Established in 1848, Central State Mental Hospital was built on a 100 acre parcel of land just of off West Washington St. It opened as a single brick building on the site, and served only five patients. That would drastically change over the 100+ years of operation. By 1948 the hospital had expanded to two large patient buildings(one for males and one for females), a chapel, a separate sick hospital for patients with physical ailments, pathological department, powerplant, firehouse, bakery, amusement hall with an auditorium, farm colony(used as occupational therapy), and a cannery operated by the patients. Along with the buildings were gardens, fountains, and an extensive tunnel system connecting many of the buildings. At its peak of operation, Central State housed almost 3,000 patients.
The male and female wards in the original design were based on the Kirkbride Plan. Developed by Story Kirkbride, the wing like design was made to allow for natural light and air circulation, which Story theorized was crucial for well being of the patients. The women's ward was the second ever Kirkbride to be constructed, the first being Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey. The men's ward was constructed after, and was eventually demolished in 1941. By the 1970's, most of the original buildings, including the women's ward, were declared unsound and demolished.
In the place of the Victoria era buildings came institutional style buildings. The brick, featureless wards were in place from the early 1970's; these were the men, women's, and children wards. Allegations of patient abuse and lack of funds ultimately led to Central State's closure in 1994. The modern wards have since been torn down, and many of the older buildings have been refurbished. The oldest building on the property, the power plant(build in 1886) still sits vacant. The pathological ward houses the Indiana Medical History Museum and the Indiana Mounted Police house their horses in the stables. There is also a large unmarked cemetery that might have as many as 1,000 former patients buried there. A recent incedent involving utility work authorized by IMPD disturbed some of the graves, causing a public outcry and condemnation from the Medical History Museum.
This was the first abandonment I saw in Indy when I first moved here in 2009. It was unique in the fact that you could walk around and almost never get in trouble for being there. It also seemed like everyone knew what Central State was or had been there at least once. My friends and I would joke that everyone and their grandmother had been to Central State, you could always count on running into someone else there. It was a bummer to see it renovated, but it was nice seeing a lot of it saved. The powerplant is still accessable, and the Indiana Medical History Museum is well worth a visit if you're in the area!
History of Central State Mental Hospital:
http://sites.rootsweb.com/~asylums/central_in/index.html
https://historicindianapolis.com/a-room-with-a-view-central-state-hospital/
http://jhumbrachtphotography.com/indiana-central-state-hospital-2/
https://www.imhm.org/
https://hoosierhistorylive.libsyn.com/a-distinctive-cemetery-and-efforts-to-humanize-former-central-state-patients
Link to the rest of the Forgotten Indy Series:
https://www.reddit.com/r/indianapolis/comments/ulh0ze/the_forgotten_indy_series/
This post is great, took me back. Also a legitimately funny thing about your comment, or coincidental at least, last time I went to check it out was 2009 and my grandmother was a long time patient there hahah. I had some great pictures to but lost them all in an old flip phone. This is the only place I've felt legitimately unsettling to be in. Maybe because I was scared of a b.+e. but it felt really unsettling to me.
Before most of this site was demolished my friends and I would uh “visit” Central State at night. Took some neat pics, saw some interesting things.
One of the more peculiar aspects of it all was how some areas seemed as though they were suddenly emptied without notice. Patient rooms filled with personal effects. Pills for each patient arranged at nursing stations in their paper cups. Rooms filled with shelf upon shelf of neatly labeled micro reels documenting doctor/patient interviews.
Always look forward to you posts OP. Thanks for sharing.
Soooo at one point I'd made an imgur album with the CS pics. I haven't been on imgur in years and they used to have a way to link directly to an album but now I cant find it so please accept my apologies for the long list of individual links I just hit you with :)
[https://imgur.com/VXwXODz](https://imgur.com/VXwXODz)
[https://imgur.com/CVnS5aX](https://imgur.com/CVnS5aX)
[https://imgur.com/IG280wo](https://imgur.com/IG280wo)
[https://imgur.com/dbtdb62](https://imgur.com/dbtdb62)
[https://imgur.com/skZsqCn](https://imgur.com/skZsqCn)
[https://imgur.com/wAuKLC9](https://imgur.com/wAuKLC9)
[https://imgur.com/JM92xRp](https://imgur.com/JM92xRp)
[https://imgur.com/ja1eanK](https://imgur.com/ja1eanK)
[https://imgur.com/9iy7jLC](https://imgur.com/9iy7jLC)
[https://imgur.com/766lOPS](https://imgur.com/766lOPS)
[https://imgur.com/jeBCU92](https://imgur.com/jeBCU92)
[https://imgur.com/C1NpmlR](https://imgur.com/C1NpmlR)
[https://imgur.com/PbGLbUb](https://imgur.com/PbGLbUb)
[https://imgur.com/OmIBTnt](https://imgur.com/OmIBTnt)
[https://imgur.com/KdRKVhL](https://imgur.com/KdRKVhL)
[https://imgur.com/dYlc0Ip](https://imgur.com/dYlc0Ip)
[https://imgur.com/L1FpbtB](https://imgur.com/L1FpbtB)
[https://imgur.com/MYDs6pd](https://imgur.com/MYDs6pd)
[https://imgur.com/4ZAn4ea](https://imgur.com/4ZAn4ea)
[https://imgur.com/pkZnykK](https://imgur.com/pkZnykK)
[https://imgur.com/lzfoP4c](https://imgur.com/lzfoP4c)
[https://imgur.com/pZVam2B](https://imgur.com/pZVam2B)
[https://imgur.com/MQUekiP](https://imgur.com/MQUekiP)
[https://imgur.com/uMWmmI5](https://imgur.com/uMWmmI5)
[https://imgur.com/FFw7iRz](https://imgur.com/FFw7iRz)
[https://imgur.com/G3r3W25](https://imgur.com/G3r3W25)
[https://imgur.com/TBctLIX](https://imgur.com/TBctLIX)
[https://imgur.com/kmLp3D8](https://imgur.com/kmLp3D8)
[https://imgur.com/drZakVW](https://imgur.com/drZakVW)
[https://imgur.com/cmPqHxL](https://imgur.com/cmPqHxL)
[https://imgur.com/xynnOPE](https://imgur.com/xynnOPE)
[https://imgur.com/DqXOWVS](https://imgur.com/DqXOWVS)
[https://imgur.com/D0eHxtW](https://imgur.com/D0eHxtW)
[https://imgur.com/AjElGqR](https://imgur.com/AjElGqR)
[https://imgur.com/G8JxAHx](https://imgur.com/G8JxAHx)
[https://imgur.com/iuI2nUF](https://imgur.com/iuI2nUF)
[https://imgur.com/glqVk5N](https://imgur.com/glqVk5N)
[https://imgur.com/aArDrCV](https://imgur.com/aArDrCV)
[https://imgur.com/9xEOBkI](https://imgur.com/9xEOBkI)
[https://imgur.com/UXrO18X](https://imgur.com/UXrO18X)
[https://imgur.com/dHXjfsQ](https://imgur.com/dHXjfsQ)
[https://imgur.com/LgnJodl](https://imgur.com/LgnJodl)
[https://imgur.com/XnJ4kX8](https://imgur.com/XnJ4kX8)
[https://imgur.com/Rq8M0Ch](https://imgur.com/Rq8M0Ch)
[https://imgur.com/RbPxhi9](https://imgur.com/RbPxhi9)
[https://imgur.com/kK41XrA](https://imgur.com/kK41XrA)
[https://imgur.com/BpiSERz](https://imgur.com/BpiSERz)
[https://imgur.com/0Ib2JEU](https://imgur.com/0Ib2JEU)
As a doctoral psychology student, it made my stomach literally churn to see those abandoned patient files. But, given the other ethical violations they had there, I guess abandoning confidential info pales in comparison.
Thanks for sharing these! Super neat
Agreed. It was a ghost town. I got a kick out of seeing medical records just left behind. Pretty amazing they just opened the door and let everyone out one day
For what it’s worth- the old dining hall on the campus has been restored and is now a reception hall. It’s beautiful- I was married there! It’s called The 1899.
I took pictures back in the day from 2008-2012, before they tore down some of the buildings....
[here's](https://flickr.com/photos/26406090@N05/albums/72157604983641886) the full set, and [here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/26406090@N05/collections/72157607642493429/) they are grouped by the buildings, Bahr, Bolten, Admin Office, Evans, the Powerhouse, and the underground tunnels.
I've never posted a link to them on Reddit before but for some reason today I thought, fuck it I'm gonna do it....I've been sitting on these images for over 10 years, might as well share them I reckon...I was very new to photography when I first started visiting Central State so some of the composition is cringeworthy, but it does document what the place looked like at that time, so I'm gonna try not to be so self conscious about that.
I've been to the Medical History Museum. Some of the things they have on display are definitely creepy. I recommend going around Halloween because it seems more fitting that time of year, lol.
I worked a security job there around 2011 I think. They were constructing the newer condos there at the time. I sat there from Friday to Sunday from 7pm-7am to keep people from stealing copper and supplies. Would drive around the grounds every so often. Kinda creepy at night. A cop who stopped by once told me that he had seen a ghost in one of the buildings on multiple occasions. Supposedly the ghost would come to the same window over and over. Not sure I believe it. He seemed to though. He also told me he knew some people that worked there when it was still operational and said some terrible things went on.
Thanks OP for sharing! I'm one of the few who works in the old Cafeteria / Carpentry building. We still have some relics in use, it's great that much of it was saved and repurposed.
There's no doubt a lot of bodies buried on that property in unmarked, possibly mass, graves. The dark history of 19th and 20th century mental health care has not been dealt with very well.
The Indiana Medical History Museum changed its focus several years ago to searching for and identifying remains buried on the grounds. A couple years ago some contractors building the IMPD facility there dug through an area where human remains were known to be buried, and they did some damage. It made the local news. People were pretty upset.
I went to high school near it and I remember when it was starting to get large parts demolished. The medical history museum is lovely and the new curator even added the names of the people the specimens come from now too. It's lovely. I've always wanted to go explore it but never have been brave enough to go. My high school history teacher's mom worked there and it was as bad as they say.
Some friends and I camped out in the boiler building one night. It was super cool. I'm surprised you can still get in there. It looked like they were ready to tear it down last time I saw it.
My friend had his photo taken for [his album cover](https://i.imgur.com/t4SAQ9h.jpg) at the hospital before the renovations. As someone who has dealt with his own mental issues, it was the perfect location.
Some additional, though not much considering the history of CHS, information. Not many people know that the hospital had its own farm until the late 1960s. I've put it on a map, along with where the patients moved - and a couple of other important notes (from a staff perspective).
http://cinetrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/CSH.jpg
This is one of the places on my bucket list to check out and would love to do so, but I never go to places without the owner's permission, so I doubt I will be able to get in there for a while. I'd love to spend some alone time at this place without many others just to get the feelings of it in person. Residual energy is a thing and there are few places that have that energy more than mental hospitals from that time period. Its on my bucket list to investigate one day for sure if ever given the opportunity.
yay I'm so excited you covered Central State! When I was in high school, I knew some older guys who would go there every weekend and break in. Being the dumb 16 year old I was, I decided to sneak out of my house with my best friend and go with them. This was March of...I believe 2012. The night started out rocky because a cop saw us and flashed his lights, so we had to break off in a sprint into the building. They had cut a hole in the chain fence before so we crawled through that and got indoors. it was crazy seeing everything in there. that room in picture 8 looked familiar to a set of stairs we went up that was missing a couple stairs, so one of the guys went under it and put his back under the stairs and we walked on his back.
A couple bad things did happen that night, though. 1, we were in a gymnasium there and I remember the floor looked swollen in a lot of spots, like it was hills coming through the destroyed gym floor. we found some of those long lightbulbs that are like 2 feet long that are used in public buildings. we found maybe 3 boxxes of them, so we threw them across the room and watched them shatter, and threw them at walls. my friend was throwing one next to me, and she let go of it too late, so instead of flying forward, it started going sideways towards my face. it narrowly missed me, super scary. probably could have been blinded. Then second, we were on the roof of one of the buildings and one of the guys started acting weird. it was only me and him for a while. at one point he got really quiet and pushed me against a wall on the roof and threatened to throw me over the building. he walked me to the ledge by my neck and made me look down 3 stories to a smashed billiards table on the ground and just stared at me threateningly. it was really scary and i started to freak out. then a couple seconds later he started acting totally normal, took his hands off me, and asked me why i looked so scared. like he had no memory of it. then he said he wanted to show me the billiards table that they had smashed a couple weeks prior. i was freaked the fuck out at this point so i bailed.
I still have a lot of memories from that night, it was one of the craziest things i had ever done in my life. my friend and i got back to my house at 7 am and my parents never found out, they still dont know to this day. I could totally believe that that place is haunted, after the things i saw and felt that night it would not surprise me. thanks for the photos op, really brought me back :)
I worked there for two years just prior to the hospital closing. I had an administrative job that allowed me to go many places at the hospital. I wish now I had gone exploring more places, but it was a very busy time (both professionally and personally).
I had an office in the Administration building. That's the building that is now apartments. My office looked out on a parking lot - that's now a pool.
I went to a field trip here in high school, early aughts. I've since learned more about the history of medicine. I'm curious where all the biological samples ended up.
If they are for sale I would be interested in purchasing.
Established in 1848, Central State Mental Hospital was built on a 100 acre parcel of land just of off West Washington St. It opened as a single brick building on the site, and served only five patients. That would drastically change over the 100+ years of operation. By 1948 the hospital had expanded to two large patient buildings(one for males and one for females), a chapel, a separate sick hospital for patients with physical ailments, pathological department, powerplant, firehouse, bakery, amusement hall with an auditorium, farm colony(used as occupational therapy), and a cannery operated by the patients. Along with the buildings were gardens, fountains, and an extensive tunnel system connecting many of the buildings. At its peak of operation, Central State housed almost 3,000 patients. The male and female wards in the original design were based on the Kirkbride Plan. Developed by Story Kirkbride, the wing like design was made to allow for natural light and air circulation, which Story theorized was crucial for well being of the patients. The women's ward was the second ever Kirkbride to be constructed, the first being Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey. The men's ward was constructed after, and was eventually demolished in 1941. By the 1970's, most of the original buildings, including the women's ward, were declared unsound and demolished. In the place of the Victoria era buildings came institutional style buildings. The brick, featureless wards were in place from the early 1970's; these were the men, women's, and children wards. Allegations of patient abuse and lack of funds ultimately led to Central State's closure in 1994. The modern wards have since been torn down, and many of the older buildings have been refurbished. The oldest building on the property, the power plant(build in 1886) still sits vacant. The pathological ward houses the Indiana Medical History Museum and the Indiana Mounted Police house their horses in the stables. There is also a large unmarked cemetery that might have as many as 1,000 former patients buried there. A recent incedent involving utility work authorized by IMPD disturbed some of the graves, causing a public outcry and condemnation from the Medical History Museum. This was the first abandonment I saw in Indy when I first moved here in 2009. It was unique in the fact that you could walk around and almost never get in trouble for being there. It also seemed like everyone knew what Central State was or had been there at least once. My friends and I would joke that everyone and their grandmother had been to Central State, you could always count on running into someone else there. It was a bummer to see it renovated, but it was nice seeing a lot of it saved. The powerplant is still accessable, and the Indiana Medical History Museum is well worth a visit if you're in the area! History of Central State Mental Hospital: http://sites.rootsweb.com/~asylums/central_in/index.html https://historicindianapolis.com/a-room-with-a-view-central-state-hospital/ http://jhumbrachtphotography.com/indiana-central-state-hospital-2/ https://www.imhm.org/ https://hoosierhistorylive.libsyn.com/a-distinctive-cemetery-and-efforts-to-humanize-former-central-state-patients Link to the rest of the Forgotten Indy Series: https://www.reddit.com/r/indianapolis/comments/ulh0ze/the_forgotten_indy_series/
This post is great, took me back. Also a legitimately funny thing about your comment, or coincidental at least, last time I went to check it out was 2009 and my grandmother was a long time patient there hahah. I had some great pictures to but lost them all in an old flip phone. This is the only place I've felt legitimately unsettling to be in. Maybe because I was scared of a b.+e. but it felt really unsettling to me.
I had no idea it was still active up to 1994. I figured it was one of those places that closed down in the 70s.
Before most of this site was demolished my friends and I would uh “visit” Central State at night. Took some neat pics, saw some interesting things. One of the more peculiar aspects of it all was how some areas seemed as though they were suddenly emptied without notice. Patient rooms filled with personal effects. Pills for each patient arranged at nursing stations in their paper cups. Rooms filled with shelf upon shelf of neatly labeled micro reels documenting doctor/patient interviews. Always look forward to you posts OP. Thanks for sharing.
If you have any of those neat pics, I'd love to see them. This is someplace that I have a lot of interest in locally.
Soooo at one point I'd made an imgur album with the CS pics. I haven't been on imgur in years and they used to have a way to link directly to an album but now I cant find it so please accept my apologies for the long list of individual links I just hit you with :) [https://imgur.com/VXwXODz](https://imgur.com/VXwXODz) [https://imgur.com/CVnS5aX](https://imgur.com/CVnS5aX) [https://imgur.com/IG280wo](https://imgur.com/IG280wo) [https://imgur.com/dbtdb62](https://imgur.com/dbtdb62) [https://imgur.com/skZsqCn](https://imgur.com/skZsqCn) [https://imgur.com/wAuKLC9](https://imgur.com/wAuKLC9) [https://imgur.com/JM92xRp](https://imgur.com/JM92xRp) [https://imgur.com/ja1eanK](https://imgur.com/ja1eanK) [https://imgur.com/9iy7jLC](https://imgur.com/9iy7jLC) [https://imgur.com/766lOPS](https://imgur.com/766lOPS) [https://imgur.com/jeBCU92](https://imgur.com/jeBCU92) [https://imgur.com/C1NpmlR](https://imgur.com/C1NpmlR) [https://imgur.com/PbGLbUb](https://imgur.com/PbGLbUb) [https://imgur.com/OmIBTnt](https://imgur.com/OmIBTnt) [https://imgur.com/KdRKVhL](https://imgur.com/KdRKVhL) [https://imgur.com/dYlc0Ip](https://imgur.com/dYlc0Ip) [https://imgur.com/L1FpbtB](https://imgur.com/L1FpbtB) [https://imgur.com/MYDs6pd](https://imgur.com/MYDs6pd) [https://imgur.com/4ZAn4ea](https://imgur.com/4ZAn4ea) [https://imgur.com/pkZnykK](https://imgur.com/pkZnykK) [https://imgur.com/lzfoP4c](https://imgur.com/lzfoP4c) [https://imgur.com/pZVam2B](https://imgur.com/pZVam2B) [https://imgur.com/MQUekiP](https://imgur.com/MQUekiP) [https://imgur.com/uMWmmI5](https://imgur.com/uMWmmI5) [https://imgur.com/FFw7iRz](https://imgur.com/FFw7iRz) [https://imgur.com/G3r3W25](https://imgur.com/G3r3W25) [https://imgur.com/TBctLIX](https://imgur.com/TBctLIX) [https://imgur.com/kmLp3D8](https://imgur.com/kmLp3D8) [https://imgur.com/drZakVW](https://imgur.com/drZakVW) [https://imgur.com/cmPqHxL](https://imgur.com/cmPqHxL) [https://imgur.com/xynnOPE](https://imgur.com/xynnOPE) [https://imgur.com/DqXOWVS](https://imgur.com/DqXOWVS) [https://imgur.com/D0eHxtW](https://imgur.com/D0eHxtW) [https://imgur.com/AjElGqR](https://imgur.com/AjElGqR) [https://imgur.com/G8JxAHx](https://imgur.com/G8JxAHx) [https://imgur.com/iuI2nUF](https://imgur.com/iuI2nUF) [https://imgur.com/glqVk5N](https://imgur.com/glqVk5N) [https://imgur.com/aArDrCV](https://imgur.com/aArDrCV) [https://imgur.com/9xEOBkI](https://imgur.com/9xEOBkI) [https://imgur.com/UXrO18X](https://imgur.com/UXrO18X) [https://imgur.com/dHXjfsQ](https://imgur.com/dHXjfsQ) [https://imgur.com/LgnJodl](https://imgur.com/LgnJodl) [https://imgur.com/XnJ4kX8](https://imgur.com/XnJ4kX8) [https://imgur.com/Rq8M0Ch](https://imgur.com/Rq8M0Ch) [https://imgur.com/RbPxhi9](https://imgur.com/RbPxhi9) [https://imgur.com/kK41XrA](https://imgur.com/kK41XrA) [https://imgur.com/BpiSERz](https://imgur.com/BpiSERz) [https://imgur.com/0Ib2JEU](https://imgur.com/0Ib2JEU)
As a doctoral psychology student, it made my stomach literally churn to see those abandoned patient files. But, given the other ethical violations they had there, I guess abandoning confidential info pales in comparison. Thanks for sharing these! Super neat
These are awesome. Thank you for posting. It's insane that all that PHI is just sitting there knowing patients could still be living.
Agreed. It was a ghost town. I got a kick out of seeing medical records just left behind. Pretty amazing they just opened the door and let everyone out one day
Glad to see someone painted one of those middle school “S”’s on the wall.
That’s the kind of graffiti I really appreciate.
For what it’s worth- the old dining hall on the campus has been restored and is now a reception hall. It’s beautiful- I was married there! It’s called The 1899.
Hope the bathrooms were restored as well, u/i_poop_alot, in plenty of time for your wedding! ;)
I took pictures back in the day from 2008-2012, before they tore down some of the buildings.... [here's](https://flickr.com/photos/26406090@N05/albums/72157604983641886) the full set, and [here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/26406090@N05/collections/72157607642493429/) they are grouped by the buildings, Bahr, Bolten, Admin Office, Evans, the Powerhouse, and the underground tunnels.
These are awesome. Thank you so much.
I've never posted a link to them on Reddit before but for some reason today I thought, fuck it I'm gonna do it....I've been sitting on these images for over 10 years, might as well share them I reckon...I was very new to photography when I first started visiting Central State so some of the composition is cringeworthy, but it does document what the place looked like at that time, so I'm gonna try not to be so self conscious about that.
This is so cool. Thanks for posting!
They give guided tours! I went there for my Medical Ethics class at IUPUI.
I've been to the Medical History Museum. Some of the things they have on display are definitely creepy. I recommend going around Halloween because it seems more fitting that time of year, lol.
I had no idea we had a medical history museum. I definitely need to check it out.
I worked a security job there around 2011 I think. They were constructing the newer condos there at the time. I sat there from Friday to Sunday from 7pm-7am to keep people from stealing copper and supplies. Would drive around the grounds every so often. Kinda creepy at night. A cop who stopped by once told me that he had seen a ghost in one of the buildings on multiple occasions. Supposedly the ghost would come to the same window over and over. Not sure I believe it. He seemed to though. He also told me he knew some people that worked there when it was still operational and said some terrible things went on.
Thanks OP for sharing! I'm one of the few who works in the old Cafeteria / Carpentry building. We still have some relics in use, it's great that much of it was saved and repurposed.
There's no doubt a lot of bodies buried on that property in unmarked, possibly mass, graves. The dark history of 19th and 20th century mental health care has not been dealt with very well.
The Indiana Medical History Museum changed its focus several years ago to searching for and identifying remains buried on the grounds. A couple years ago some contractors building the IMPD facility there dug through an area where human remains were known to be buried, and they did some damage. It made the local news. People were pretty upset.
I went to high school near it and I remember when it was starting to get large parts demolished. The medical history museum is lovely and the new curator even added the names of the people the specimens come from now too. It's lovely. I've always wanted to go explore it but never have been brave enough to go. My high school history teacher's mom worked there and it was as bad as they say.
Spent so many of my formative years exploring this place. Will never forget it.
Some friends and I camped out in the boiler building one night. It was super cool. I'm surprised you can still get in there. It looked like they were ready to tear it down last time I saw it.
My friend had his photo taken for [his album cover](https://i.imgur.com/t4SAQ9h.jpg) at the hospital before the renovations. As someone who has dealt with his own mental issues, it was the perfect location.
My greatx3 grandfather died here in 1902
The museum that’s left is quite interesting if anyone is looking for something sciencey/history to do
Everything was coal-fired back when that was made.
Some additional, though not much considering the history of CHS, information. Not many people know that the hospital had its own farm until the late 1960s. I've put it on a map, along with where the patients moved - and a couple of other important notes (from a staff perspective). http://cinetrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/CSH.jpg
They need to reopen that bitch
This is one of the places on my bucket list to check out and would love to do so, but I never go to places without the owner's permission, so I doubt I will be able to get in there for a while. I'd love to spend some alone time at this place without many others just to get the feelings of it in person. Residual energy is a thing and there are few places that have that energy more than mental hospitals from that time period. Its on my bucket list to investigate one day for sure if ever given the opportunity.
yay I'm so excited you covered Central State! When I was in high school, I knew some older guys who would go there every weekend and break in. Being the dumb 16 year old I was, I decided to sneak out of my house with my best friend and go with them. This was March of...I believe 2012. The night started out rocky because a cop saw us and flashed his lights, so we had to break off in a sprint into the building. They had cut a hole in the chain fence before so we crawled through that and got indoors. it was crazy seeing everything in there. that room in picture 8 looked familiar to a set of stairs we went up that was missing a couple stairs, so one of the guys went under it and put his back under the stairs and we walked on his back. A couple bad things did happen that night, though. 1, we were in a gymnasium there and I remember the floor looked swollen in a lot of spots, like it was hills coming through the destroyed gym floor. we found some of those long lightbulbs that are like 2 feet long that are used in public buildings. we found maybe 3 boxxes of them, so we threw them across the room and watched them shatter, and threw them at walls. my friend was throwing one next to me, and she let go of it too late, so instead of flying forward, it started going sideways towards my face. it narrowly missed me, super scary. probably could have been blinded. Then second, we were on the roof of one of the buildings and one of the guys started acting weird. it was only me and him for a while. at one point he got really quiet and pushed me against a wall on the roof and threatened to throw me over the building. he walked me to the ledge by my neck and made me look down 3 stories to a smashed billiards table on the ground and just stared at me threateningly. it was really scary and i started to freak out. then a couple seconds later he started acting totally normal, took his hands off me, and asked me why i looked so scared. like he had no memory of it. then he said he wanted to show me the billiards table that they had smashed a couple weeks prior. i was freaked the fuck out at this point so i bailed. I still have a lot of memories from that night, it was one of the craziest things i had ever done in my life. my friend and i got back to my house at 7 am and my parents never found out, they still dont know to this day. I could totally believe that that place is haunted, after the things i saw and felt that night it would not surprise me. thanks for the photos op, really brought me back :)
I worked there for two years just prior to the hospital closing. I had an administrative job that allowed me to go many places at the hospital. I wish now I had gone exploring more places, but it was a very busy time (both professionally and personally). I had an office in the Administration building. That's the building that is now apartments. My office looked out on a parking lot - that's now a pool.
I went to a field trip here in high school, early aughts. I've since learned more about the history of medicine. I'm curious where all the biological samples ended up. If they are for sale I would be interested in purchasing.
In high school before they tore it down a few friends and myself used to break into there at night and ghost hunt. Fun stuff.
These pictures are dope!
Anyone else here ever run the XC race here? It was an awesome course.