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So this is it. The last report from my fourth American adventure. I started with a bang and I simply had to go out with a bang visiting the largest site of the trip.
This asylum was at one time one of the largest in the USA, catering for almost 10,000 patients at it's peak capacity in the 1950s. During the 1980s the buildings gradually began to get wound down and closed, and nowadays about 3/4 of the site is derelict with the rest still a very much active mental hospital. The roads and paths through the site are all public right of way so you can freely wander but the campus police force (yes it has that) will ask you to leave if they see anything resembling camera equipment on show due to natural concerns over patient privacy - as the same paths you can walk down are also used by patients of the operational mental hospital units dotted around the site. I first visited the place in March last year but our entry into the main portion of the site was thwarted by the persistent presence of the campus police driving around constantly so we only managed to see a couple of the outlying buildings which did include the childrens centre that has now been absolutely ruined by tags.
Once safely inside we immediately went on a long walk down one of the service tunnels to our first building. It seemed like we walked forever, the site is enormous and has three layers of service tunnels criss-crossing the site so at times you are as much as three storeys below ground level. We saw some of the main buildings of interest as well as many others, I couldn't pinpoint them on a map as I honestly don't know. The place is so vast we were exploring building after building for hours, some were almost unbearably humid inside with the tunnels providing mercifully cool relief from the heat. I think overall I have seen probably 1/3 of the place by now, it would take you a week or two of solid exploring to get around every derelict building. The best part? We only ever saw the police drive past once, when we were safely in a building. It was a dream visit here to end my adventures on with no issues whatsoever other than my now broken tripod which didn't accompany me on the last explore.
First stop was the main auditorium, this standalone building is incomparable in size to any other asylum hall in the USA. It is suitably breathtakingly enormous like the rest of the site.
We met a group of five explorers in the bowling alley underneath the auditorium, due to the real bad lighting in here and my lack of tripod I was only able to get a couple of crap photos.
We then moved on to explore various other buildings, moving through endless corridors and hallways, wards and basements.
Like West Park, there was a padded cell hidden in the depths of one of the wards.
Until finally, after hours of walking around, we found the last stop on the explore - the mortuary. Hidden deep off one of the basement tunnels god knows where in the asylum.
Thanks for looking, and I hope you've enjoyed my photos from America. I don't know when I'll be back over, it may be next year the way things are going. Normal service will be resumed now, I can finally start going through the photos from the five explores I did last weekend!
