388 Comments for DeJarnette Sanitarium

Hi Mott! We are very interested in your photography and have a couple questions for you in regards to this shoot. If you could please get in touch with us by email that would be fabulous. deepexposurephotography@yahoo.com

-Addison

There was a boy here who bite off another boy's ear while my sister was staying there in the 1990's.

Actually that fence was there in 1993 when my sister was there.

This would make cool apartments, I know I'd live there with a setting like that to look out on.

Went here at night recently. There's a comment above saying that the fourth floor was off limits because they heard noises--me and my friend were on the floor below and we heard footsteps above. They were following us, and seemed to be trying to hide their footsteps. Needless to say, we got out. Never checked out the morgue but that's scary as shit to hear about.

Found tons of ripped up books and homework assignments. Can almost imagine the students staging a revolution against the teachers and having some Lord of the Flies type society or something. It's pretty weird. I'll be back during the day.

P.S. The showers look weirdly like gas chambers, which I know they aren't. Still, with the history of eugenics, it's unsettling.

I remember these wall paintings. They didn't cheer me up at all.

I was here in the 90's. This room was unpleasant. Some of the treatments they used were horrific. Inside those rooms, some had beds with mechanical restraints as well as leather straps that bounded pir arms and legs together that we would have to walk around in if we misbehaved.......like I said. The stories I could tell.

I was there in 1994. I was on the floor with a young man named Eric. He was very caring. I can see his face in my mind. A lot of the pictures I remember so well. The therapy they used at times was completely in humane. They observation mirror in one of the previous pictures was for those on suicide watch. We had a lot of those rooms. The handprints were supposed to make us feel like we belonged and were part of a group of kids that had the same emotion issues as we did. The stories I could tell you of this place would blow your mind.

Sad part is, I remember those rooms so well. I once was a patient in this horrible place. The memories.....oh the memories.

I'm pretty sure those handprints were made by pranksters after the facility closed down. If they were made by the kids in the hospital for some therapy or entertainment purpose, they would neither have chosen black nor would allow the kids to paint on the back of the door.
Besids, I think they look like an adult's or teenager's handprints.

If this is dj north I was here twice in the 80's and made some wonderful friends and even the staff wendy mathias, kim and joey were the best in the world and done everything they could to help the kids here.. I miss everyone so much because im 40 now and have no idea what happened to all my friends. I wish they would fix it and reopen to children because this place helped make me the person i am today.

It is certainly a lovely campus, atop that hill. I think the problem might be more closer to there finding a developer with the motivation and money to rehab the place, rather than an asbestos issue. Take a look at Western State Hospital just down the road - dozens of buildings, tunnels, and much much more asbestos than DeJarnette's two structures, and yet they're being renovated...

I lived in Staunton or nearby for over 20 years. If I remember correctly, there is a serious asbestos issue with the building. Most likely the main reason for not saving the building. Shame tho. Actually quite a lovely area.

Lol Icewox

Is that were the former patient's hand print? Seem looking out for escape from that place :(