4,537 Comments for Pennhurst State School

Looks like the Girl from the Ring!!!

HOLY S***! I SEE IT!

yeah, but it's the fact that it looks like a torturing device

This one definately reminds me of "The Changeling." That Wheel chair is just about to take off after you.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhh!

This has a 'jail cell' look to it. This one may have been an isolation unit.

Exit signs can stay lit because they have a back-up battery in the light itself.

Yes, the painting is crude, but I bet whoever painted it felt s/he was adding something cheerful to a room that was perhaps plain. I'm sure the colors were brighter before years of abandonment dulled them. If the walls weren't chipping away and if the floors were swept and there was real light in the room it may have been a fun room for the kids to hang out in. And who knows, there may have been toys around back then. I'll bet the "artist" was trying to do a good thing at the time, attempting to cheer the place up.

The rust resembles lichen.

There is no radioactive material in these generators. There's only an x-ray tube which doesn't contain radioactive material.

yeah, over this year I did a huge research project on these kinds of schools (primarily the Fernald State School), so lucky for me I got to interview both Fred Boyce and Michael D'Antonio (plus a few more.)
Talking to Fred Boyce is really depressing. Most of the people I talked to that were directly involved with the school wanted to forget what happened and never talk about it. But after he was let go from the school, Mr. Boyce spent his entire life trying to tell the world what happened to stop it from repeating its mistakes. Even when he was in the school, his goal was to shut down the institution forever. When he joined the science club (a group of children that were fed radioactive oatmeal for experimentation purposes. They did not know there was radiation in their food.) he believed that he was going to show the researchers how bad Fernald was so they could save him and all the other children. Not the case.
Two days after we interviewed him, I recieved a phone call saying that he had been moved to the hospital because his cancer was getting much worse. Now, I don't even know that he is still alive.

these should be restored and fixed up so you can use them all over again instead of decaying away here.

I believe that was the model Stephen King wrote most of his early novels on.

lol...very nice Keith. It took me a minute to really understand what you were talking about..but if you look at it and keep in mind what you said, it kinda makes sense.

Makes me wonder if they always remember to deactivate these machines before abandoning them. Leaving a source for radioactive material in an abandoned building would be one hell of a bad over-sight.

Ah, the only "good" vandalism. Anything beyond signing your name in some dust should be punished severely. Seriously, forget security. We should organize our own groups. Patrol as many of these places as possible and let the decent people be while making sure the kids who go in to smash and spray paint everything decide it would be prudent to never enter the building again. You know, play with their minds the way they toy with the memories of people who probably had four times the humanity they ever will.