4,224 Comments for Northampton State Hospital

This reminds me of the remnants of middle eastern war zones that are being so frequently splayed across the airways on CNN these days, usually with some poor arab child squatting in the corner, When i see this, i expect to see a weeping mother kneeled over her dieing child on that matress in some sort of hospital ruin.

"I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion."

Or on the left, either way, you already have your explicit orders scratched out for you.

~Me, fourth step down on the right....it would be a perfect place for your box if you ever had to move.

"I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together."

Motts, what is that dogfood-like substance on the floor?

That is most foul! They should have set up litter boxes for themselves instead of using peoples' brand new bath tubs! P.S. For all the Beignet fans out there, Cafe Du Monde has re-opened!

What an outstandingly beautiful window!

Obviously not a one of them has lost anyone. The only way I want to see a morgue is on "CSI".

Why do these kids think abandoned morgues are so scary anyways?I've never heard of a haunted morgue.No one dies in a morgue,now hospitals.

Lynne, yet another fab post. I suspect most of the '"death = cool" brigade are 13 year-old wannabe goths who talk about corpses and cadavers yet would no doubt wee themselves if they ever came across a real one - especially in one of these places. The same people who hang around drinking cider in graveyards and breaking into crypts so they can post it on their cliched web pages with a load of dumb poetry to show how very 'alternative' they are. Fortunately they usually grow out of it. I think you were very restrained in your choice of the word 'asshat'. Anyway my Mom has a saying... "the dead can't hurt you, it's the living you need to watch out for!" So true...

wardsman -

Amen. :-(

Everyone who thinks this is so "sexy" should spend time assisting here as well. How is anyone brave who goes into an abandoned morgue? It's easy to be somewhere when there's no actual bodies around. I know because I work in the same building with our morgue (in the basement of the building my office is in) and I walk past it most days (and nights) to get to the hospital next door, even when we have had power failures. Even a morgue with someone in it is not particularly "scary." Now, go into a functioning morgue while procedures are underway and see what is really done - THAT is what takes bravery.

Some people get a cheap thrill out of other peoples' misery. There is a difference between having a fascination with death that is put into constructive uses and being a gawker who profits emotionally off of others' misfortune.

You want a thrill - go out and take some food and a blanket to a homeless person who is so psychotic they don't understand they are freezing or starving to death. That will get your adrenalin rushing but it also might do something for someone instead of allowing you to wet your pants in your own self-projected fear and then bravely take the scary story back to your "admiring" friends, most of whom are too smart to get a thrill that way. And you know, the next time one of them loses a close family member, they will look at you differently because of the way you disrespected the people who have died by making light of their deaths like this.

I have as much of a gallows humor as anyone. However, the fact that people in the MR/DD population are now living past the age of 30 is a huge change in the last several decades, and it is due to the incredible care these folks have received as well as the improvements in equipment and medicine (and funding, obviously). The folks I work with are becoming geriatric now. That is exciting to me, because these folks never used to live this long. At the same time, the group of people who still remain in ICF-MR facilities are those with the most medical challenges, and time is catching up with a lot of them. Every time one of them dies, I lose a little part of myself. I admit I have a hard time when people make jokes about morgues in institutions because many of the people who have died in these places were friends of mine. To go into here and make light of the place, to tag it, to steal parts of it, to take pix of people lying on the slabs thinking they are so brave - yeah, I know it's people just trying to make light of mortality. It's still the place that used to hold the last remains of someone's sister, someone's daughter, or someone's brother. And if that person was related to you, the bravery aspect would disappear and other emotions would take its place.

I love these pictures and I am glad they are here because they tell a fascinating story that needs to be told. They would tell a much better story about all of us if they didn't include people being such (dare I use the word?) asshats to equate walking through an abandoned morgue with a statement of their personal bravery and worth.

i cant count how many times i vomited

u think its cool to see dead people,u can have my job of putting broken people in cadaxer bags.putting there guts back in and sewing them up with string after there skulls are cut open ,there heart lungs are cut out then.wash my hands then going home to the misses and kids.my wife never asks me how was my da;;;;you can have my job then mr cool/

Jeremy has never been exploring in my basement.
It is VERY uncomfortable down there!