By Gregory Brown
Jonathan Brothers once rushed up a set of stairs
in an abandoned insane asylum only to burst into a room full of Reserve Officer
Training Corps cadets practicing close quarters combat fighting with raised
M-16 rifles.
Such are the perils of a devout insane asylum
explorer.
For nearly three months, Brothers has been at
work on his pet project. He has scoured the Internet and historical databases.
He has crept into closed-off sanatoriums. He hopes eventually to complete a
database of the major abandoned insane asylums in the United States.
Abandoned insane asylums have attracted a
following of photographers and explorers. Of particular interest are facilities
built following the principles of Thomas Kirkbride, who in the 1840s pioneered
the idea of self-contained sanitarium communities. He was responsible for the
spires and sprawling stone compounds of facilities like Danvers State Hospital,
dubbed the "castle on the hill," in Danvers, Mass.
“For some people, it’s the deep and sometimes
dark past surrounding these places,” said Brothers, who maintains his database
at asylumprojects.org. “Others hope to find something there, something of the
past that they can connect to when the institution was open and running. Other
people may have spent time there and want to go back.”
Today, many of the stone mansions built to house
the mentally ill or isolate those with diseases like tuberculosis are vacant
and decaying. Riddled by forgotten memories, they have become home to
explorers.
Some simply explore, thrilled by eluding law
enforcement and shunning “no trespassing” warnings in order to discover a
hidden nook or cranny. Others are photographers, hoping to catch glimpses of
past pain on film. While others simply chronicle the facilities, compiling
in-depth directories of the hundreds of abandoned asylums across the United States.
While explorers often mention a tangible sadness,
a feeling of longing and loss that resonates from abandoned asylums,
photographers delight in the little slips of life that still remain: a curling,
fading list of patients on a floor; a twisted bed with the sheets still wrapped
over the mattress; a patient recreation room with old jigsaw puzzles or rusted
steel chairs.
Asylums began to fall vacant during the 1970s as
new drugs helped the mentally ill function in society and as court decisions
held that people could not be institutionalized against their will. Many
patients moved to less restrictive treatment facilities.
Shaun O’Boyle has a passion for architecture and
industrial photography. Among his favorite subjects are abandoned factories and
mills as well as the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, an abandoned asylum in upstate
New York.
“What makes me most interested in visiting these
places is finding things left behind--equipment, furniture, personal
items--these start telling a story about who the people were who lived
here," O’Boyle said. "What looks like an old wreck from a distance
can contain some beautiful and intimate portraits when looked at carefully.”
While O’Boyle considers himself more of a
photographer than an explorer, he has still had to overcome the challenges of
getting into sites. Trespassing is prohibited on almost all abandoned asylum
grounds, which are often surrounded by functioning hospitals or colleges that
have security patrols.
“It's about half the job getting access to these
sites,” O’Boyle said. “For many urban explorers, the reason to be exploring is
for the rush of being places you are not supposed to be, but when your main
objective is to take photographs it’s much easier to be able to move around
freely and do your work if you are there with the consent of the owner.”
Many explorers are drawn to the darker side of
asylums. Waverly Hills Sanatorium was built outside of Louisville, Ky., to
treat tuberculosis patients. It was closed in 1961 and for four decades has
lured explorers. The facility was recently featured on the Sci-Fi channel's
"Ghost Hunters" show, and macabre tales about the facility’s death
tunnels--underground passages used to transport dead bodies out of the
complex--have drawn considerable interest.
Ellen Derry (should be Erin not Ellen), a
Web designer who lives with her husband in Crestview, Fla., recently finished a
project called Tales of Eloise. Her site, talesofeloise.com, stemmed from her
fascination with Eloise Insane Asylum, an abandoned asylum in Detroit that was
once one of the largest hospitals in the country.
At its peak Eloise existed as its own
self-sufficient community, growing its own food, maintaining its own post
office and handling all of its own laundry and other services. The facility was
shut in the late 1970s, and most of its records were destroyed, leaving a level
of mystery and intrigue unmatched by most other abandoned asylums.
Derry said that she often heard ghost stories
about the mysterious network of tunnels that exist under Eloise.
"Whether people know it or not, these
asylums have influenced the American culture," Brothers said. "When I
go to these places I always think back and imagine all the emotions that went
on there. I think of what the people went though as they were patients or
workers at that hospital."
E-mail: grb2104@columbia.edu