, she was cared for by other feeble minded patients. She spent so much time in this crib that she lost the ability to walk. Her knees atrophied, her hips atrophied, and her knees were drawn up to the chest so she could no longer walk when she was let out. Sometime during the first ten years of this treatment, Rhoda decided that she no longer wanted to watch the world go by through the bars of a cage. And she clawed her own eyes out. She beat on her teeth so hard that her front teeth fell out as well. She spent decades in this situation. Now, in 1902, Dr. Zeller became superintendent of the Peoria State Hospital. And as I said, part of his mandate was that he believed that no one was beyond help. He wanted the worst cases. So how do you prove that? How do you prove that no one is beyond redemption? Will you go around to the Alms houses and the poor houses in the state of Illinois and you cherry pick the worst cases? That's exactly what Dr. George Zeller did. He went to the Peoria. He went to the Adams County Alms house, and he saw Rhoda there. By this time, she had been moved from the Utica crib to a box bed. She would not tolerate the feel of clothing on her body. So she was just in this box bed, naked, with a thin sheet of canvas covering her. Dr. Zeller took one look at Rhoda and said, this patient is coming with me. And the superintendent of the Alms house didn't want to let Rhoda go because he figured that the Alms house was going to be blamed for her condition. And Dr. Zeller said, either this patient comes with me, or I shut your institution down, effective immediately. And Dr. Zeller did have that power. He was the state alienist, so he was in charge of all these mental asylums. So. September 20, 619. Oh six. There was a big storm that afternoon, and there was a washout on the tracks. So the train between Adams county and Quincy, Illinois, and Bartonville got in very late that night. It wasn't until about 01:00 in the morning that the nurses and the attendants got the call that the train had finally arrived at the station on the hilltop. So they went down to the platform to meet the train. The patients, about 60 of them from Adams county, were being transported on box cars. So the nurses and the attendants escorted the patients out of the box cars, and they stood on the train platform kind of shivering a little bit in the cool September night air. And then a couple of the attendants went back onto the box car, and they realized they wanted to make sure no one was being left behind on the train car. And they saw a great big wicker laundry basket at one end of the train car. And this was unusual. Usually the patients arrived with just the clothes on their backs. So they saw this laundry basket and said, whoa. Okay, I guess this is patient laundry. I guess this comes off, too. So one attendant on either end of this great big wicker laundry basket, and they hump the basket off of the box car, and they set it down on the train platform. And then all of a sudden, the lid of the basket opens the closed part, and there sits Rhoda jabbering at people. She was being transported in the laundry basket because her hips had wasted away so much that she could no longer sit in a wheelchair. She was being carried around in the basket. That night, for the first time in 44 years, Rhododeri slept in a bed with clean white sheets. The nurses knew her excruciating history. So even though she could no longer see, they made sure that she experienced the hilltop in any way that was left to her. They let her sit out in the gardens on a blanket and feel the sun on her face and smell the flowers whose color she could no longer see, and listen to the birds chirping. They took her to dances so that she could listen to the music. It's said that Rhoda never smiled when she was at the Peoria State Hospital, with one exception. When Dr. Zeller came into a room where Rhoda Derry was, she lit up like a sunflower following the sun. I don't know if she recognized the smell of his cologne or recognized his voice, but she knew he was there. She knew her savior had walked into the room, and she was beaming. There is one photograph of Roda Dairy that was taken in dining Hall A, which still stands. And this was taken very close to the end of her life. She developed tuberculosis, probably in the Alms house. And when her case became full blown in the summer of 1906, she was moved from her cottage to dining Hall A, which had been pressed into service as a hospital ward to treat tuberculosis. And we have discerned that that picture was taken in dining Hall a. So it was taken very late in her life. And she is this wisened, wasted mummy of a figure. But she's beaming. She is smiling so big. And I just have to think that Dr. Zeller was in that room when that picture was taken. So Rotary was with us for two years. She passed away on the Hilltop, October 1906, the day before she would have turned 72.

Michelle: I wish that people could see me right now because I have tears in my eyes. And I've read her story because I've read 44 years in darkness so many times. I think that the book is quite doggyed, because, as I said, it's one of those stories that you just hope you never, ever forget. And the way that you summed it up at the start, this is a story that ends with such success. My gosh, to know the kindness that she must have felt in gentle hands, soothing her and gentling her. Honestly, I'm getting really teary thinking about.

Sylvia Shults: It because, yeah, you and me both.

Michelle: Everyone needs and deserves that kind of level of kindness and compassion. And to know that's how her story finished after such awful tragedy and treatment. But to know that she had people who really, truly loved her and wanted her to see the world and have the warmth of the world and to know the warmth of other people is just so moving. And I just cannot thank you enough for bringing her story to my attention. And I hope other people's attention who listen, but also anyone who's read your book, because, my goodness, it's so wonderful to know that people can have that kind of impact on someone else. And, yeah, you did such a brilliant job.

Sylvia Shults: And thank you.

Michelle: I think you can hear how it impacts on me whether I read it or whether I hear it from you, in your own words, out loud. It's just so moving and so beautiful a story to have that conclusion. Yeah.

Sylvia Shults: And she was loved. Far from being relieved when she passed away, the nurses were all just devastated to have lost her. And the interesting thing about the cemeteries at the Peoria State Hospital. Is that cemetery one and two were both started at the hospital's beginning. The cemetery that people, families who had money, that was cemetery one. If their families could kick in for a nicer grave or maybe a nicer headstone, that was where the people whose families were well off were buried. The pauper's burying ground was cemetery too. And by the time Rhoda passed away, she only had one brother left. Of all of her siblings. Her siblings never came to visit her at the Peoria State Hospital. And she only had one brother left. So she had no family to speak of. And her family was dirt poor anyway. But she is not buried in Cemetery two. She is buried in Cemetery One. And I believe the reason for that is because Dr. Zeller and his nurses. Made the decision to place Rhoda in a place of honor. And give a little more attention to her grave. Because she had no one else to pay her that final attention. So they did it for her.

Michelle: Well, they stepped in as family.

Michelle: Yeah.

Michelle: Just as they'd done in caring for her. They stepped in as family.

Sylvia Shults: Absolutely.

Michelle: And I think it's so touching that her story, that legacy of her story, is something that people know. And whether that's through the history of what happened or through the accounts of her still lingering in the afterlife. Because this was a place that had such meaning to her that she is still there. My goodness. The fact that she is still being spoken about is she's not forgotten. And she could be so easily one of those people, sadly, that nobody ever knew about. And forgotten so easily with no one to tell her story. And it seems like the hospital didn't want that. The staff didn't want that. They cared for her after her death. To place her in that kind of a burial and to give her that kind of love. And her story still keeps being talked about and told. And again, something very moving in.

Sylvia Shults: I was the same psychic medium who helps me talk to Chris has accompanied me to Rhoda's grave a couple of times. And I told Rhoda about the book that I had written. And all the wonderful things that are happening with that. And the medium said that Rhoda threw her arms around me. And gave me a great big hug.

Michelle: It should do. It really should I do really think it's very touching that her story has that impact on people, because it should. And I think there's something wonderfully emotive about the fact that she chooses to be there because it was her home. And I think that really does stand as a testimony to what Dr. Zella and his wife and all of those people that worked there were trying to achieve and do for their patients, because this was home. And for her, you can really see that it gave her a quality of life and compassion when she needed it the most. And to know that that's how she ended the last few years of her life is magical. And the fact that she's still there, enjoying the place that was her home is beautiful.

Sylvia Shults: Oh, yeah. I smile every time I think of Rhoda. And she really is our most beloved spirit on the Hilltop. And she still does appear to people. A few years ago, there was a joint investigation with several groups that showed up at the Pollock Hospital for a two night investigation Friday night and Saturday night. And I was with the groups both nights. And I told Rhoda's story several times Friday night. And there was one of the investigators, a woman named Lisa, that she is also sensitive. And she heard my story a couple of times, and she spent all day Saturday just stewing over this. She said, this is so unfair. One of the signals that Rhoda is around you is that she will tug on your pants leg, because she would crab across the floor in life and tug on your pants leg to ask for some chewing tobacco. She was addicted to chewing tobacco, and she would ask for some tobacco that way. And that's part of her ghost lore. And Lisa spent all day doing. She said, this is so unfair. This woman suffered so much in life, and now she's relegated in the afterlife to still just crawling around on the floor. How is that even fair? That's so not right. And she arrived at the Pollock Hospital for the second night of investigation, and she became aware that there was someone next to her in the hallway sitting on the floor. And she became aware that it was indeed Rhoda Derry sitting on the floor next to her. And Rhoda cocked her head, looked up, made eye contact with Lisa. And then Rhoda got to her knees and then stood tall and proud. And she kind of gestured to herself as if to say, see, I am whole. I am beautiful and tall again, once on the other side. And she was trying to tell Lisa, it's okay. I'm not just still crawling around on the floor. I'm whole. On the other side. So that was a really special thing that she showed to Lisa, and I'm so grateful to Lisa for sharing that with her own Ghost Lord. That's what fascinates me, is that Rhoda knows her own ghost stories, and she knows how to approach you, to let you know that it is indeed her that you're talking to, because another friend of mine said, she said, I saw a beautiful, tall Victorian lady, and if she hadn't showed me that, I wouldn't have known it was Rhoda. But she let me know that it was indeed Rhoda.

Michelle: I was going to say the same thing. There's something almost empowering about her being.

Michelle: Able to be part of her own.

Michelle: Story, even in death. The fact that she's choosing to be there, she's choosing to make herself known and to interact and to kind of give people that message of what they need to hear in that manner. There's some power in that, that maybe for a large part of her life, she didn't have that she reclaimed, and she's reclaimed still in death, in the place that was important to her, that gave her a sense of home and family. And, yeah, I think, again, something really, there's a really important message in that. I think that we can sometimes feel something is a certain way, or should be, is being perceived in a certain way. And sometimes it just takes a little bit longer to have something made known to us, a revelation of that kind, to really understand what it is that they're also wanting us to know about them and their experience in death, if that makes.

Sylvia Shults: Oh, yeah, yeah, it definitely does.

Michelle: Honestly, Rhoda's story is just so touching. I hope anybody listening to the podcast goes out and buys all three of the books about the hospital, about Dr. Zella, about the other patients, the other accounts, Rhoda's story, which, oh, my gosh, just, I defy anybody to read her story and not be moved to every emotion imaginable, to be honest. They are books that, like I said at the beginning, they're books that I think will stay with you for all manner of reasons. And, my gosh, there are stories that come through like Rhoda's, where you just think, thank goodness for people like Dr. Zella, who found her and rescued her. There is no other way about it. Who rescued her. So, yes, they are three books that if you don't have them on your Christmas list, if you don't have someone who loves you, tell them that you want them or treat yourself or get it in your local library, something. But you need to know those stories. They will touch your heart. And I think that's really important. So thank you so much for your time in giving us a glimpse of the absolutely characters, the staff, the hospital itself, the mission, all of it. It's such a beautiful legacy and story to know about and to hear. So I really appreciate your time.

Sylvia Shults: It's one that, and I'll tell you that fractured spirits and 44 years in darkness are available as ebooks. I'm sorry, not ebooks. I don't know where my mind was. They're available as audiobooks. And the publisher who put out the audiobook of both of them actually told me that he talked to the narrator that read 44 years in darkness. And she said, I broke down in tears a couple of times while I was reading this.

Michelle: I don't think it would be one that I would be able to read, to be honest. Honestly, every single page gets me. It really does. It's just, as I said to you before the podcast, it's not often I'm completely lost for words, but my gosh, she does it. Rhoda does it with her story. And the way that you've so sensitively told her story is just so many to you as a writer and as a researcher. So yes, I can't recommend your books highly enough. And I just thank you once again from the bottom of my heart for coming along and sharing it, to be honest.

Sylvia Shults: Thank you very much, Michelle. It was an honor to be on your show and to share these stories. I am always pleased to share the history and the stories of the Peoria State Hospital.

Michelle: And I will make sure to put all of your details as before into the podcast description notes and on the website so people can easily find you and find where to get hold of the books, whether it's audiobooks or hard copies or Kindle copies. However you prefer to kind of consume your books, really, they can easily find them. And yeah, I will say goodbye to everybody listening. Bye everybody.