Former Asylum Now a Booming Tourism Business

Normally, Rebecca Jordan will take all the free TV exposure she can get for the psychiatric hospital in Weston, West Virginia, that she's turned into a tourist attraction known as the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, constructed in 1864.

SyFy's "Ghost Hunters", Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures" and "Ghost Stories", Discovery's "Forgotten Planet". She even hosted an episode of CMT's "My Big Redneck Wedding" on the 307-acre grounds.

But she drew the line when producers for A&E's "Paranormal State" called. They didn't want to meet the ghosts behind the 2½-foot thick walls, she says. They wanted to get rid of them.

"And I was like, 'Well, maybe you're not the right fit for me. We do not want to get rid of our spirits! We want them to stay in the building. Unless they want to go home," she adds with a laugh. "And then they can go home. I'm not trying to keep anybody here who doesn't want to be here."

The property that Jordan's father bought three years ago for $1.5 million is now generating enough revenue from overnight public ghost hunts at $100 a person and other types of tours to pay a staff of 33 and fund a never-ending list of maintenance and repair projects.