There was one just like this in the zoology department of Birmingham University (that's Birmingham, England, not Alabama) where my dad worked as a scientist. Used to be scared to death of it as a child, I used to have terrifying fantasies of being locked in it!
This one looks in very good shape though- ANOTHER piece of expensive kit that the Third World's crying out for and the Western world can afford to just let rot....
Daft to leave a piece of equipment like this- even if it does date from '73 it's still useable, and optometry instruments like that are expensive.
There's many an underfunded African bush hospital that would be glad to have that sent out to them- and a lot of the other equipment and furniture, too.
Take a closer look at the cabinet drawers- the cat 's remains are actually lying in a seperate, smaller drawer that has been removed from another cabinet, and placed within the larger drawer. The smaller drawer (coloured grey) is too tall to allow the larger drawer (black) to be shut- it's jamming it open. Thus it'd be physically impossible for the cat to have been shut in.
I agree that it probably died naturally- also that it should be left to rest in peace.
Definitely looks like a much nicer canteen than the one for civilian patients in another block- it's got daylight, for one thing.
Doesn't seem like it'd take too much effort to get it cleaned up and running again.
I think the 'ghost' is either a cobweb or light interference.
Be interested to know what the books were- look to me like old telephone directories, or manuals of some sort.
I don't think it was a real office, I'd say it was an old dorm that was later converted into a patient's activity room, with the different sections' names painted on the divider walls.
At least the vandals seem to have left the murals alone- maybe if they were graffiti artists, they respected mural art, albeit of a different genre. Getting the patients to depict their daily lives via such a shared kind of creativity, for all to see, seems like quite a progressive idea back then- for a public institution, anyway.
The furniture doesn't even look smashed, just toppled over- it may not have been kids up to no good, perhaps some furniture was badly stacked and toppled over in a draught or something.
This one looks in very good shape though- ANOTHER piece of expensive kit that the Third World's crying out for and the Western world can afford to just let rot....