106 Comments Posted by Keith

I want one.

Bah! Some people like Bocon just don't appreciate regional dialects. :o(

It's really quite nice what they've done with the place. I must admit I was very disappointed that interior shots wouldn't be possible for most people, but I have to also admit I am thrilled to see them actually doing the right thing and keeping this place safe and secure. And the way they lit the exterior is quite nice too. Well, I'd bet if you asked the right people, and asked them nicely enough, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities to have a bit of a tour some day. Come to think of it, that holds true for nearly all of these places, but it's usually just not exciting to get in the legal way. :o)

I believe that was the model Stephen King wrote most of his early novels on.

Makes me wonder if they always remember to deactivate these machines before abandoning them. Leaving a source for radioactive material in an abandoned building would be one hell of a bad over-sight.

Ah, the only "good" vandalism. Anything beyond signing your name in some dust should be punished severely. Seriously, forget security. We should organize our own groups. Patrol as many of these places as possible and let the decent people be while making sure the kids who go in to smash and spray paint everything decide it would be prudent to never enter the building again. You know, play with their minds the way they toy with the memories of people who probably had four times the humanity they ever will.

All psychoanalysis aside, this mural is still creepy for one reason. It's like that famous "man from apes" illustration, but in reverse. That one starts out with the hunched over little monkey that gradually develops into an upright modern human. This mural starts with the tall upright boy and then regresses down to the short hunched over children. I'm sure it wasn't the artist's intention, but it just seemed strange to see a sort of downward regression if you "read" the painting from left to right. With that said though, the girl in the (possible) wheelchair seems to preceed the tallest boy. Perhaps an unconcious statement that the disabled children are more human than the "normal" humans which seem to be regressing down to the level of dumb beasts again? Probably not, but it sounds all Freudian and fun. I never liked Freud though so you should now pretend I never even mentioned him. Okay, carry on with your day...

I've left quite a bit of comments lately. Well, one more before bed can't hurt. Not sure what that comment about LSD and Thorazine was supposed to be about, but it does seem to have some success in aborting some acid trips. Remember that, kids! When you start to see your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth, you better hope you remembered to keep the thorazine handy. Double super extra bonus points if anyone knows the inspiration for the sentence just before this one!

Yeah, I'll be honest. I just found the site last night and I actually did have a nightmare. I've seen a lot of places like these and it's fairly rare that their imagery makes it into my dreams, so I suppose we can only conclude that... you use subliminal messages in your photography. I found you out, sir. Now, you must reveal all of your secrets.

With the advent of more powerful anti-psychotic drugs and other such things, not to mention changing attitudes, there was a definite move away from using isolation from about the late 60's onward. So, they probably phased out the rooms. Perhaps even made them into private bedrooms for well-behaved patients. Which could explain the light switches. I mean, if you have a bedroom you'll want control of your lighting.

Whatever it is... I don't like it.

While historically feasible that these were purchased by the institution for our assumed use of disposing of unclaimed corpses, I can not help but get a nagging feeling of doubt. Creepy building, darkness, COFFINS! The equation just seems too good, in a morbid way, to be true. Any possibility these were brought in after the facility closed as props? I know quite a few hospitals that doubled as haunted house attractions in their abandoned years. Likewise, I know quite a few people who stumbled across too good to be true finds in places such as this only to find out that they were props brought in to film some obscure horror film that only about 10 people, 9 of which where probably family of the director, ever bothered to watch. The strangest incident of this would have to be a hospital somewhere where all this strange medical equipment was discovered by an urbex group. They were thrilled about the "time capsule" nature of the place until it was uncovered that it was all brought in as props to film some strange soft-core lesbian porn/ horror movie. It seems that nothing was too strange for the horror movie industry of the 70's and 80's.

I'm impressed the slides held up so well. I guess whoever put them together knew what they were doing. I could never get my slides to come together right. :o(

Unless you are a doctor with an obsessive interest in the composition of the blood and urine of a person who may have died 10, or more, years ago, I doubt you are going to get much exciting insight into the patients from lab reports. Blood chemistry isn't very thrilling. I don't even bother to read my own.

You know, sometimes I wonder if we are getting it all wrong. I mean, there's all these comments about "so sad" and "I'm glad I'm normal" and "well, it takes the children's mind off of how they are not normal", but really I begin to wonder if many of them were even that self-aware. I mean, my friend's brother has a high-functioning type of autism of some sort. He's quite intelligent in certain topics like history which he will obsessively study, but he's certainly not "normal" by most definitions, but he really doesn't seem to comprehend that in any way. He's pretty much always just laughing and enjoying things regardless. Even if he's being made fun of or something it never quite registers in his mind that there is "something wrong with him". That being said, I don't feel many of the children in places like this would comprehend their situation to the degree many would like to believe. These places look pretty stark and depressing now, but even the nicest mansion in the world after 30 years of abandonment would pretty much look the same. So, I don't know. I kind of imagine that the staff for the most part tried to give them a good life. Also, they at least had the prospect of having playmates. I mean, how many of these children would have had a chance of having very many friends? At least in a facility like this there was plenty of other children that they could associate with if for no better reason than because everyone was pretty well stuck with one another. Who knows? I'd much prefer to keep the child at home with limited visits to a clinic or some other day-time care facility, but I guess what I am going at is that we can't always jump to conclusions and assume everything was doom and gloom every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year. Especially when we are dealing with people who's minds certainly would give them a far different perspective on the world. There'd probably be alot of terror when the child first arrived, but as they got to know staff and understand the daily schedule, I think many of the children would have settled in without too much thought of their situation, at least in the sense that many would like to expect they would. Or, I could just be drunk. Who knows?