THE STORY – For over seventy years, Pennhurst State School & Hospital was called a place of care. What happened inside killed over half its population. It closed in 1987, leaving behind unmarked graves and an unresolved history. Today, on those same grounds, disabled performers – many living with the same conditions that once sent people to Pennhurst – put on their makeup, pull on their costumes, and prepare to scare people for a living.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Mike Attie, Nathan Stenberg & Katarina Poljak (Directors)
THE RUNNING TIME – 80 Minutes
From its opening moments, “The Haunting of Pennhurst” announces itself as far more unsettling than your typical haunted-house documentary. An architectural blueprint of the former Pennhurst State School and Hospital in Pennsylvania glides across the screen like a ghost drifting through its halls, accompanied by a creepy score threaded with static and the mechanical click of an old slide projector. Then comes a question, posed in narration: “Do you remember what it sounded like at Pennhurst?” The answer that follows, provided by the late Roland Johnson, a disabilities advocate and former patient who spent 13 years at Pennhurst, is chilling. “The vibrations of something not right.” The sound of fear itself. And what a perfect environment, then, for a haunted house.
What begins like a behind-the-scenes theater camp documentary, where actors workshop terrifying characters, craftspeople build elaborate sets and costumes, and tour guides coach newcomers on how to unsettle visitors, gradually reveals itself to be something much heavier. The haunted house at the center of the film is run largely by disabled performers, and their presence on these grounds carries a significance that the filmmakers, Nathan Stenberg, Mike Attie, and Katarina Poljak, never let you forget.
The production itself is fascinating to watch unfold. Autumn and Emily, volunteer workers at Pennhurst, encourage the performers to reclaim their disabilities and build their characters. The actors design their own personas as creatures who were wronged and want revenge, patients mistreated and now on the loose, and through the rehearsal process, reveal what scares them: losing their minds, losing control. Exactly, the film reminds you what the real patients of Pennhurst probably felt. One actor asks about whether the movements of their performance could be seen as ticks. This encapsulates the tightrope the entire production walks, disrespect vs respect. Using the R-word, for example, is immediate grounds for dismissal. Performers cannot portray a disability they don’t have themselves. Patient-on-doctor violence is permitted in performance, but not the other way around. There was enough of that in real life.
The film doesn’t sugarcoat what Pennhurst once was for a single moment. Archival newspaper clippings, photographs, old recordings, and deeply disturbing historical footage paint a portrait of a society that viewed disabled people as burdens to be managed and eradicated. The patients were called degenerates. They were treated as inmates. It was a prison in disguise, and the film forces you to sit with that.
The historical footage is particularly hard to watch, and the R-word appears frequently enough to be triggering for many viewers. But the filmmakers frame it all with care and intention. What makes “The Haunting of Pennhurst” so powerful is the contrast it creates between past and present: the profound loneliness that once hung over these halls now stands in stark contrast to the found family that has gathered here. Eddie, one of the haunt actors who is deaf, speaks about feeling welcomed and included at Pennhurst in a way no patient ever could. Many of the performers speak on their disabilities, and there is even a trans performer who reflects on how they are sometimes viewed as a monster by society, much like the patients here and those who are disabled today. If people are going to treat them like monsters, they’re going to own that through their performance. “Let’s see how scary I can be.” It’s a powerful line because, through this haunted house, these performers are taking control over the monstrosity projected onto them.
The cinematography here is excellent, using framing to emphasize the place’s enormity. At certain moments, the camerawork makes you feel like a patient yourself; trapped, peering out a window, longing to be free. The sound design is equally strong, with that recurring slide projector clicks cutting through like the tick of a clock, turning back time on a history that should never be forgotten.
The film does lightly touch on Pennhurst’s paranormal appeal, with a ghost-hunting convention that’s its least compelling stretch. But it’s a minor detour in an otherwise tremendously focused piece. What lingers most, and what elevates “The Haunting of Pennhurst” into one of the best horror documentaries in recent memory, is its insistence that this history is not comfortable in the past. Disability care in the United States remains in crisis. The film doesn’t just want you to be afraid of what was done here. It wants you to be afraid of what could happen again because we are not as far from those disgraces as we would like to believe.
