Check out what i found today:

Ah, yes.....



I have fond memories of my days.........



oops!




nevermind.... never been there, have no idea what it was like.....etc etc.....


RM

I was going to guess Pilgrim State.

rocketman said:

Ah, yes.....



I have fond memories of my days.........



oops!




nevermind.... never been there, have no idea what it was like.....etc etc.....


RM

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I think I know you??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlkZVAw8Gc

BubbaZanetti said:

i think i'll just stick to my tent, less chance of pcb and asbestos contamination, haha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Park_Psychiatric_Center

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Too late; already contaminated.

Now I gotta add that to my list of must-explore's.

Statdawg said:

Kings Park is haunted. Please check, you may have brought someone home with you in your tank bag ? Is that rabbit stew boiling over ?

I like those buildings of that era. Most of the buildings are connected by underground tunnels for security reasons such as transporting clients or for lazy staff that do not wish to walk in the weather between residences. Most of the ones in Pennsylvania have been converted to Prisons. Our buildings are not skyscrapers or closer to the gods that maybe required by the New Yorkers. Ours are three floors and very Victorian. Others were former TB hospitals because people came here for fresh mountain air.

Randell makes a valid point because even thought they are unattended they are still a threat to those that wander too close. The environmental decay is an issue especially during a fire. One should note that during construction the work went to the lowest bidder. Not saying it was done wrong but just at the lowest cost.

Our state was able to eliminate or update the old State treatment buildings and centers when they were expanding the Department of Corrections. Sadly the insane have a right to mingle with society now. Most are ill prepared for such a change and will commit a crime to get re-institutionalized in Corrections. I guess it beats the days when the insane was chained to the floors and doped up on laudium which was cheaper than Gin. Then came lobotomies, cold showers to dunking, shock treatments and today it is better living through chemistry. Sadly the buildings can't be used for another purpose except a cocoon for tormented souls.

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i've been really into Kirkbride Buildings since i started college at Umass and spent a lot of time over at Smith College, which was built right next to the Northampton State Hospital. I spent many nights in that building before it was torn down, exploring, investigating and doing stuff of general historic adventuring. Although not a Kirkbride, the Kings Park facility is easily the largest pyschaitric hospital i've ever been seen (and i've been to quite a few) in terms of number of buildings. The Kirkbrides on the website above were some of the largest buildings in America until the advent of modern steel/concrete construction techniques in the early part of the 20th century. From what i can recall of my explorations in Northampton, the basement alone had hundreds of rooms, dozens of tunnels and a myriad of strange passageways and layouts. this went on for 4 floors and dozens of other buildings.

Wow, that brings back some memories. Not of that facility, but of others. When I was growing up, my dad was a psychologist at state-hospitals in Alabama and Georgia. These hospitals all had old red-brick buildings, usually four stories, situated around grassy lawns and lots of pecan trees. They always seemed a little creepy.
In 1983 he moved into on-campus housing at one hospital in a very small town in Georgia (founded in 1842 as a "State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum") , and I spent a few summers there. The house itself was a nice charming little brick bungalow built circa 1940, with a couple of bedrooms downstairs and a couple of bedrooms upstairs inside the roof-gable, a creeky old wooden garage out back (where I spent many a day improving my wrenching-skills), and a musty basement where Dad kept a good collection of wine.
The house was about 100 yards from a big building that was the former medical/surgical building. It had been closed several years earlier, replaced by a nice modern facility off-campus. The old building was locked and chained, but at night we'd see lights on in different rooms...different rooms on different nights. We never saw anybody coming or going, but the suspicion around the neighbourhood was that whichever hospital-police-guys had the keys were up to who-knows-what in there...speculation ran wild.
I always got the most hair-raising creepy feeling when I was near that building, which was often. Our household trash had to go into a dumpster over by the building, and I often walked or rode my bicycle past it on the way to other places. One summer day my curiosity got the better of me and I started poking around, looking for an unlocked door. At first I found a basement door that led only into a dark and creepy storage area. I didn't go very far in, but in the small area penetrated by sunlight there was a mess on the floor of old files, old 16mm film (something to do with mosquitos, from what I saw on a few frames) and dumped-out boxes of little bits of wax all melted together and containing what appeared to be micro-thin slices of brain.
I moved on and found an above-ground door open. It led into a laboratory that was strewn with old papers and junk and empty containers and had a real air of decay about it. The led to another room that I quickly figured out was the morgue. The table and bucket-scale and overhead lighting were gone but the steel wall with all the little chiller-doors was still there. On a counter was what appeared to be an odd little bowl. I looked at it and saw the long black burnmark where a cigarette had sat in it for a while. Thinking it was an odd sort of ashtray, I picked it up for a closer look and found it to be the neatly-sawed-off top of a human skull! What surprises me is that I didn't freak out more than I did at this discovery. A quick look in the chiller revealed nothing but an old plastic trash-bag, but at that point I was getting so creeped out that I fled the building and never went back.
I did find some pictures on the web though:




And yes, these types of facilities are indeed supposedly VERY haunted. In the bad old days of mental health care, many dead patients were buried in either mass graves or minimally marked ones, sometimes all over the campuses in locations lost to history. My hometown in Alabama has an old asylum cemetary in which the gravestones are identified only with numbers. My hometown also has a large facility for mental retardation that got a new campus years ago, and the old abandoned former-campus out in the woods outside town is a favourite place for ghost-fans to go to try to get close to the supernatural. In fact, between that and all the ghosts from the civil war, the local university (founded 1831), former state capital (1826-46) and other odd bits of the past, my hometown is one of the most haunted places in the southeast.

Back on topic, yeah we could have ONE HELUVA rally at the old hospital!

Reminds me of the buildings in Wingdale NY along route 22.

creepy stuff.

Why are there so many of these palces in the Hudson Valley?
I drove by one on my way to the CIA everyday.... and I don't mean the Vanderbuilt mansion.

CWaterous said:

Why are there so many of these palces in the Hudson Valley?
I drove by one on my way to the CIA everyday.... and I don't mean the Vanderbuilt mansion.

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early population centers would be my guess. you'll note most of these hospitals, esp the kirkbrides are located not closer than 10 miles, but not further than 30 from a major city, generally, it seems, in the north east - michigan. The idea of these buildings was to create a pastoral, calm and relaxing environment for the patients, but for practical reasons, they couldn't be in the woods of northern maine. Danvers in MA outside Boston, Northampton, about 20 mi north of Springfield MA, there's a Kirkbirde outside Buffalo, a beautiful one that is semi restored at the University of Ohio if memory serves. Worcester MA has a very strange Kirkbride located within city limits in a part of the city that used to be pasture. Unlike the others it is built with stone instead of brick and is very imposing. Also, very well secured, haha.

CWaterous said:

Why are there so many of these palces in the Hudson Valley?
I drove by one on my way to the CIA everyday.... and I don't mean the Vanderbuilt mansion.

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Hey Chris! What are you doing at the CIA? I went there a long... long time ago...

BubbaZanetti said:

i think i'll just stick to my tent, less chance of pcb and asbestos contamination, haha

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Oh what's a little toxic waste among friends. Come on inside

Wow. They didn't convert every last room in that place for state offices like they did here in Vermont.

tessler said:

Hey Chris! What are you doing at the CIA? I went there a long... long time ago...

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The Military wouldn't take me and figured I would of ended up in a kitchen there anyway. Difference was I ended up paying for the discipline. I think it was '88-'91. Spent the next 12 years in NYC as the Porcetta King for Pino Longo and the cast of rising Italian superstars of that era. You know how it is..... That was alife time ago.
You?

CWaterous said:

The Military wouldn't take me and figured I would of ended up in a kitchen there anyway. Difference was I ended up paying for the discipline. I think it was '88-'91. Spent the next 12 years in NYC as the Porcetta King for Pino Longo and the cast of rising Italian superstars of that era. You know how it is..... That was alife time ago.
You?

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I started out in kitchens in NYC in the late 70s and did the CIA '80-'81. Left to work for Pat Clark and the McNallys at the Odeon and remained in the biz, while getting a degree in music, until '88 when I jumped from restaurants to magazines... Pino Longo, nice!

Randallisland is also a CIA guy.

Hey, see you up in the Catskills soon!

tessler said:

I started out in kitchens in NYC in the late 70s and did the CIA '80-'81. Left to work for Pat Clark and the McNallys at the Odeon and remained in the biz, while getting a degree in music, until '88 when I jumped from restaurants to magazines... Pino Longo, nice!

Randallisland is also a CIA guy.

Hey, see you up in the Catskills soon!

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I'd like to meet you guys when you are up here sometime. Are there meets up here during the summer/fall. How about a BBQ? MaxBMW sends me rally schedules in Greenville.

tessler said:

I started out in kitchens in NYC in the late 70s and did the CIA '80-'81. Left to work for Pat Clark and the McNallys at the Odeon and remained in the biz, while getting a degree in music, until '88 when I jumped from restaurants to magazines... Pino Longo, nice!

Randallisland is also a CIA guy.

Hey, see you up in the Catskills soon!

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I'd like to meet you guys when you are up here sometime. Are there meets up here that you attend regulary during the summer/fall. MaxBMW sends me rally schedules for Greenville but those arn't MOA.

CWaterous said:

I'd like to meet you guys when you are up here sometime. Are there meets up here that you attend regulary during the summer/fall. MaxBMW sends me rally schedules for Greenville but those arn't MOA.

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In the back of your BMW ON (Owner News) mag you will find a pretty comprehensive list of all the goings on for the next few months. I highly recommend joining any nearby Yankee Beemers gathering too. Either way, you'll get a feel for some great companionship, and make some outstanding new acquaintances toward eventual priceless friends.

I don't know if I'm going to be in China again this summer, but all signs point to yes. Send me a PM and I'll get you my phone #. Some of us will probably do something low key in the near future some weekend. You're certainly welcome to join us.

weird we got one also

BubbaZanetti said:

abandoned, just sitting there

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her in Eastern CT we must have the twin to this Hospital complex, looks just like it. Also looks like its been closed for about the same amount of time. Its in Preston ct and for those of you that are gambles its right across the river from Mohegan sun Casino.

BubbaZanetti said:

i think i'll just stick to my tent, less chance of pcb and asbestos contamination, haha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Park_Psychiatric_Center

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you know, this looks like an ideal rally site, but only if they let us sell our own beer.

ian