Sleepy Bats State Hospital

(Click for Part II)

Hi, friends. I’ve been finished with these shots for weeks now. But things have been a bit hectic, so it’s taken me a while to post them. Admittedly, it’s been a pretty lousy month. There are a few things going on at the moment that have me a little off my game. Those are always fun patches to go through, aren’t they?

This was the first place I shot this year, a somewhat small state hospital. I’m a bit lost on the history here, to be honest. There isn’t much online to read about. My understanding is that this place was first an insane asylum, then an institution for the mentally disabled, and at some point, a detention center. It operated through the late 1990s, with some especially awful things taking place between the 50s and early 80s — you know, that particularly crappy window for mental illness in this country.

I shot this hanging out a window to text Matt, because there was ZERO cell reception in these buildings.

I went here with friends who (mostly) knew the grounds pretty well. Not that the place is all that big, but I wanted to go underground, and that’s easier with a “guide.” For me it is, anyways. The tunnels here are full of little sleeping bats. Bats are my favorite animal! They were so cute.

Friends who know this place have all had strange experiences here and felt a lot of really dark energy. I didn’t feel much on my visit. Actually, I had a hard time connecting with this place altogether. I mainly felt like a visitor passing through. The abandoned places I visit never feel abandoned — but this one actually did.

It just goes to show you that, at least in person, no two places are alike. They are each their own entities.

There’s a lot of natural decomposition taking place in this first building, which wasn’t nearly as wrecked with dumb graffiti as I expected. The water damage is out of control. Everything was slimy, moldy, mossy, icy, rotten, and crumbling.

These rooms reminded me of another psych hospital back home, which is sadly set to come down soon (come to think of it…so is this one). The murals on the wall gave me deja vu.

What’s that? Inundate you with wheelchair pictures? If you insist.

As usual, I found stacks and stacks of paperwork that really should have been taken out of the building when it closed. Patient files, ledgers, ward journals, and grievance reports against orderlies.

Isolation ward.

That color green really is my everything.

More wheelie shots. Sad to imagine being stuck in that fishbowl of a room, looking out.

This was creepy. One of the day rooms was filled with gym mats and padded climbing toys, and what appears to be a padded table. That car’s manic little grin was unsettling to say the least.

This seems like a good stopping point before this post ends up way too long. Next time, I’ll share the rest of my shots from the last building I saw here — the scrapped, burned, and vandalized children’s ward.