We’re Here to Scare
QUICK DETAILS
Things to know before you go
Scare factor: Moderately Scary
Appropriate For: Ages 10+
Organization Type: Charity/Not for profit
Category: Home Haunt
Additional info: Indoor events, Touching not allowed, Free parking
DATES & TIMES
Witness the horror, while it lasts
Check back soon for an updated calendar!
FAQ
Answers to common questions
The State of California strongly recommends that when you visit Desoto Asylum you be fully vaccinated for Covid-19, obtain a negative covid-19 test result prior to visiting, or wear a face covering.
*Guests who are not fully vaccinated should wear a face-covering during their visit at all times.
All guests, regardless of vaccination status, are required to wear face-covering indoors.
We encourage all guests to keep a safe distance between travel parties.
It’s Free! If you paid you went to the wrong haunt. We’re part of Haunts Against Hunger and collect nonperishable food items for those in need this holiday season. Please bring a nonperishable food item, but a food item is NOT required for entry.
NO, we change the layout and rooms every year to create a new experience, although it is always asylum themed.
Yes, but you must wait in line again, but DO NOT tell other guests where the monsters are hiding.
No, the monsters have been told not to touch or chew on the guests.
No, touching the monster or the props will get you removed from the haunt.
NO Pictures/Videos while inside. We encourage all pictures/videos to be taken in front of Desoto Asylum or while in the line, but don’t forget to share them with your friends.
Yes, If you are wearing a costume mask you will be asked to remove it before entering the haunted house as the small eye holes limit your vision.
YES! Message our Facebook page for more information.
ABOUT US
Desoto Asylum Back Story & Haunts Against Hunger info
We proudly collect nonperishable food items for those in need this holiday season. Patients visiting Desoto Asylum are asked to please bring a nonperishable food item.
Please check the dates items, people can’t eat dated food.
*Food item is NOT required for entry.
Stay in touch with us on social media
Even small towns need medical services, so a hospital for the mentally insane wasn’t unusual. The asylum in Needles was typical—nurses administered medicine and restrained patients if they became agitated or dangerous. A doctor was in charge of treating patients and determining when—or if—they could ever return to society.
According to a registration log that was uncovered years after the catastrophe, there were 22 patients admitted at Desoto Asylum and a staff of 10. Under normal circumstances, nothing ever went wrong.
But, in the summer of 1966 residents of Needles began to go missing. Their mangled bodies were found by authorities inside Desoto Asylum. Unable to figure out how the patients of Desoto Asylum were escaping the residence panicked and boarded up Desoto Asylum with all the patients and staff still inside, the strong brick structure acting as a prison.
In the weeks and months that followed, things began to change inside the Desoto Asylum. The doctors and nurses ignored the patients in their frantic attempt to save themselves.
Toby was one of the higher-functioning patients, who’d been committed to Desoto Asylum in 1966 after killing his family with a pitchfork and using their dead bodies for experiments involving electrical cords and blue cheese dressing. When Toby was no longer subdued by debilitating amounts of brain-numbing sedatives, he overheard the staff planning to escape and leave the patients to die.
Unrestricted by the bounds of human decency, Toby unleashed years of pent-up rage against the frightened staff and began committing revolting horrors on their live bodies. With the help of other patients, Toby turned the tables on the former nurses and doctors, drugged them, and subjected them to his own twisted and painful experiments.
Years passed before anyone escaped. Her name was Nurse Betty, and her story was found scribbled in the margins of a book. Most of the entries are smeared with blood. One of them reads:
October, 1968. He is coming for us one by one, and I can hear them screaming from the padded cells, can smell the burning flesh each time the lights flicker. I know it is the electric chair. He calls it “shock therapy” but he and the girls are punishing us. I beg Alice and Paulette to remember how well I treated them as patients, but now as Toby’s nurses, they are brainwashed to enjoy Toby’s dreadful experiments. I’m afraid to guess what he’s doing with the dead bodies this time.
Today, hardly anyone remembers the horrors of Desoto Asylum. During the day, its vacant, eerie, crumbling brick structure hardly seems worthy of notoriety. But at night, when the smell of burning flesh permeates the air in a putrid dark cloud, thrill-seekers looking for innocent fun are in for the shock of a lifetime.
GALLERY
For your viewing displeasure…
