Rodney Barnes and Elia Bonetti’s Crownsville #1 Delivers An Unforgettable Ghost Story Full of Terror and Trauma

Oni Press is publishing one of the most anticipated horror comics of the year, beginning with Crownsville #1 by Peabody Award-winning screenwriter and master storyteller Rodney Barnes and breakout star artist Elia Bonetti. This frightening and unforgettable five-issue comic book series is inspired by actual events and the terrible legacy of Maryland’s Crownsville Hospital. For decades, the notorious (and now defunct) Maryland psychiatric hospital traumatized the Black communities of Jim Crow-era Annapolis. For writer Rodney Barnes, the hospital’s awful history is intertwined with his own family legacy; his grandmother worked at the hospital as a nurse and a few family members were patients there.

Founded at the turn of the 20th century outside of Annapolis, Maryland, the Crownsville Hospital was a notoriously segregated, all-Black psychiatric institute. After decades of overcrowding and neglect— alongside darker, more-persistent rumors of patient abuse and illegal medical experiments—it was finally closed. Today, it stands condemned—a crumbling testament to a legacy of all-too-real terror inflicted on a marginalized and vulnerable community. But even as a ruin of its former self, Crownsville still casts a long shadow. . . . 

In the highly anticipated series, an unexplained death inside the abandoned hospital is ruled a suicide. But a lone police detective and his old friend—a local journalist— soon discover the reality of the horrors that are still locked within its walls. In issue two, the mystery deepens around Annapolis police detective Mike Simms and journalist Paul Blairare as they discover that anyone coming into contact with the facility is being deeply affected —and even killed… penance for sins of the past.