Xtreme Xplorations

Name: Danvers State Mental Hospital

Location: Danvers, MA

Current Status: Redeveloped

Risk Level: Very High

Security: Yes, Patrolling

Infiltration Level: Difficult

Background: This is an abandoned mental hospital built in 1878...its a small city pretty much..it featured its own movie theater, 2 chapels,workers that lived on campus, its own water tower, a gym, and a farm and many other such things...its been abandoned since the early 90s...one of the most unique places I have ever been.  The place resides on the top of a hill in Danvers , MA and from the air the building resembles a bat with a male wing stretching out one way and a female the other.  The most extreme patients were kept at the tips of the wings.  Also the hospital was built on the very location where the head judge of the salem witch trials used to have his house which only adds to the history of Danvers . The movie "Session 9" was also filmed entirely on location there and it gives a good visual of the place if you have never seen it.  Like Met State several former resident patients still reside there beneath unmarked graves.  However a group has made an effort to clean up this cemetery.  Like most large state hospitals, the hospital started out as a beacon of excellence in the health community but eventually it became over crowded which led to patient abuse.  Many patients were eventually kept in attics and the vast tunnels that run beneath the hospital.  Also parts of patientsbodies were known to be kept after they has passed for further study and then the body parts were later buried next to the body!  The frontal lobotomy was perfected at this facility. For those who don'tkno that is actually where they shove a metal spike in your cornea and into ur frontal lobe in order to relieve stress .  I would think if they were coming at me with a metal spike i wouldn't be to stressed, I'd be more inclined to piss my pants!  Anyway Danvers is gone now thanks to Avalon Gay who has turned it into a condo community. Interesting.  All buildings except for part of the ad-min building have been or will be demolished to make way for high priced condos and a pool and a coffee shop with wireless internet access...cute.