A Haunted Asylum

One summer, a friend and I decided to explore an abandoned psychiatric hospital that was set to me torn down in the fall. We did some quick research on the place and found out that it’s patrolled quite often and so technically, it would be trespassing if we were caught. It would take us about a 20 minute walk through the woods to get to one side of the large group of buildings and we had to do it in our pants and long sleeves to avoid being seen and protect ourselves from the thick woods. I had to bring my camera too, everything was so morbid and it seemed as though the place had just been picked up in one day and abandoned. There were so many buildings to explore. A men’s ward, women’s ward, recreation building, a building for the criminal insane, a few other buildings for medical, and of course the morgue.

One of the first buildings we walked through was the men’s ward. Almost the entire building had been cut down the middle through the two stories of hallways. It looked as if the gates of hell had been opened and everything and everyone was sucked down into it. The wooden floor boards were all curved downward and there was no possible way to walk around the second floor. On the ground floor you could walk through parts of the dark hallway and peak into the rooms. Most walls were tagged with graffiti, giving it that real abandoned look.

When we made our way through the tall grass surrounding the entire property we entered a building I can only imagine was everyone’s least favorite place to go. There were many small rooms and in most of them were metal slabs or a cushioned reclining chair. Most things that weren’t nail down had been long looted, but the buckled straps were all still attached to their chairs. It was so quiet in this building, you could almost hear the bone chilling screams if you listened long enough. This building also had the least amount of windows, making it even grimmer walking around by only the light of our phones.

Next, the building next door was a lot smaller than the previous one. Right when you walk in the first thing you see are six cubbies missing their doors, but with rollers still intact. Almost all of the metal inside had been rusted over time, so none of the rollers would move anymore. This was where the bodies went. Probably close to the other building for convenience. This building was small, so there wasn’t much to see, but it did have a second floor. Upstairs was what I imagine was the office or even laboratory. There were heavy machines stuck to the counters and papers covering the entire floor. This room was one of the only rooms that was covered in windows, as if to go up the stairs was to escape the grim downstairs. If only everyone had that option. I imagine dying at a place like this was one of the worst deaths. What do they do to your body? I didn’t see any giant furnaces, just places where test tubes and metal instruments must have rested.

This experience was one of the grimmest I’ve ever encountered. The grounds were huge and there must have been thousands of residents. All I could imagine through the journey was the melancholy faces of the ghosts, unsure of where they were or how they died. I’m lucky enough to not have seen any ghostly figures, but I’m sure they saw me.