Comments

This shot reminds me of Danvers.

I knew a woman who got sent to Pilgrim in the 1980s after a suicide attempt.
She had no money and no family to speak for her at the time, so she was just sent there, transfered in the middle of the night
She describes a feeling of stark terror on seeing this facade as the car escorting her entered the campus.
She was on one of the wards for about a month until being discharged upon case review.

It's the same old sun that warms the room today as fifty years ago!

I wonder if any of those nurses are still alive. The one standing foremost has an elderly posture, but a few of the seated ones look like they may have been rather youthful.

That's a cool shape for a tub. I'd like to have a bathtub like that, only I'd prefer porcelin!

Hydrotherapy is use of water to treat symptoms. In mental hospitals it was used to treat psychiatric symptoms.
Soaking the patient in a warm bath was thought to have calming effects. Wrapping a patient in cool, wet cloths or running cool water over pulse points (wrists and ankles) was believed to lower body temperature, calm nerves, and slow pulse rate. Things like that. These were palliative (symptom only ) treatments at best, and at worse were abused for punishment and deterrant. If you act up, you might get plunged into a tub of ice water again , and we wouldn't want that now would we?

Ironic how the building itself is dead and being "autopsied."

Wasn't there another hospital that had a hall with multicolored cabinets also, or am in going in circles?

I grew up a few towns north of Danvers. Just the name "Danvers" conjured terrifying images. My high school teachers used to take tour groups there, but stopped after some patients objected to being viewed like "zoo animals." Thus, I didn't get to go. The way my civics teacher described the dazed patients, the squalor, and the stench probably would have discouraged my attendance anyway.
I used to get the shudders just driving by this place. It seemed to have an evil presence. One thing to bear in mind, "Hospital Hill" is the same hill where the Puritans hanged the accused Salem witches. In colonial times, Danvers was known as "Salem Village."
I thought "Session 9" was a turkey. The voice-over acting on those "tapes" was really cheesy, the acting in general was bad, the plot was a let-down and anti-climactic. I would have made a much darker, much spookier movie!

Serious business for mental patients: tobacco!

"I don't you cigarettes, or his, or his, or his, or his, or even YOUR cigarettes, I want MY cigarettes!!!!"
--Charlie Cheswick

Those trees are sure big for a place that closed 8 years ago.

Ha! I was just going to say very NIN or Marilyn Manson-ish.

Love it.

when i first became a nursing assist , probably fifteen years ago, i started out nightshift in a nursing home, i had one whole wing to myself which equaled out to 18 residents. I made on continuious round where all i did was change beds, it was a nightmare, and all for $6.oo and hour. I love being a cardiac care tech and not all aides that work with chroniclly ill people are abusive, some of us actually give a shit........ :-)

that's a being reaching up to the light for help don't kid us wow this is the most fun any one can have. I want this whole sight ion my favorites.

If it baffles us, imagine how it bewildered the patients. They must have emerged from the lavatory with such perplexed looks on their faces. It also leaves one to wonder how many have walked to the top and urinated out the window.

Great condition.