Rauceby Asylum lies deep within the Lincolnshire countryside. Built-in 1902, the hospital closed in 1997.
Rauceby Hospital was taken over by the RAF and renamed No. 4 RAF Hospital Rauceby with 1,000 beds treating crash and burns victims. The pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe worked here on members of his so-called “Guinea Pig Club”. The main hall burnt down in 1947 and the RAF handed the premises over to the newly formed National Health Service, which then returned to using it as a mental asylum. The site was closed in 1997 amid allegations of abuse. The site includes two graveyards, a mortuary, and a series of underground tunnels connecting wards.
Tens of thousands of patients have passed through its doors. the administration block and chapel are reportedly the only original features to be retained. The chapel is the only building that’s had work done but it was never completed, and now has partial drainage been implemented and plywood over the windows. The images which I have taken are over a period of two visits, one a few years back, the inside images and the wider images are a result of my latest revisit.
Rauceby Asylum now stands half demolished and is stripped of everything apart from a bathtub, and a few toilets. It was finally great to explore this asylum after it has eluded me for a few years.
The open-air greenhouse that lays in the middle of the grounds still looks stunning today, and the window opening mechanism still works.
A leisurely stroll around the grounds and buildings that remain was overlooked by hundreds of crows, and in the middle of the ground where a roundabout once resided stands a huge abandoned digger. Is the site still been demolished, what is happening to this site? I’ve no idea.
I found a tunnel to the left of the grounds that runs for about 100ft but was sadly blocked off, it was partially waterlogged.
Haunted
It is documented that a male named Bert is said to haunt the top floor of Rauceby Hospital’s admissions unit,, along with a young maid. Within the hospital, there is rumoured to be another spirit that has no facial features and makes a disturbing groaning noise before vanishing into the darkness.
Rauceby Asylum and The Film ‘The Lucifer Effect.
8 members of the public participated in an unscripted filmed experiment at Rauceby Asylum on 24 January 2010.
They all signed a waiver form and agreed to be locked inside for 3 days and nights with little food and water. Cameras were set up to record the effects.
The film was studying the social condition known as ‘The Lucifer Effect’, which is a psychological consequence that is said to occur when ‘good’ people are given power over others in an evil place.
The effect was first investigated in the 1970s during the infamous Stanford Prison experiment by professor Philip Zimbardo. The director Tim Burke, wanted to do a production of ‘The Lucifer Effect’ which was a recreation of a modern-day equivalent of the Stanford Prison experiment in an abandoned mental asylum.
A cameraman was nearly strangled to death after a séance with a spirit board. The 8 participants began to act strangely supposedly under a curse. The film was classed as fake but the events that happened are supposed to be real and unscripted.
All 8 required treatment of some kind. The film was shown at the Cannes film festival where it supposedly affected members of the audience. The film was stopped and the police confiscated all the footage.
One photo was posted online from the festival of a girl who was assaulted whilst the lights mysteriously went out during the film’s midnight screening.
John Valenti, manager of the screening room, who also attended the screening committed; “The energy in the room was rowdy and excitable due to the nature and history of the film anyway. However, when the lights went dark, we heard a loud commotion and discovered a girl had a cut on her eye when the backup lights were eventually switched on.”
The film director went missing after making the film.
What really happen and was the film cursed.? I guess we’ll never know.
The only link which now seems available to read any of this information is listed below
Simon Wilson
After researching the film for a few days, I have come to conclusion it was a hoax. A trailor does exist from the film, but the date of the Rauceby footage within the trailor, doesn’t match the date of the supposed release; also the appears to be filmed in at least two other seperate asylums. The usual sites I look for films (inluding banned) show nothing for the matched title.
Simon Wilson