Sanatorio Durán In Cartago, Costa Rica
Sanatorio Durán has a long and sad history. It was reportedly first opened as a tuberculosis hospital in 1918 by a Costa Rican doctor named Carlos Durán Cartín, whose daughter was suffering with the disease.
But according to another origin story, Cartín's daughter actually contracted the disease after the sanatorium was opened. What's known for certain, however, is that Cartín's beloved daughter died shortly after the hospital was opened.
The sanatorium continued its operations, and it was mostly run by nuns from the nearby Sisters of Charity Santa Anna. Like many tuberculosis facilities of the early 20th century, Sanatorio Durán also began welcoming other kinds of patients, including those living with mental illnesses.
Specialized hospitals like Sanitorio Durán were also often transformed into unofficial prisons. Hospitals of this time were largely viewed as spaces where individuals who were deemed "undesirable" could live together and apart from society. As a result, patients sick with contagious diseases were kept alongside people living with mental illnesses, and those with disabilities were housed alongside criminals.
By the early 1960s, tuberculosis treatment began to make progress and the hospital began to see fewer patients, and those with mental illnesses were moved to bigger psychiatric facilities. After all the patients were moved out, the hospital was converted into both an orphanage and a prison. It continued to operate for another decade before it was completely shut down.
Today, the building sits in decay, thanks in no small part to the eruption of the Irazú Volcano in December 1994. The abandoned asylum is now considered one of the most haunted sites in all of Costa Rica, with many claiming that they can still hear and feel the spirits of the people who died there.
