I don't know about you...but I REALLY want to hit this up next year. The only I'd like better is if it were being held in a Cemetery...but beggars can't be choosers. So I'm going to plan for it in advance for next year. And I think it will fall on a Saturday next year too, so that would be even better. My only decision is do I want to take the kids to let them experience something cool from another culture, or do I want to go with just the hubby or some friends and really let loose...ha! I need to start looking for Day of the Dead make-up tutorials on You Tube!
While in Salem and the surrounding area this October, I made my husband drive me to a location that I've been reading about and eager to visit for the last 6 years. Every time we went to Salem previously, we just ran out of time to make it over to Danvers. It's actually not that far from Salem. In fact, Danvers, Massachusetts is said to be the actual place where the Witch Trial hysteria began, because back in that time....Danvers was known as Salem Village. In fact, it was there that the notoriously fanatical, Witch Trial judge Johnathan Hawthorne resided. He lived high atop Hawthorne Hill in a home his father had built. But it's what was built on that hill later that I was interested in.
On that very same, scenic hill top, in 1878, a mammoth Gothic mansion was built for the care and keeping of the mentally ill. Not being restricted by the PC world in which we now live, this architectural masterpiece was aptly named The State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers. Guess they just came right out and called 'em what they were back in those days...ha! The building itself is called the Kirkbride building, named after Dr. Thomas Kirkbride. And it is built in the shape of a bat, with two wings extending out to each side where the males and females were housed respectively. The farthest ends of each of those wings were called the 'wing tips' or A and J wards, and they were reserved for the worst of the 'criminally insane'! (I would NOT have wanted to work on those wards.) The facility was built to accommodate about 600 patients and was likened to a small city because it was almost completely self-contained. And in the beginning, it had a great reputation. The Asylum even had its own morgue and burial grounds on site.
But in the 40's - 50's, state budget cuts ensued and overcrowding began to plague the beleaguered hospital whose population had swelled to over 1200. The condition of the building and the patients began to deteriorate rapidly. Reportedly, as a desperate means to control the burgeoning population, the doctors began employing horrific treatments that were used in that era such as Full Frontal Lobotomies, Experimental Drugs, Hydrotherapy and Shock Treatment. This allowed them to keep their mentally insane patients subdued, but with sometimes adverse and even fatal consequences. "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) 
Eventually in 1992, Danvers State Mental Hospital shut its deteriorating doors for good, and the building itself sat silent for 14 years. The building was considered extremely dangerous with rotting floors falling through in certain wards, so full time security was placed on site to apprehend would-be ghost hunters, urban explorers and thrill seeking teenagers. But the general consensus of psychics and paranormal investigators who've been fortunate enough to visit during that time....is that the place was extremely haunted with lots of residual negative energy from those tortured souls who'd been housed there and experimented on over all those years. There have been many reports of apparitions and orbs and cold spots by those who were able to get inside its rotting walls. And the decaying institution was also the perfectly haunting location in which to film the horror movie, Session 9, in 2001. It was also believed to be the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham Sanatorium in "The Thing on the Doorstep".
I would have preferred to see it in its dilapidated state, as it makes for far spookier photographs. However, the day we went, the skies were very overcast and cloudy as a cold front was making its way in. And those clouds and bare branches on the trees in front of the Gothic facade still allowed me to work a little photo magic to recreate the Haunted Insane Asylum on the hill, as I had read about it and envisioned it in my spooky lil' mind! It does beg the question....does a building retain the horrors and negative energy of its former dwellers? And does bulldozing this place down to create new apartments somehow cleanse the space of said negative energy....or do those lost souls still dwell there? 
Photos 1,2,6 © 2011 Wendy A. (All Rights Reserved) Could not find copyright info on the other photos.
Okay...the last two posts are more autumn related than Halloween per se....but I only promised to post in the general realm of those two subjects. And since I've been away for a week, it's the best I can do.
So we eagerly open the box up with no regard to life and limb, should it have been some sort of explosive or snake infested booby trap. My son was hoping for gold and jewels of course....(well really, weren't we all?!) But at first we didn't understand what we were looking at. There were small spiral notebooks inside of plastic zip lock bags, pens and pencils, business cards and an assortment of small strange trinkets. We were wondering who put this stuff in this box, and why they had it hidden in the nooks and crannies of the boulders on the side of a mountain in Smuggler's Notch, Vermont. 
So being the 'Curious Georges' that we be.....we opened the bags, removed the notebooks and looked inside. There were notes from all different people, one after the other. The oldest notes we found dated back to 2002 and the most current note had been inscribed on the very day we found it. So we started to read a few. And the first one I read made me very sad. It was written by a man and his wife who had gone hiking in Smuggs to commemorate the death of their daughter. They too had found this same box and added their message. We flipped through the books and saw a wide variety of passages from individuals, hiking groups, couples and families just like us. There would be days when no one had found the box, and days when apparently more than one person had found it.
If you don't already know this about me....I apparently live in a parallel universe where I learn of things several months, to years AFTER, the rest of the world has already 'been there' and 'done that'! So of course we still had no idea what exactly we had found or why....but it seemed like a really cool thing to find nonetheless....whatever IT was. So we put it back nice and neat just where we found it. My son begged us to go back there a couple of days later so he could explore some more. So we did go back after the Great Pumpkin Boat Regatta on Sunday. And sure enough, one or two others had also found the box since we had. 
Fast forward to us coming home from vacation, and I remember the address and plug it into the computer. And lo and behold....GeoCaching is basically a real life treasure hunt game that began with the use of GPS devices in 2000, and is now found on every continent in the world. There are currently 1,547,128 million caches hidden throughout the world and over 5 million 'Cachers'! And chances are....there is one within a mile of your location RIGHT NOW, just waiting to be found! Really? Who knew? Well apparently 5 million other people knew....that's who! But not us....nope....we just stumbled upon this 'geocache' by sheer accident. We didn't use any GPS devices or iPhones....only the curiosity of a child exploring the side a mountain.
So now....we are officially going to start doing some 'GeoCaching' as a family. Turns out you sign up for a free account and plug in your zip code or location....and a large list of GeoCaches all around you pop up. Then you use a GPS or a GeoCache App enabled iPhone and head out for the hunt. Some even have secret codes to break and things to collect in order to find the caches. My kids are ALL ABOUT doing stuff like that. And honestly....I am the first one to participate in Easter Egg hunting (I'm not ashamed to admit it), so this looks like fun to me. It's something to do if your bored and want to get outside. And what better time to do it than in the Fall! :o)
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