1 Comments Posted by BigRedpg51

I used to work in this Essex County Isolation Hospital (a.k.a. "Soho") during the summers of 1970 and 1971. I was a porter in the nursing department. My fellow porters and I would explore this hospital in our spare time. At that time it was being used as a "Geriatrics Hospital".....but in truth it was just a dumping ground for mentally handicapped, patients dying of one disease or another, and multiple sclerosis patients.

To the best of my knowledge this hospital was not used for TB cases. Those were shuffled off to the Essex Mountain Sanatorium on an hill near the Cedar Grove/Verona boarder.

As a 17 yr. old I remember noticing the ward doors on the different floors (in my spare time from portering). The doors to each ward were painted over with many coats of paint, but if you looked at them at the right angle you could see the light bouncing off the words printed underneath.....POLIO......ENCEPHALITIS.......RHEUMATIC FEVER.......SMALL POX........SYPHILIS........ I got a chill down my spine when I saw that! Each ward dealt with a different disease.

Down in the basement level were the old operating rooms. Also, lined up outside them were 4 iron lungs.

I always wondered.......and even do to this day.......what it was like up in the 'tower' -- the highest room in the center section of the admin building. I'd like to see it one day, if possible. It's been knawing at me for quite a few years.

Once, I had to help a couple of nurses transport a body to the morgue building, out back. Now THAT was a scary adventure! In recent years they've torn down that tiny little building and the power plant building.....and they've put up a townhouse complex there. I don't mind telling you that I would not want to live in a townhouse that was built over the ground that that morgue occupied.

There are, as others have noted here, a series of tunnels under the grounds which connect the main hospital building to the other buildings.

Now, part of the main hospital building is given over to a research organization called "The Garden State Cancer Center".....

http://www.gscancer.org

Personally, I think it's being used for US Govt. secret germ warfare experiments. Why else would a cancer research organization feel the need to occupy a building that was originally designed to contain highly-communicable and deadly diseases? Has anyone seen the current state of this building lately? Windows are broken out on almost every floor except where the cancer center is located.

I suspect that what they are working on up there is so deadly and 'sensitive' that they needed a place that no one would care about........but that would be built in such a way s to contain any 'run-away' experiments that went wrong and might tend to contaminate surrounding countryside.

Many a restless spirit wanders those grounds!