91 Comments Posted by isabeats

One more grim and creepy mold story: William Hope Hodson's "A Voice in the Night". This and the above story are online at www.horrormasters.com. You won't mind the moldy walls and floors in Motts' photos as much after you read these stories!

For really creepy mold, check out "The Derelict" by William Hope Hodgson. And as for grass in strange places, check out the "grass car" image at www.randomimage.us.

Motts- The animals aren't "making quite a mess"; they're making quite a nest.

DW- A pottywalker.

There is a book called "I Raise My Eyes To Say Yes", by Ruth Sienkiewicz, which was written by a woman with cerebral palsy who lived at the Infirmary at Belchertown State School. It's worth reading, especially if you ever wonder about what life was like for those people leaving all those wheelchairs behind. I know Michael D'Antonio's book, "The State Boys Rebellion", has been mentioned elsewhere on this site. It's well worth reading and is available cheaply from the huga and diverse cut-outs/remainders catalog from Edward R. Hamilton Books.

A few strange, weird, creepy clown stories I would highly recommend: Thomas Ligotti's "The Last Feast of Harlequin", Ramsey Campbell's "The Other Side", and James Powell's "A Dirge for Clowntown".

Lynn- Yes. I worked 3-11PM, and just before the overnight ("third") shift came on, we'd go through each ward, changing any wet bedding, escorting certain people to the bathrooms, etc. We were "tripping"! And sometimes I got to "trip" in a building I had "floated" to.

The way I interpret Mike 1968's comment is that he was there and saw the plaque with his own eyes. Not that he was there in 1927.

Is that an old building out the window? Or just rotting curtains? Or what? I can't really tell for sure. I notice that as I go through all these galleries (and happily I have a long way to go yet) my favorite theme is what is outside the windows of interior shots (the view, basically). Some of those details, enlarged, would be beautiful photographs in their own right.

This was the perfect time of year to take these photos- beautifully dreary.
Belchertown State School also named buildings by letters: A (recreation building), B, C, D, E, F, G, K, L, and M. I'm not sure why there were gaps in the sequence. There were other buildings too, with more normal names (Tadgell Nursery, The Infirmary, The School Building, the Farmhouse, the "cottages (#1-9) etc. Later, after I left, all the letter -named buildings were renamed to appear more "home-like" (but nothing could ever make them home-like!)

K Building, at Belchertown State School, had a fenced -in recreational yard called the Bullpen.

Is yellow really associated with craziness? Because it's my favorite color and a yellow room would cheer me up. I would think it would cheer anyone up: sunshine, sunflowers, dandelions, etc. Of course, if I spent a lot of time in a yellow seclusion room, I'd probably grow to hate yellow.

Lynn, do you "trip the wards"?

If someone at BSS became agitated or violent they were "flipping out", and sometimes were put "in the doghouse " (which was a seclusion room). (Terrible !) The people living at BSS used to refer to sex as "playing house". That seemed to be there own slang term... probably learned from very supressed staff.

This reminds me (for some reason) of the slang staff used at Belchertown State School: when we checked the wards at night, we were "tripping" the wards; if we had to cover a shift at some building we didn't normally work at we "floated" to that building. I'm sure there's more slang, but I can't recall it (too much tripping and floating?) I wonder if that was just BSS slang or if it was used at most state institutions. Anyone know?