My dissertation examines the reuse and repurposing of industrial-era mental hospitals, asylums, and prisons in a post-industrial context. These imposing structures often sit abandoned for years before they are repurposed or razed, and the violence associated with them raises the specter of ghostly hauntings that fuel local myths, legends, and curiosity. I argue that these sites fetishize and romanticize the past, even as they attempt to suspend time in the form of anachronistic cultural tours.