The Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanitarium is home to Developmentally Disabled Adults.  The Booneville Human Development Center as it is now called (BHDC for short), at one time housed tuberculosis patients from all over the United States.  Those who came to the sanitarium rarely left.  The doctors took up the residence in the small white houses on Curtis Circle (which is still called by that name or sometimes referred to as 22). 

As a former employee, I, as well as others, can recall odd happenings in various buildings on the premises including, Dorm 3, Dorm 4, and Judge Hill.  These buildings are off limits to investigate because they are lived and worked in 24 hours a day.  But most of the ghostly activity happens in the Nyberg building.

The Nyberg building (the biggest and oldest building on the premises) has a basement, 4 floors, and a fifth floor boiler room and roof.  Nyberg has not housed any patients since the TB Sanitarium closed its doors.  Only part of the first floor is still used for offices. The elevators have not worked since the days of the sanitarium and the rest of the building goes untouched due to its age. 

The only company that Nyberg gets is the yearly spook house that BHDC puts on to raise money for the residences Christmas presents, and paranormal groups that come to investigate the activity in the building.

As of late, groups interested in investigating Nyberg are asked to offer a donation, usually between 10 and 20 dollars a person.  Some of the people that investigate Nyberg are those that have won raffle tickets for a chance to go in with said prospective groups.  These amateurs usually are loud, skiddish, and usually hinder the groups chances of catching anything other than a migraine. 

It is recommended that if you are a paranormal group, bring only 8-10 people for the safety of others and to better your chances of 'seeing' or 'feeling' something.   A large group can be quite bothersome especially when there are people that have never been to a haunted place and don't know how to react or what to look for.  In all investigations relative silence is the key. 

Now let's have a look at Nyberg floor to floor.  Upon entering from the basement through the double doors an immediate right will take you into the room that used to be the morgue and the window there is where they used to push the bodies through to remove them from the building so none of the other patients could see.  If you walk straight through the double doors until you come to a hallway, you can make a right and a little ways down the hall is a doorway to the right that takes you to the kitchen where there are big freezers that most people think used to be the morgue.  Silly people, large upright  freezers are good for storing food, not bodies, which must lay horizontal.  Further on down the hallway is a stairwell to the right and a longer hallway continuing to the left.  The doors down this hallway are kept locked as all of the files from every TB patient are kept here.  Through the double doors to the left are storage rooms.  First floor is completely off limits as the doors are all locked.  So, traveling up to the second floor brings us to a long hallway the length of Nyberg itself (as all of the floors do)  with doors on either side.  Each room housed someone different, be it adult or child, so activity in each room greatly differs.  When you travel up to the third floor, look to the left and all the way at the end of the hallway is a plexi-glassed wall lined with a cage.  When you enter the door there are 4 rooms sealed behind these doors that all connect.  In the days of the TB Sanitorium, this particular area was used to house a violent, psychotic, and criminally insane murderer that had TB.   All of the windows in this section have cages over them.  The activity level on the 3rd floor is extremely high.  The 4th floor houses the old nurses station.  Activity is high on this floor, but not as intense as the 3rd floor.  The fifth floor boiler room has some activity but to a minimum. 

When starting out in the basement of Nyberg, when you ascend upstairs your breathing will begin to be more labored as the air is thicker and heavier.  Take  note that there are also Halloween decorations still up in the basement and 2nd floor. 

From former employers and those who have worked to prepare Nyberg for the spook house and have spent long hours each night in each room decorating, we have gathered some tidbits of information about the hauntings. 

1) A former employee has had a chance to look through the TB files and came across one that stood out.  With this name in mind, a medium was called at a later investigation and named that person without the former employee mentioning it. 

2) Former employee has seen a small boy in the basement that followed them, and giggled, and left good footprints and then said child vanished.

3) Former employee and friends were on 3rd floor and looked down towards the cage and a large heavy mist was spotted and began rolling towards them.

4) One investigator, while in the basement, had a door slam on their face and hand even though it was jammed open.

5) Several employees that work the midnight to 8am shift have spotted lights on in a certain room on the 4th floor in the west side of the building. 

There are hundreds of other stories that people have about Nyberg, some may or may not be true, but if you are truly interested in paranormal activity, you will not regret visiting the old TB Sanitorium.  You will most certainly have some very odd, if not negative vibes and feelings of anger and rage thick enough to cut with a knife. 

Everyone can come to their own conclusions.