History & local legend
After Dixmont State Hospital’s buildings were demolished, plans called for a Walmart on the hillside above Ohio River Boulevard in Kilbuck Township. The redevelopment became the subject of a ghost story when the ground itself gave way.
On September 19, 2006, a landslide sent earth and stone across Route 65 and blocked the railway beside the Ohio River. Walmart abandoned its plans a year later. Retired Dixmont employees had their own explanation: the patients buried on the hill had pushed the earth downhill to stop the store.
Psychiatrist Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia recorded the story as a joke among former staff while researching her great-aunt Hannah, who had died at Dixmont. Her 2015 essay connected that personal search with the hospital’s afterlife in local memory.
Sources
- Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia, Finding Hannah, Psychiatric Services, April 2015
- Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission, The Kilbuck Township Landslide, 2008 final report
- Pittsburgh local recollections of the Dixmont landslide story, April 2023
- Hospital building history, Reed Hall and the original wards
- UNCG historic preservation research, Appendix D, Kirkbride building database, Dixmont coordinates
