The Massachusetts-mare: Taunton State Hospital and Danvers State Hospital
By Reeha Kasem
Hospitals are universal gateways to realms of mankind’s countless questions surrounding existentialism. In one room, a baby is born with a whole new journey. In another room, someone meets the expected end of their journey in death. Meanwhile, in other rooms, people are battling to stay afloat past their weighing clock. In these rooms, stories are monumental plot points of countless novels. The setting matters just as much. With all stories, a beginning follows with an end to mark its time. Yet, some hospitals silently linger in the eerie smokes of inhumanity and neglect.
In eras of disease development and mental health mislead, hospitals were constructed in the mid-18th-20th century to house and care for the ill and disabled. A hospital’s inhabitants consisted mainly of the poor for most of the 19th century. Many of the wealthy were able to afford personal physicians in their homes. What introduced today’s idea of hospitals being for all was an advancement shift in technology and innovation. With an influx of immigrants and scientific breakthroughs, hospitals began rapidly populating the country and improving in desperate times when outbreaks followed in pursuit. Hospitals were a booming commodity; although, what happened behind the doors scurried unregulated.
Hospitals and asylums full of patients with mental health disorders, addictions, and learning disabilities were where many things went under the radar. They were deemed “insane” and a “shame” to society, so society sealed them out of its path onto a treacherous, brutal life sentence. The Taunton State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital, in Taunton, Massachusetts harbored barbaric and inhumane procedures to their mental health patients from 1854 to 1975. Hydrotherapy was a torture method done on patients thought to be able to treat them from their illnesses because of the temperature. Lobotomies and electric shock therapy were additional things added to their “treatments” in the early 20th century. The lack of understanding of mental health and what was best for patients further induced patients to more issues, especially mistreatment.
There have been notorious coined names from Taunton State Hospital. Serial killer Jane Toppan was a life resident to the hospital after her trial in 1902. By that time, she had killed 31 people as a nurse by poisoning patients with morphine and atropine. She made fake charts and medicated them to be in and out of consciousness to live out certain fantasies in the alone time she had with them. Other people who weren’t her patients died mercilessly the same way, like her foster sister. Another name is from one of America’s famous unsolved mysteries. Lizzie Borden, a high-profiled alleged axe murderer, temporarily stayed at the Taunton State Hospital before being sent to Taunton jail. Even Satanism itself has been rumored to have been practiced at the basement. With all of this darkness seeped into its history, workers, who used to work when it was still open and standing, and urban explorers sensed the bone-chilling paranormal activity in its buildings.
Psychiatric hospital Danvers State Hospital, known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, is another Massachusetts haunted hot spot. Opened in 1878, it wasn’t too long before they conducted inhumane, controversial practices on patients. These practices and procedures are similar to Taunton State Hospital with lobotomies and shock therapy, but they also played with drugs and straitjackets. They were known as pioneers for lobotomies that followed across the whole nation. Living conditions were far from quality. Danvers State Hospital struggled with its overcrowding surplus of more than 2,600 patients. In a capacity meant for 500 left some patients filthy.
Danvers State Hospital had a high death count — one account of 278 people dying in only one year. Their two hospital cemeteries are where 770 bodies lay, reminders of the hospital horrors after it was demolished in 2006 for new land to build apartments on. In the hospital cemeteries, apparitions and paranormal sightings are one way that has Danvers State Hospital living. Another is Danvers State Hospital-inspired Arkham Asylum, present in the Batman universe and H.P Lovecraft’s work.
Hospitals like Taunton State Hospital and Danvers State Hospital have come a long way from their horrors, which is something to be grateful for. These two hospitals and many more were building stones in the hospitals we have today for better, safer, smarter treatment, especially for those affected by mental health today. While cruel and ghastly, they serve as a reminder in history of where we once were and how we’ve progressed today. Not to mention, its spookiness will forever remain on the list as America’s top haunted hospitals.
