When it comes to abandoned hospitals, Kings Park Psychiatric Center in Long Island, New York is the mother of them all. Founded in 1885, at its peak the Kings Park Psychiatric Center was comprised of 150 buildings and housed over nine thousand patients. In its current abandoned state, it is believed by many to be haunted by its former patients.

Kings Park Psychiatric Center was founded as the Kings Park Lunatic Asylum, and was built to alleviate overcrowding in other asylums nearby. At the time, it was believed that fresh air, rest, exercise and manual labor were effective cures for mental illness. As a result, Kings Park quickly became a self-sufficient farm community, where patients would tend crops, milk cows and make their own clothing. But the facility kept growing until it became overcrowded in the 1950s, and doctors began to use more invasive treatment methods such as prefrontal lobotomies and electroshock therapy, making the hospital a fairly miserable place to live. With the introduction of Thorazine as an approved medication for mental illness, patients that had been unable to function independently in society were now able to live on their own, and the patient population began to diminish. Throughout the '70s and '80s several of the Kings Park buildings were shut down, and in 1996 the entire facility was abandoned.