Danvers State Hospital

Danvers State Hospital

Danvers State Lunatic Asylum is probably one of the most notoriously haunted and intriguing places on earth. High atop Hawthorne Hill, overlooking the scenic countryside, sits an incomprehensibly massive structure. Donned the "witches castle on the hill". Danvers State Lunatic Asylum was constructed in 1878, costing a mere 1.5 million dollars, and was considered to be an architectural masterpiece. The asylum resides in the town of Danvers, Massachusetts which many people are unaware was formerly known as Salem Village. Salem Village was the first actual location of the 1692 Salem witch trials. Unbeknownst to some, the witch trials did not begin in Salem, but in Salem Village, or present-day Danvers at a church on Centre Street. The trials were later moved to a larger building in Salem when hysteria ran rampant and onlooking spectators swarmed the church. More significantly, the most fanatical judge of the witch trials, Johnathan Hawthorne, lived in a house built by his father in 1646 at the top of the hill, in the exact location on which the asylum stands today, hence the name "Witches Castle". It has also been speculated that John Proctor and 4 other accused withches were hung on Gallows Hill in 1692 , the property on which Danvers was built. Creepy? For sure.

Danvers was the epitome of ever changing health care at the turn of the century and its humane treatment of patients earned it a brilliant reputation. But like so many others of its time it fell victim to rising cost, lack of government funding, understaffing, and over population. Its deteriorated physical state was a hell-hole likened to that of a German death camp. A once humane facility had turned dark by the mid half of the century.

Danvers, between 1940 and 1950, housed over 2,600 mentally ill patients in a structure only designed to house 600. Due to over crowding it relied on medical interventions customary to infamous asylums of that time- shock treatment, hydrotherapy, insulin shock therapy, psychosurgery and lobotomies (the frontal lobotomy was said to be perfected here) to keep its burgeoning census under control. Patients became haggard and ghostly, often spending a majority of time alone and in solitary confinement in a space no larger than a small bathroom. "Poorly clothed and sometimes naked, these legions of lost souls were shown pacing aimlessly on the wards, lying on the filthy cement floors, or sitting head in hand against the pock-marked walls" (Deutsch 1948, 41, 49). It was so bad that a lifeless patient would go unnoticed for days.

Finally in 1992, Danvers State Lunatic Asylum shut its doors for good. The remaining patients were placed accordingly in other facilities and the castle was locked down. 14 years passed as the building sat abandoned, then in 2005 the property was bought and parts of the once grandier hospital were demolished. Although still recognizable, Danvers State is now apartments and although the part of the original structure was kept, the foreboding that once emancipated from this great palace is gone.