Missing Reporters, Orderlines, and Staff Gone Missing: Donald Haynes Institute

1941- Missing reporters, orderlines, and staff were pronounced missing at the Donald Haynes Institute of Mental Health, once named the Greybriar House. Police claim that reporters attempted to get pictures of the famous inmates but could not do so before their disappearance. Married couple Hiram Greybriar and Miriam Drayton previously owned this house. Since the house was first established in 1841 in South Carolina, there have been horror occurrences, such as murders, previous disappearances, smuggling, and the disposing of bodies.

Donald Haynes Institute of Mental Health Visual

Attending a few times before their disappearance, reporters claimed they heard noises of pain and distress. Reporters claimed when they looked into some of the patients’ eyes, they saw anger. They saw blood on the floor. Markings on the walls what seemed like a “language” they couldn’t seem to comprehend. These inmates were placed in the Mental Health Institute due to their unwantedness to the public; even their families wanted them hidden.

One staff member had said this 2 days before their disappearance: “All of the inmates are showing signs of some possession by someone higher than them. They often were on their knees, bowing, speaking in tongues, and partook in suicidal actions.” A caretaker of the inmates at the hospital said that she felt distressed when she communicated with them. Reporters had collected several pictures and videos exposing something unsettling- the footage revealed a staff member going into an inmate’s cell to give them their daily prescriptions.

This video, taken exactly 12 hours before all staff reporters and staff went missing, revealed the staff member choking. The inmate was not near the staff member but watched her suffer happily. While in pain, the staff member heard an unfamiliar voice speaking to her, saying, “Bow down to me.” In the police station, just a few hours before she went to work for the last and final time, she claimed to the police and her fellow staff members that she refused to submit to whatever might have been speaking to her. She never left the mental institute when she went to work later that day. Neither did her co-workers or the reporters.


Ever since the disappearance of the staff, reporters, and orderlies, there has been a tragic pattern with their fellow loved ones. Health problems, suicidal thoughts, paranormal visions, lucid dreams, and intermittent explosive disorder (IED). There have been reports of deaths of the extended family since their disappearance. In 1893, there was a question of Hiram Greybriar’s ghost being responsible for the murder of a stranger- was it responsible for this case?