Danvers State Mental Asylum

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This famous lunatic asylum was built in 1878 at Danvers and was built by Nathaniel J Bradlee, an architect from Boston.  The hospital was built to provide care and to treat mentally ill patients.  As time went on it was in the 1960's that this sort of care and alternative treatment methods were not very popular and the in-patient population began to decrease. So on 24th June 1992 and because of budget restrictions within the mental-health system, Danvers State Insane Asylum was closed down.

Many people beleive that this building is haunted and are there is a huge amount of interest in it. The building has stood empty for over 100 years and is in a very bad state of disrepair inside. There have been numerous break-in's from spirit-seekers and young people who flock there, in the hope of seeing a ghost. It is in fact a very dangerous place full of open floors, hanging wires, fibre glass and is very very creepy. There have been plans to demolish the building and, on the flip side, campaigns to keep it preserved. To date I know that part of the building, the Kilbride building, has already been demolished. 

There was a horror film made, called Session 9, which was filmed entirely on location at the hospital which was very atmospheric and very creepy. See Movie Trailer Here

A woman named Jeralyn Levasseur grew up on the grounds of the hospital in a house which was let out to her father Gerald Richards, who was the Hospital Administrator and she has a few tales to tell. She has told of doors opening and closing and lights that would flicker on and off. The family would also hear foot-steps walking along the second story hallways of their home when no-one else was upstairs.

There is one account where she remembers when she was quite young and her brother and sister, who were playing in the attic upstairs saw the apparition of an older woman who appeared to be scowling at them angrily. Too scared to move, they stayed rooted until their mother called for them to come down. When Levasseur was in High School she told off an experience where her bedcovers were pulled off her bed and there was nobody else in the room. Although petrified she didnt feel she was in any real danger.

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• Other information
• Source: Wikipedia

History

Constructed at a cost of $1.5 million, with the estimated yearly per capita cost of patients being $3,000 the hospital originally consisted of two main center buildings, housing the administration, with four radiating wings. The administration building measured 90 by 60 feet, with a tower 130 feet in height. Connected in the rear was a building 180 by 60 feet, in which the kitchens, laundries, chapel, and dormitories for the attendants. In the rear is the boiler house of 70 feet square, with boilers of 450 horsepower, used for heating and ventilation. Water was pumped from Middleton Pond. On each side of the main building are the wings, for male and female patients respectively, connected by small square towers, with the exception of the last ones on each side, which are joined by octagonal towers. The former measured 10 feet square, and were used to separate the buildings. The original plan was designed to house 500 patients, with 100 more possible to accommodate in the attic. However, by 1935, 2,150 patients were being housed, and overcrowding was severe.

As of June 2006, all of the Danvers State Hospital buildings that were marked for demolition have been torn down, including all of the buildings on the lower grounds and all of the buildings on the hill except for the center most sections of the kirkbride building. Avalon Bay predicts that they will have properties available for rent/sale by Fall 2006.

Trivia

• Danvers State Hospital was almost located in Winthrop, Massachusetts under the name "Massachusetts State Hospital", however it was decided that the Danvers Location was better suited for the needs of the state.
• The hospital was the setting for the 2001 horror film Session 9.
• The Danvers State Insane Asylum may have been the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium, which in turn was the inspiration for Arkham Asylum in the Batman comic book series. Danvers also appears in H.P. Lovecraft's short stories "Pickman's Model" , "Herbert West Reanimator" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".
• In the game Painkiller (video game), one of the levels, called Asylum, is based on the central administration section. While the outside is a faithful reproduction, the insides were not.

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