The Bell Tower building at CSU Channel Islands, a white Spanish Revival building with a domed tower, arcade and red tile roof

CSU Channel Islands – Camarillo, CA: The Former Camarillo State Hospital and the Stories Students Tell

Southwestern US Haunted Schools

California State University Channel Islands stands on the grounds of the former Camarillo State Hospital, which opened in 1936 and closed on June 30, 1997. Many of the campus’s red-roofed buildings were built for people who lived and were treated there, and some of those people died there. This guide gives the documented history first. It then covers the ghost stories students tell today, in a separate section, and it lists the popular claims that no source supports.

The hospital: what the record shows

The John Spoor Broome Library’s newspaper chronology says the state chose the old Lewis Ranch near Camarillo in April 1932, paying $415,000 for 1,512 acres. The first 10 male patients arrived on March 22, 1933 and were housed in the ranch house. The site was named Camarillo State Hospital in May 1933, and Governor James Rolph Jr. broke ground on August 18, 1933. The chronology lists the hospital as opening in May 1936, and the formal opening ceremony under Governor Frank Merriam took place on October 12, 1936. The first 300 women arrived in January 1937, and by April 1937 the hospital held 1,119 patients.

The library’s collection page says the hospital was designed for 7,000 patients, was a Public Works Administration project, ran a teaching hospital and partnered with UCLA’s psychiatric facility. It was also a large local employer. The Ventura County Star reported that it housed more than 7,000 patients in the 1950s.

The hospital closed in stages. The Los Angeles Times reported on June 29, 1997 that Governor Pete Wilson ordered the closure in early 1996, that the last of about 700 patients were moved out on June 10, and that the hospital would officially shut down the next day, Monday, June 30. The same article says its research programs contributed to the wider acceptance of newer drugs for schizophrenia.

From hospital to campus

According to the university’s history page, a governor’s task force recommended in 1996 that the hospital be converted into a public university, and the property was conveyed to the California State University on October 1, 1998. The Bell Tower building was renovated by July 1999 for students from the CSUN Ventura campus, and CSU Channel Islands held its first classes on August 24, 2002 with 629 transfer students. The Broome Library, a new building, opened on April 4, 2008.

Remembering the people who lived and died here

The Ventura County Star reported in 2010 that state officials confirmed more than 1,000 people died at the institution in its last 30 years of operation, of both natural and suspicious causes. The California Memorial Project, which Disability Rights California describes as honoring people who lived and died in state institutions, held its first Remembrance Day ceremony on the former hospital grounds on September 20, 2010. About 100 people attended. Two former residents spoke and described very different experiences. One said she found treatment that helped her, and the other called his stay in 1963 “a nightmare.” The same page shows a Memorial Project monument on the former hospital grounds, now the CSUCI campus.

Earlier, in 2002, LA Weekly followed former residents on a visit to the new campus. They remembered both ordinary things, such as movie nights and the bowling alley, and treatment they described as harsh, including shock therapy and restraints. A university guide told them no cemetery had ever existed on the grounds and that people who died without relatives were most likely buried in unmarked graves in nearby cemeteries. When asked about a memorial, he said the university did not think students would be interested in one. The Memorial Project says people who died in state institutions were often buried in mass or unmarked graves.

Campus ghost stories: student accounts

This section is folklore. It is drawn from one source, a series in the student paper The CI View, and none of it is documented history. In Part 3 of “Is CI Haunted?” (February 27, 2026), the paper prints four first-person stories:

  • A voice near the old bowling alley. A physics major says that around 2 or 3 a.m. in May 2024, while sitting on the steps outside Islands Cafe, he heard a shrill voice call his name from the direction of the old hospital bowling alley and found no one there.
  • The man from 1936. A neighbor says that around 2018 she and her husband chatted with a tall man in a white shirt who said he had worked at the hospital when it opened, and that he vanished when they turned around. The paper itself notes that anyone working there in 1936 would have been at least 100 years old by then.
  • A cold restroom. A psychology major says he felt sudden cold and a headache in a Bell Tower restroom in February 2026. The symptoms stopped when he left the building.
  • A moving shampoo bottle. A 2024 graduate relays his roommate’s account of a bottle that twice ended up on the shower floor of an Anacapa dorm in 2023.

Two of the people the paper interviewed say they do not believe the spirits mean any harm. None of the accounts names a person, and this guide does not connect any of them to anyone who lived or worked at the hospital.

What the record does not support

  • A morgue beneath the library. No source for this was found. The Broome Library is a new building, with groundbreaking on October 7, 2005 and its opening in 2008, according to the university’s history page.
  • A “Hotel California” connection. The Historical Marker Database’s entry for the campus marker calls it a rumor, and no evidence was found.
  • A university ban on ghost talk. No source supports it, and the student paper runs an open series on the subject.
  • Claims about secret experiments and the like. These circulate in online comment threads. No documentary source was found for any of them, and they are not repeated here.
  • Named or identified ghosts. No account reviewed identifies a spirit as a specific former resident or staff member.

Visiting

CSUCI offers family, group and virtual tours through its Visit Us page. The Historical Marker Database places the 1998 campus marker east of Richard R. Rush Hall. The Camarillo State Hospital Collection in the Broome Library, about 100 linear feet of documents, photographs and oral histories, is open to researchers by appointment through the university archives. Its catalog record says any photograph that features a patient cannot be published or distributed, and marks the client photographs and artwork as confidential. Please treat the buildings as classrooms and residences.

Sources

Shop the gear

Heads up: NicheStuff is our own shop, so we earn from purchases made through these links. Prices and availability are set on the store and can change.

Top image: The Bell Tower building at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo, the former Camarillo State Hospital, photographed in 2007. Photo: Stephen Schafer, CC0 (public domain dedication), via Wikimedia Commons