History Main / BedlamHouse

* ''Film/GraveEncounters'' centers around a reality TV crew locked in an allegedly haunted insane asylum. It ends badly.
** Although oddly, despite the asylum's macabre history, it looks like a regular building from the outside, which adds to the surreal horror.

* In the Broadway musical version of Disney's ''Beauty and the Beast'', Monsieur D'Arque joins Gaston and LeFou in a song about their scheme to lock up Maurice in order to get Belle to marry Gaston. Judging by the lyrics, the Maison des Lunes is a very unpleasant place indeed.

* ''Theatre/MaratSade'' is set at the insane asylum of Charenton, where [[PrisonerPerformance the inmates perform a play]] about the murder of Jean-Paul Marat under the direction of the UsefulNotes/MarquisDeSade.

* In ''Literature/WhiteTrashWarlock'', A teenage Adam is sent to a mental institution by his mother and older brother because of his ability to see/hear magic. Not only is the Liberty House mental institution a terrible place in general (with abusive orderlies, a heavy reliance on sedating patients, and generally abysmal living conditions, Adam's [[TheEmpath magic is empathic in nature]], meaning he was essentailly being tortured by the mental anguish of the patients around him.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Hotel Crescent Hotel]] in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, used to be one of these. It used to be a treatment center for incurable diseases during the early part of the 1900s, but it was actually run by a con man who purposefully sought out rich families with ailing elders. He would trick the families into checking their sick family members into the hospital, where they would never come out, periodically forcing them to write to their family to ask for more money. Some of them would die and the deaths would go unreported, and letters would still be sent to the family asking for money as if they had never died. Needless to say, the hotel is reportedly very haunted.

[[quoteright:320:[[Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/foggs_asylum_0.png]]

%%%

%%This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!

%%%

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/batman_arkham_asylum.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Makes you long for the good old days of [[HollywoodExorcism exorcisms]], doesn't it?]]

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Batman-Arkham-Asylum-Impressions-1.jpg]]]]

** Following the destruction of Arkham Asylum (again) in ''Comicbook/InfiniteFrontier'' #0, Arkham Tower, constructed in the wake of ''Comicbook/FearState'', is very specifically defined as Not This, being a modern health facility with an excellent recovery rate. It ''immediately'' proved to have a dark secret, but once that was taken care of, the new management is still determined to destigmatise mental health while also doing their best to deal with, well, Gotham. Time will tell how long this lasts.

* Marvel's eighth ''Comicbook/MoonKnight'' series opens with a CuckooNest plot in which Marc Spector is seemingly locked in Mercy Hospital for the Mentally Ill with sadistic guards gleefully giving him electroshock therapy, despite knowing perfectly well "hospitals like this don't even ''exist'' any more!"

** One {{Elseworld}}, ''ComicBook/TheBatmanOfArkham'', had Bruce Wayne as a psychiatrist in an Early 20th-Century Arkham... where, in a surprising subversion, he genuinely helps people. The story opens with a breakthrough therapy session with Killer Croc, who is nearly rehabilitated because Dr. Wayne simply treated him like a human being instead of chaining him like an animal. Later, Wayne says that before he came, Arkham was indeed "the old Bedlam, where unfortunates were whipped, chained, and starved." But under the later direction of Dr. Crane, it reverts to the old ways immediately. Things got better.

* ''[[Series/GulliversTravels1996 Gulliver's Travels (1996)]]'' is partially set at the very facility of Bethlem itself, with the requisite display of lunatic patients.