For more than a century, Danvers State Hospital supposedly offered humane medical treatment to patients confined to the psychiatric facility — but the reality was far darker.
Wikimedia Commons Danvers State Hospital, pictured in 1893.
First established in 1874 in Danvers, Massachusetts, Danvers State Hospital once had a good reputation for treating mental health patients. But over the decades, conditions at the asylum deteriorated, and some people eventually made horrific allegations about patient abuse and botched lobotomies. The facility itself also began to fall into disrepair.
Was this just an unfortunate coincidence, a result of mental health care declining due to an overcrowded and underfunded facility? Or was this hospital destined to become a hellish place due to its chilling history?
As it turns out, John Hathorne, a notorious judge who presided over the Salem witch trials, once occupied the same land where the hospital stood. The witch trials, which led to 200 accusations of witchcraft and 20 executions in the 1690s, were undoubtedly a dark chapter in American history. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the region where Hathorne once lived is rumored to be “cursed” or even “haunted.”
Even though the area that once housed Danvers State Hospital later became home to a residential community with fully renovated apartments, the former building’s troubled past makes the old asylum impossible to forget.
The Early Years Of Danvers State Hospital
Danvers State HospitalAn image inside Danvers State Hospital, year unknown.
Danvers State Hospital was originally called the State Lunatic Asylum at Danvers. It was part of a growing 19th-century concept that people with psychological problems needed to be cured inside specially made facilities.
The idea was that the facility would be self-sustaining, with all necessary amenities available onsite. The hospital was designed in the hopes that it would draw nice, calming breezes throughout the entire structure.
Construction on Danvers State Hospital started in 1874, and the first patients moved in sometime around 1878. At its peak, the facility had 40 buildings and was intended to max out at 450 patients. The goal was to not only treat the patients who needed help, but to completely cure them of their ills.
At first, the hospital was seen as a success. By 1900, Danvers State Hospital employed 125 people and had treated more than 9,500 patients since opening. However, its initial good reputation might have been its undoing, as it became an increasingly popular place to drop off mental health patients.
Over the next 20 years, the population of the hospital swelled to more than 2,000 patients, despite its official capacity of just 450.
Administrators begged the state for money to build more rooms and hire more staff, to no avail. And soon, amidst overcrowding and underfunding at the asylum, allegations of abuse emerged at the facility.
The Shocking Living Conditions At The Massachusetts Asylum
In the early 20th century, Danvers State Hospital was plagued by many horrific accusations, from mistreatment of patients to inhumane “medical” treatments to the increasingly dismal state of the facility itself.
Reportedly, some patients walked through the facility’s hallways completely naked. Many purportedly suffered from a lack of basic hygiene, and ended up living in their own filth as a result. Conditions like these clearly wouldn’t help cure the patients’ psychological issues, so it’s little wonder why many began to steadily decline as their mental health symptoms worsened.
Before long, shock therapy became the norm at the hospital, with the idea that jolts of electricity could either alter a patient’s brain or make the patient afraid of shock therapy and scare them into submission. When patients still misbehaved after enduring painful treatments, they were placed in straitjackets to keep them restrained — and left in them for long periods.
When methods like these failed to keep patients in line, that’s when the lobotomies started. By 1939, the medical community as a whole was looking for a permanent fix to the crisis facing overcrowded and deteriorating mental health facilities. At Danvers State Hospital specifically, the population of patients had swelled to 2,360, which was significantly over capacity. Chillingly, a total of 278 people died at the hospital that same year.
Danvers State HospitalThough patients were once treated humanely at Danvers State Hospital, conditions there deteriorated over time.
Lobotomies seemingly promised a treatment for insanity, as well as a way to prevent the unnecessary deaths of mentally ill patients. Some doctors stopped performing the procedure after they realized that it often hurt the patients more than it helped them — but others didn’t seem to care.
Danvers State Hospital has often been described as the “birthplace of the prefrontal lobotomy.” This came from the procedure’s widespread use at the asylum, as well as the surgery’s refinement at the hospital.
Visitors at the hospital in the early 1940s reported seeing lobotomy patients wandering aimlessly through the halls. Some patients seemed to be in a drugged, hellish daze, while others stared blankly at the walls surrounding them. These patients also seemed to be confined to the hospital, unable to leave and possibly even held at the facility against their will.
Tragically, some of these patients may not have even been able to express their own thoughts and feelings after suffering severe damage to their brains.
The Decline And Eventual Repurposing Of Danvers State Hospital
Despite the clear crisis at Danvers State Hospital, the lack of funding continued. But eventually, people outside the facility could no longer ignore the terrible state the buildings were in, as they fell further and further into disrepair, undoubtedly making the conditions even worse inside.
Finally, the state intervened.
Portions of the hospital were shut down in 1969. By 1985, most of the facility had ceased operations, and then there was a permanent shutdown in 1992.
For years after the shutdown, the site was a popular destination for thrill-seeking kids looking for a good scare. Rumors had spread that the location was haunted and that the building was occupied by the souls of patients who were horrifically mistreated there before they died. The fact that the land had once been occupied by someone heavily involved in the Salem witch trials likely made the area all the more chilling.
Then, in 2005, a development company bought the rundown property and tore down a large portion of the buildings. The renovations turned the lunatic asylum into Avalon Danvers Apartments. Construction faced delays in 2007 when a mysterious fire broke out and burned most of the new construction and some trailers. Some who believed the area was still haunted suggested that the tormented spirits of the dead put a curse on the construction site.
Wikimedia Commons The Kirkbride complex of the former Danvers State Hospital, as seen in 2010.
Though the area where Danvers State Hospital once stood is largely unrecognizable today — and seemingly far more cheerful — the asylum’s haunting reputation remains. Its reputation has also left a historic mark on pop culture, as horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft reportedly used Danvers as the inspiration for his Arkham Sanitarium.
If the name Arkham sounds familiar, it’s because DC Comics latched onto that name and created Arkham Asylum as the bone-chilling backdrop for where Batman’s ultra-psychotic villains come from.
But the only physical remnants of the horrific practices that went on in Danvers are the gravestones in two nearby cemeteries, which mark about 770 bodies. Some headstones only have numbers, as opposed to names.
Tragically, even in death, it seems these patients were never dignified.
After venturing inside the tormented history of Danvers State Hospital, see these haunting photos taken inside mental asylums of decades past. Then, read about the real horror story of Bedlam, the Bethlem Royal Hospital.
