234 Comments Posted by rich_edwards79

Carl, I bet you're a hoot at parties! Lighten up, like Angelwolf said, people do far more dangerous activities everyday than urban exploration. Isn't it all about measuring the risks, assessing the situation - in other words thinking for one's self? This nannying approach is seeping into every aspect of life and it bothers me, the idea that we shouldn't ever take a calculated risk, instead obeying every warning sign and piece of health advice from those who 'know better'.

And I like Motts' technique. It appeals to the Goth in me. Most of these subjects don't lend themselves to bright lighting. Atmosphere is every bit as important as detail. These images aren't intended to be scientific studies of dead items, they're meant to give the viewer a taste of being in the photographer's shoes, experiencing his feelings. That's my impression anyway... feel free to correct me :-)

Someone else who doesn't read through threads before posting to them.

I hope you're being ironic Mark... though I'm not too sure...

Well Lynne, I found this place by googling for abandoned institutions... I lost my UE virginity (so to speak) a while back in an old TV studio in Leeds and fancied giving an old facility on the edge of town a look.

I stuck around after I found the Danvers pages (my girlfriend, who lives in MA, told me abou this one) and became fascinated by Pennhurst just because it's so unbelievably eerie and there's a wealth of information on the Web about it (and so many stories surrounding the place). It's a perfect candidate for a film IMO...

At first I spent about 3 days going through the site looking at all the incredible photos, now I tend to check the Comments section first for interesting posts. But there's so many ways to explore it, kinda like an abandoned building I guess!

Either way I think it's the combination of the incredible 'eye' Motts has for a good image, the subject matter itself and the fascinating comments which are the perfect accompaniment to the photographs which makes this site one to visit daily.

I've spent ages poking around on Peecho's site and not 'caught' anything... but then I do have some pretty heavy-duty virus software :-)

It's a fascinating site (if very dated-looking, though that kinda fits with the subject matter in a way) and as I say, as long as you have a decent, up-to-date antivirus program it's probably fine.

I wouldn't recommend his version of "Suffer the Little Children" though, it's in B&W and is so badly deteriorated as to be almost unwatchable. The soundtrack is virtually inaudible in places (especially the 'Dr Fear' segment, which is the most shocking bit of the whole thing) There's a pristine version here: http://nbc10.feedroom. ... set.jsp?ord=263067.

Everyone with the slightest interest in Pennhurst or institutionalisation should take half-an-hour to watch this.

This is actually quite a poignant shot in itself after having watched the 1968 "Suffer the Little Children" documentary (http://nbc10.feedroom. ... et.jsp?ord=263067) and seeing these elevated walkways, which seemed to encircle the entire campus, thronged with patients moving from one cottage to another. They feature in numerous images I've seen of the place. Now they're overgrown and ruined like the rest of the facility. I bet they still echo with the ghosts of these ruins though...

Talking of STLC, I'm sure I also saw a picture on another site of the remains of the hand-painted Pennhurst sign (ugly horrible thing IMO) beside which Bill Baldini narrated much of his report - very eerie. Unfortunately I can't find it again now :(

LMAO!

If someone were to plug it into a wall outlet would your eyes light up ;-)

Awww thanks! Mind, I just read back through the previous messages though and realised you made exactly the same point a few weeks ago! Well, that will teach me to review a thread before I post to it *d'oh!*

And incidentally I can see where you're coming from regarding community placements. Some people (like the girl I work with mentioned in another post) benefit massively from it, but 'Care in the Community' (as we term it) has arguably been a monumental failure on a wider level, since many ex-patients ended up homeless and isolated, or living alone without adequate support in dingy social housing, often harming themselves, and in a few extreme cases others through lack of supervision, neglecting to take meds etc. Few of the former patients of large institutions have family / friends to fall back on, which simply compounds the problem.

Closing institutions is all well and good provided there's adequate structures in place to meet the needs of the patients in other ways. I suspect that much of the motivation behind the move to community care was a dramatic reduction in expenditure brought about by expecting people to fend for themselves.

Yeah, I echo Zodiac's thanks for the better link to STLC. I guess El Peecho's pirate version must have come from some seriously degraded tape or an early home recording (did they have VCRs in 1968?) It's so much more shocking in colour and being able to understand a lot more of what is being said. Suddenly Pennhurst doesn't actually look all that different in some of Motts' photographs to the way it did in 1968.

And yes, in another place and time, and like more people than I can bear to think about, I could have possibly been an 'almost' too (didn't know the term for it...) since despite having a higher-than-average IQ I was disruptive, an outsider socially and have suffered from lifelong depression. At times I was probably virtually unteachable. My girlfriend, well she's dyslexic, comes from a fragmented background and as someone else put it ' doesn't test well'. She's also incredibly smart. She was actually threatened as a teen by social workers that she'd be taken away and put in a 'home'. Whatever that was meant to imply...

I can sympathise much more with the majority of staff at these institutions (of course there are always a few sadistic sickos) having seen the documentary - the issue seems to overwhelmingly be about lack of money (as always) and overworked people trying to do their best in impossible conditions. I'm amazed some of the staff of these places didn't end up having breakdowns and winding up in an institution themselves...

I never fail to be amazed by the incredible ways the Government find to waste money whch isn't theoretically even theirs in the first place.

Lol damn typos.... I'm gonna blame an excessive amount of beer last night for that one :-/

Heheh 'Bulky brimming wideness'.. i love that!

Nah, it's a acronym for 'big beautiful woman'. Or in other words, anyone over about 150lbs these days :(

Don't worry, some of the stuff on here is a whole load scarier than any of those! The ones I mentioned are mainly discussion boards, not porn sites - though there's also PLENTY of those on the WWW if that floats your boat :-)

How anyone ever thought these would 'work' is beyond me.

I know of more than a few people who far from being skeeved out, would posively relish that mental image of the jiggly fat guy. Google 'fat admirer' or 'BBW'. My own SO falls under the second classification by the way. Or for a more in-depth examination of corpulence and eroticism, try www.dimensionsmagazine.com, www.abundancemagazine.com or www.bigfatblog.com for a real education...

;-)

Probably far too big and heavy to be worth moving. I worked in a footear warehouse as a student and above the adminbuilding was the former accounts / payroll department which had been abandoned for about 30 years.

Along with ancient adding machines and refrigerators were a couple of huge Victorian safes just like this one. I can't imaging rhat they would be especially 'safe' by today's standards (especially if someone has taken an oxy-acetylene torch to the locks!) and I doubt the scrap value comes close to covering the cost of dismantling and removing it from the building if there's no pressing need (ie redevelopment).

What a terrible story Anon.

I think that many people's persistent, negative impressions of large institutions stems from their frequent use as 'dumping grounds' for those that respectable society didn't want to see in the early / mid 1900s. Pregnant teens, those suffering from various physical disabilities or just disruptive children from poor families all ended up in these wards. As one example, apparently Pennhurst was full of deaf and blind kids who were misdiagnosed as educationally subnormal and who would live full and productive lives today.

I can't imagine experiencing some of these places as a barely-aware, severely retarded person let alone as a relatively 'normal' person shoved in one for whatever political or social reason. fifty years ago myself, my girlfriend and many of those I know and love would have very likely lived out their lives in such places. That's a sobering thought indeed.

The work and attention to detail expended on industrial buildings in the 19th and early 20th centuries was nothing short of wonderful.

Somehow I can't imagine today's functional structures holding the same visual appeal a century from now. Corrugated iron and concrete blocks may be cheap but architectural beauty is priceless.

Even sadder, then, that so many of these buildings from the golden age of industry are now flattened without a second thought or a backward glance.