4,537 Comments for Pennhurst State School

Man you people really know how to suck the fun out of art. Its ok to make up your own scenario when looking at a photo. This is not the place for political discussions. Take it elsewhere.

Well, that certainly is disturbing.
Poor Jean :(

Ahh the last act of privacy.

I really don't remember, I think there was a sink, not sure about the toilet. After seeing 50+ of these places they start to melt together in my memory!

Could this have been a therapy room rather than a bathroom? The stairs look a lot like stairs used for rehab, and the shower would have helped loosen up muscles before using the stairs. That would explain the medicine cabinet (probably things like bandaids, low dosage pain meds, etc for bumps and bruises). Motts, was there anything else that made it look like a bathroom (toilets, sinks, etc)?

its really cool how the deatailing lines near the buttons is pealing.

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i life nearby and yes, some of the underground passage ways are lit up at night. the creepy thing is that every time i go back...different lights are turned on.

i fell down these stairs and broke my big toe

Until we get some books written by staff, however, the full side is still not available to the public.

I will say in the facility where I work that the possibility of severe on-going abuse of any sort is next to impossible. Too many checks and balances, too many people who are trained to spot the signs of abuse, and the fact that every person who lives there gets a body check daily and has multiple notes written on them in the charts by many different staff makes it difficult for abuse to occur without the abuser getting caught quickly. Add to that the fact that all staff have to go through criminal background checks (anyone with any sort of a violent history - spouse abuse, child abuse, or any other "barrier" crimes can not be employed) and are fingerprinted with the fingerprints going to the national data base, etc., and you are as safe here as you are in a regular hospital. You are certainly safer than in a community setting, I am sorry to say, because I personally prefer the freedom of the community settings, but they have a ways to go to assure such comparable checks.

wait, I retract that last statment. I've never been in this area. I do have reels from Pennhurst though, possibly only audio.

I think I've got some of the film reels from this room. Never had a way to watch them though. Do I want to?

wow, i've never come across this room!

I've never seen any of this in the daytime.

Without there being an open flame, I doubt that these would have gotten hot enough to start a fire. No actual flame would occur until the wood was around 535 degrees, which is when the gases released would become combustible. Before that the wood would smoke, dry out, probably char, but not burn. This can be taken advantage of to char decorative patterns into wood, technically called "burning", safely. Since the temperature on most steam radiators (I'm assuming this was steam, right?) doesn't exceed 230 degrees, this would be completely safe.