3,287 Comments for Danvers State Hospital

I agree...cool shot. You don't know from which door, or window the hand is going to shoot out from, and GRAB YOU...

All the outside shots are stunning. When was this facility built? I can't help it, but all the outdoor shots remind me of some foreign countries capital building complex...the centuries old buildings...the architecture....

where was this inside of dsh? its amazing how the entire inner structure is gone yet the walls hold true.

i wonder what was on the other side of that door during dsh's operating times

ive been up there recently, they have become very leniant with security and my friends and i actually rode our BICYCLES all the way through the premices(spelling?) its incredible, and for michele ranting about 'goths" and "weirdos" going through your yard, how about you dont buy a house 20 feet from one of the most allured haunted sites in the north east? wait that wouldnt be rational at all, because you would NEVER have people walking through YOUR yard.

I KNOW WHERE YOURE STANDING haha i walked right by that wing and window like 4-5 weeks ago.

danvers state is an amazing place to visit, i had the luck of going up there in august while 1/2 of the watch guards were off duty. we never made it inside but just standing on the steps looking directly in the face of the kirkbride building is amazing.

p.s. i live a 3-4 minute driver from dsh, i know many idiots who try to get up there during halloween and get caught, so DONT, its bad.

The people that view these facilities as "Houses Of Evil" should research the conditions that led to them being established. Prior to Medicare and Medicaid (mid 1960s) a family with a MR/DD child could be wiped out financially by the cost of caring for the child. Add that to the social stigma of having "tainted genes" in the family tree, some people chose to sacrifice the one to save the many. These children were hidden away in attics and closets or worse. The establishment of hospitals and schools for them was the work of high minded people trying to provide a safe and caring environment.

Thanks for the use of your soapbox Lynne.

The one in independance iowa is so surrounded by modern buildings and stuff it's hard to see it. I live in Iowa and pass it alot. They aren't to friendly there so I have never tried to go and look.

Nah, I WISH it were true that many of the people who have come here have had their opinions changed by what they have read. However, unless people have to deal with something directly it is easier to believe what popular culture, such as movies and TV, tell you. And what reliable sources THOSE are, eh? ;-)

For most situations, and not just in this field, no one seems to care much about what happens unless they somehow become personally involved or they read or hear something about it. And journalists rarely write positive stories about systems that work because that is boring and honestly doesn't sell very well.

I am all for investigative journalism. That is how my field made most of its advances, I am sorry to say. We had the tools and the technology to make things better many years ago, but we didn't have the public funding because we didn't have public support. It took someone breaking stories about how bad things were to shake up the public to push for increased funding. Sadly enough, however, people somehow didn't quite get that the problems were NOT just the result of evil staff but were the result of no money and no on-going public clamor for things to get better. The history of the field, as is the case with many others, consists of nothing happening, a scandal finally coming to light, and money subsequently being thrown at it and it alone to "make the problem go away." People in all fields of human endeavor are "penny wise, pound foolish" and want to save money by taking short cuts or ignoring things until they have no choice but to look them in the eye rather than planning proactively and spending the money where it counts - up front.

Unfortunately, when negative conditions finally come to light, what you have is a scrambling toward finding someone to blame, and the system that created it gets a free "bye" card, and so the same situation "amazingly" recurs over and over and over. And over.

And over.

And again, all we do is shake our fingers at the poor schmuck staff who ended up in this field, accusing THEM of being the cause of all the misery, because they are the least powerful employees on the food chain. And we "pity" the poor people who were "tortured and abused" by the system. If you pity someone they become less than human - what you want is empathy, because empathy means that it could happen to you and to me and we feel "for" the person, not "about" the person. I pity animals, but I have empathy for humans, and that is what makes me an activist in this field.

And once again what I am saying probably doesn't make any sense at all to most people, so why am I such a schmuck to keep writing this? Maybe I *DO* need my meds adjusted after all. "Doctor, heal thyself!" :-)

Funny how the holes are symmetrical - one either side of the doorway gable.

Moe, it's sad but this does happen. I've seen pictures of the Pines Resort on another site which show the heating system with full pressure still in it.

And as with the Pines, I wonder if a little time and effort spent on roof maintenance would have prevented millions of dollars worth of water damage in subsequent years as well as leaving far more options for the buildin's re-use.

How much would a couple of tarpaulins or sheets of corrugated aluminium for that damaged roof have cost, for instance?

I for one am glad people like Lynne and Anna are here to educate those who see anything vaguely institutional as some sort of medieval torture chamber staffed by grinning sadists.

Popular culture has done much to tarnish the reputation of the entire field - this is as good a place as any for those who know different to bite back...

I suspect that many over-active imaginations have been given a sharp reality check following a visit to this site!

What constituted "extreme precautions" I wonder? Mace? Body armour? A platoon? :-/

You're not alone, I haven't seen Session 9 either!

I remember One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest though... nasty stuff, and probably the origin of much of the continuing interest in psychiatric facilities.

Remember... it's Hollywood!

I worked in this building for 12 years - I met some of the nicest people (and the worse) and have learned alot about life, like thank God I could unlock those doors and go home every night. Some patients we treated like family. we were their only link to the outside, some never knew what it was like outside of those walls.. You can't believe some of the stories the old folks told us.