Sleepy Bats State Hospital: Part II

(Click for Part 1)

Hello again. Welcome to the children’s ward.

Where the other buildings are falling into ruin from mainly natural causes, this building’s damage is largely people. Taggers, vandals, scrappers, arsonists… It’s in rough shape.

I actually hate finding photo albums like this. It makes me really sad.

Those are bullet holes. PSA: Abandoned buildings aren’t always empty. Don’t shoot f$#!%&@ guns in them.

Those flowers were real!

Scrapped to death.

There are giant holes in the ceiling, totally exposing the halls to the elements. I don’t know if they were skylights or access panels at one point or what, but now they’re just big rectangular openings. It started snowing, you can see the flakes drifting down in my shots. You can also see smoke rings on the ceiling and where some annoying kids got a hold of paint in a craft room.

All the rain/snow coming in also did a number, though. Your boots sunk into the ground in some areas. A few decades’ worth of ceiling tiles, flooring, paint peels, and insulation turned into sludge.

Tire tracks. Like, someone was in here doing donuts on an ATV. Honestly, for a place that sits right next to a state trooper barracks, the level of stupidity that has gone on here is unparalleled.

I went to crash at my family’s house a few nights after I shot here. I was flicking through some photos while sitting next to my mom on the couch. “Look at this creepy thing,” I told her.

“Oh,” she said absently. “A Bye Bye Buggy.”

“…You know what it is?” I asked. She shrugged. “It’s a Bye Bye Buggy.”

“I don’t know what a Bye Bye Buggy is,” I complained. “It’s a Bye Bye Buggy,” she repeated, as if saying the phrase a half dozen times would clue me in. “You put the little kids in it and wave ‘BYE BYE!’”

She told me she sees daycares using them to take kids out for group walks. Listen, I have come across several of these things now in my weird travels, and every single one of them has been in an abandoned asylum. If I ever see one wheeling down the road toward me, it’ll be like a scene out of a horror movie.

I don’t know what this says about me, but I instantly recognized the stickers on the wall in one of the nurse stations as the same stickers in another nearby abandoned institution. Can’t say I’m not observant.

That’s my tour here. Thanks for taking it with me. Even though I didn’t really feel the connection here, I can at least say I got to shoot WAY more than I expected! I was really surprised by that. Until next time, my dears.