Inside Danvers State Hospital: A Thrill-Seeker's Paradise

Sitting on Hathorne Hill in Danvers, Massachusetts is a beautiful Kirkbride building that features gothic-style spires and red brick. John Hathorne, a judge who oversaw the Salem Witch Trails, lived here a few hundred years ago.

The facility was once Danvers State Hospital but is now home to a residential community that has full renovated apartments inside. However, its dark history makes it one of the eeriest insane asylums in the world.

At first the facility was supposed to be self-sustaining, everything it would need would be on site. If you look at the building from above, it appears as if is a bat in mid-flight, this design supposedly helped draw breezes throughout the facility.

Even though it looked breath-taking from the outside, the inside was a whole different story.

The Early Years

First called the State Lunatic Asylum at Danvers, it was part of a countrywide concept(for the 1800s) that people who suffer from psychological disorders needed to be cured inside these specially made facilities. The construction of Danvers State Hospital begun in 1874, the first patients moved in around 1878. At its peak, the facility had 40 buildings and around 450 patients. The goal of the facility was to completely cure its patients of their disorders.

Danvers started out as a success. By 1900, it had 125 employees and had treated more than 9,500 patients since opening their doors. However, over the next 20 years, the population of the hospital increased to 2,000 patients despite its capacity only being 450.

Administrators of the facility begged the state for money in order to construct more buildings for more rooms and to hire more staff-they didn't receive anything.

Inside the Hospital

Thus, the abuse of patients started.

Patients would wander the halls naked, they were living in their own filth due to a lack of basic hygiene and they were not getting cured, instead their symptoms grew worse.

Shock therapy and straight jackets became regular forms of treatment. It was thought that the jolts of electricity would either alter the patient's brain or that if they made the patient afraid of shock therapy, it would scare them into submission. If a patient were to misbehaved, they were shoved into straight jackets and forgotten about.

When shock therapy failed, they turned to lobotomies. The medical community was searching for any sort of permanent fix to the crisis facing mental health facilities. The population of Danvers was now at an astounding 2,360 patients in 1939. A total of 278 people died that year in the hospital.

Medical science as lobotomies as a permanent cure for any person's insanity and as a way to put a stop to the deaths.

Neurology experts often say that Danvers State Hospital was the "birthplace of the prefrontal lobotomy."

Those who visited Danvers State Hospital in the early 40s reported that the patients who received lobotomies would wander aimlessly through the halls. But, the patients didn't complain, because so many of them would just stare blankly at the walls. Patients were walking around drugged in a daze and they were not allowed to leave, they were being held in the hospital against their will.

That was if any patient could express themselves after having a part of their brain removed during surgery.

The Decline of Danvers State Hospital and Repurposing

Danvers continued to have a lack of funding, the buildings fell into despair and this made conditions even worse. That was until the state intervened.

Portions of the hospital were shut down in 1969, most of it closed by 1985 before a permanent shutdown in 1992, after which the building became a popular destination for thrill-seekers.

In 2005, a development company purchased the rundown property and tore down a large portion of its buildings. Then the renovations started, turning the asylum into the Avalon Danvers Apartments. Construction had delays in 2007 after a mysterious fire broke out and burned up a majority of the new construction and some trailers.

The Danvers State Hospital, or the Hell House on the Hill as some nicknamed it, looks brand-new today. But, its reputation remains. H.P. Lovecraft used Danvers as the inspiration for his Arkham Sanitarium, which soon sparked DC comics to create the Arkham Asylum.

The only things that remain of the horrific past of Danvers are the gravestones in the two nearby cemeteries that contain 770 bodies. Some of the headstones only have numbers as opposed to names. Even after a patient's death, the administrators at Danvers did not respect or dignify their patients.