3,287 Comments for Danvers State Hospital

i was too at danvers state hospital in the teen ward. i was there for 4 months and i was in there around 1989. I hope to God that noone left my damn records there so others can buy them. How can i find this out. here is my email yayasisterhood72@hotmail.com and here is my myspace name johanna sarrocco/ holman i need to find out if anyone knows how to get a hold of someone to find out info about knowing if my records were involved in selling online. if so how. thanks. It was very very difficult being in danvers. I had no family to come and visit me. I cried alot and I hurt myself and flip out because i didnt want to be there. I feel bad for ANYONE who was there lived and died there. As for friggin families leaving there love one in that rat hole go to hell. you had no idea what those poor kids and adults had to suffer. my god i even had a staff come in my room check to see if i was naked looked under my blanket and when he saw me move he ran off. Now you tell me that was normal for a teen girl to go through and what others had to indure. Im soo sick of hearing about families what they had to go thorugh. they had it made compaired to what these poor people went through. sorry that i dont feel anything for the families but they left their loved ones in that hell. you have no idea what its like to be put in one of those places and no family to visit you. sorry had to vent. i have been in many hospitals from age 13 too my twenties finally im doing great no meds have a husband and work as a nanny and got my life together. Its only Because of Gods love and others who love me and supported me. i only wish that for the others out there who still hurt and having it rough.

The place with the chair in it has been demolished. The chair itself has been appropriated by an enterprisng urbexer, who doesn't mind having an old , torn, probably pissed ion chair around, just because it was in a movie.

Awsome picture it has a eerie gloom about it.
i would like to go check it out. good work.

i have sat in that chair

The ratios in todays group homes are considerably smaller and may seem much better but in reality one has to question if it is. The majority of caregivers are women and if you have ever gone up against a very upset and frustrated mental patient, then you see the issue there, but anyways, the smaller groups still have the same problems. Lets say you have a runner, a self and other abuser, one that is on a special diet and at every turn is getting into the fridge, another that likes to do self indecent things and the other two while normally calm, change real fast when the crap hits the fan. Its like a domino effect, one right after the other they start going into their behaviors, totally chaotic, yeah, serious understaffing is a problem that has yet to be fixed but alot of that stems from another issue. Being underpaid, which in turn leads to many caregivers just not caring enough and so the abuse and neglect still go on. :(

Indeed some things have changed such as medication distribution, the laws have changed, though perhaps becoming too drastically one sided (at least here in Michigan where the caregivers have no way of diffusing a physically violent attack from a client other than trying to talk them down or calling the cops. I know other states teach caregivers proper defense techniques against such attacks.) However, things such as, caregiver/client ratios have not really changed all that much. In the institutions we will guesstimate that there were 2 nurses to say 100 patients on a floor. Each nurse has to feed, medicate, change, bathe and otherwise keep watch over 50 patients. Some of them are runners that try to escape, some are physically aggresive, others are self abusers and so on. You can imagine the problems that arise by the hospitals being drastically understaffed. (Sry I have to put this in more than 1 post as I am posting from my cellphone internet, again my apologies.)

Yes the vast majority of the tortured souls who lived with in the grimness that was Danvers State Hospital, left under their own power, eventually. Things changed, laws changed, medication changed, treatment changed, from the day DSH opened to the day it closed forever, every thing changed. Whether things improved, I leave others to decide for themselves. (IMHO they did)

I see many a protest to have kept this vehicle of tortured memories standing but few if any of you saw the reality of it. Some called it beautiful but how can it be when its very being and its very deep, dark soul pulsates with the ugly blackness that diseased its walls? The patients that resided there or any state mental hospital for that matter were human beings used as lab rats, many neglected and abused. It was all real, not some movie set and sequence built and romanticized by Hollywood to feed our dark need for the black and dreary. Human beings really lived this and died this, so where does beauty fit in? I fail to see it, maybe its bcuz I work in the mental health field and I see what vibrant personalities my clients possess and I see just how human the mentally challenged are on a daily basis. I say I'm glad its gone. As for those seeking ghosts, no worries, they are still here just "living" with more freedom than they had in life.

I was at Danvers in 1991 as well, just for a month...May/June. I was transferred from Bridgewater State (relax, I didn't kill anyone).
I received very fair treatment at Danvers, though some patients did not get along well with staff members.

The weirdest damn thing happened though on one of my last nights there. There were not many people staying on the first floor (I beleive it was the first floor, whatever the minimum security floor was...and I was sleeping with just one other person in a room full of beds. I had this nightmare where the ghost of a woman was trying to get into my body. She was incredibly angry and agressive...I would use the words demon, wraith, and banshee to describe her. I struggled to wake up, and when I finally did I was totally freaked out. I shared my experience with the other guy in the room...and as I told the story his face went blank and his mouth dropped open...I asked what was wrong and he said, "The exact same thing happened to me."

I had no idea so many people think that place was haunted, until I did an internet search recently...and based on my own experience there, I am inclined to beleive it.

I can be reached at srk890@aol.com if anyone has any questions or had any first hand experiences of their own at Danvers. If anyone was at Danvers during May/June 1991, I hope you are well and would love to hear from you.

It is in the section of the building that was saved. It was gutted, but maybe some of the wood work exists still elsewhere.

Danvers during the day time, with the windows unboarded, the shades up and curtains back was not all that grim a place to be. That particular hallway at night with only the nightlights on was a spooky place to be. I never had any paranormal experiences there, but others did. Motts photo is one that lends it the haunted look. It wasn't that bad. We kept the lights on in most of the floors without patients on them due to the fact there was quite a bit of movement by staff during the night.. Mott's photos lend the place a dignity that it never really aspired to in the last 50 years. By the time I worked there the glory days of DSH were long past. They were long past when my father started working there in 1948

What the mesh didn't stop was people throwing themselves down stairs. Happened a few times. The mesh did prevent bad hops through the railings into free space. So when ever possible one staff person walked in front, and one behind known suicidal patients going between floors

that was so beautiful i think i might throw up

i actually go to the prep(st johns) which is like a half a mile away.i see it everytime i go outside because it is the only hill larger than that of which the prep is located on. the asylum i never even knew existed, will probably now scare the shit out of me and i havent even seen ses.9! ahh

Again, another brilliant picture.
I cared for a woman that lived in Danvers for years. She was so messed up ,beyond repair..constant flashback and boughts of rage and terror that I have never seen before. Taking a look at these pictures gives me a better understanding of what her life must of been like .. so thank you for that.