3,287 Comments for Danvers State Hospital

If you quickly look at this chair and then look away you will see a face that say's:

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.................

Signed: An American Soldier stationed in Mannheim, Germany.

4:09 P.M. / Sunday / 02 / December / 2007

Merry Christmas,

Happy Hanukkah,

Happy Holidays,

Happy New Year everyone.

why would they hang somebody????

What a Treasure! Too Bad the whole building wasn't renovated. Actually, it shoulda been restored in it's orginal form and used for some constructive purpose, such as city affices and the like. The center 1/3 that was renovated is beautiful.

out did your self again MR MOTTS!!!!!!!!
FANTABULOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!

awsom

Danvers Stae when it opened was a showcase. It had gardens you'd see proudly kept in European villas. The architecture was new, fresh, and maintained. For many years outdoor work and much indoor work was done by trustee patients. It was a self supporting community. We had a farm, dairy herd, and piggery all on grounds. There was a power house (which is still active) and a train station, Asylum Station. When it got to the point the state had to pay the patients the farms and such became a luxury, and couldn't be run efficiently enough to sustain the hospitals needs. This didn't happen until the 1960's. It was at the time considered excellent vocational therapy.

Hopeful,

You have learned more than most people will ever earn in a lifetime - that people are just people no matter where they are or what they do. We all have bad times and we all have times when we are on top of the world. The difference is in the resources we have - personal, physical, financial, genetic, etc. - and the amount of time we are affected - with the good as well as with the bad. You sound like one of the strong ones who will eventually conquer your demons and will be a beacon for others. I salute you and your strength.

Lynne

I was never a patient at Danvers, but have been to a different rural, currently-open, much smaller psych hospital. The first time there was quite shocking, as I was first placed in a unit that you might want to call "lockdown". The windows had fence-like coverings, the small yard was steeply fenced. There were not any locks on bedroom/bathroom doors. Staff could enter the bedroom at any moment, and did - privacy is totally gone. New patients with unknown psych ills are new roommates, sometimes arriving in the middle of the night, again into your bedroom without asking. Feeling very vulnerable. Only a hospital gown. Trying to cover up. Staff who are strangers, looking in on you with flashlights, waking you every hour. For the first time sharing living space with the truly mentally ill without understanding it or them. Not knowing how they'll behave, and being considered one of them. How to talk to them. Not thinking the way you usually do. Not wanting to exist. Listless. Trying to figure a way out the window. Trying to figure the place out, what to do, how things are done. What is the commotion out in the hallway. For the first time, talking to someone that appears to be talking to the air, and they talk to you too, quite well, then go back to their conversation with the air.

Finding out these are people. The shock of seeing that these "weird" and "frightening" people are treated fairly and with respect by staff. Learning to do the same. It leaves you feeling sad to leave because you lose the staff and patient support, and unconditional acceptance from staff - but hoping not to return, because you want to be well, and free.
And then you are almost well, which is scary, and then you are. But then again, you have the no-slip fuzzy socks as a souvenir.

Danvers must have been quite nice in it's time. It was a beautiful facility. I would have loved to have gotton a tour of DSH before it was torn down.

Lynne - never met you, but thank you Lynne, for being in the business.

Danvers state was not a penitentiary, nor did we use torches we had electricity.

it looks like a aperition of a nurse that was beat to death in the mirror to the left

NO its another name for a torcherous prison

Fire ?

I drove past it on my way to work a couple of mornings ago. It was foggy as hell. You could barely make out a mass on top of the hill. I remembered the many times I came out of the Bonner building, and seen the Kirkbride enveloped in fog. It's about 100 yards and you could barely see the building, the fog was so thick. I remember the feeling of the Kirkbride looming in the fog, barely contained menace, radiating from it. Then I catch myself and think that's a ridiculous way to think about it. Next foggy morning, it would happen all over again. On foggy nights the place was just that more spooky looking. The glow of the various lights that still burnt in the building. It was a scene out of a Lovecraft novel. But inside the Kirkbride, the place was just as normal a place as any other place of employment. None of the dread feelings you'd get from the outside.

Ditto, DaveWilly, I'd love to have a little space like this in my attic. I'd put an armchair there and sit and read by the light of the window and drink tea. I love little nooks and crannies like this, I don't feel any 'pain and sorrow' at all looking at this picture!

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