Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Inside the Asylum

Today, I want to show you some pictures from the inside of The Trans-Allegheny Insane Asylum. I love the aged look of this place. The paint is coming of the walls....the floors are stained with water marks.....Windows are broken, doors are falling off the hinges~ Mind you someone came in and stole the middle hinge out of all the doors on one floor.....and they stole a lot of shutters and door knobs. Sad!! That stuff has history in it, and when your butt's getting haunted, don't ask yourself why...DuH!! You shouldn't steal for a place like this, that's just asking for bad karma!!

OK...So he we go. These pictures are in no particular order...I won't show you everything....Wouldn't want to ruin any one's visit. I do highly recommend getting out here and seeing this thing, It's so Neat!! So here's my take on it...

I believe this room was used to house people-troops durning the Civil War.

Like I said, there's a lot of history in this place. If you check out yesterday's blog...You can find a couple of links to more information. And, before we went I found this link: http://garritygal.blogspot.com/2009/04/trans-allegheny-lunatic-asylum.html
Turns out it is a blog to a Polymer Clay Artist.......:)
She has a lot of useful info in her post! So check it out when you can.

Now this was cool......They didn't have wallpaper back then...So they used stencils. And it was the patients that did this.....Go ahead and make it bigger so you can see how awesome of a job they did!!

And what about a Nice Pink Bathroom, hehe (the patients got to pick out the colors you see around the hospital)......Our tour guide was telling us that the nurse was in charge of the toilet paper, and depending on how much she trusted you......you either got only a few squares, or you could borrow the whole the roll. Crazy people might try and eat it, or put several layers together and try and strangle someone with it....or if they got bored they might clog up the toilets with it~ so they could watch it flood. Eating toilet paper! Could you imagine???

Now I thought this was strange....Look all those dead bees in the window.

The wash room made me think of Nikki and her green algae stuff she paints.....

lol.....People leave candy for the ghosts, and then the raccoons break in here at night and have a party:)

Look out the window....see the circus?.......What about that vine that is growing through the window?

Or this window shot.... This is what this person saw Everyday.

This gurney was in one of the halls. Not much has changed about those, huh......

This place has been vacant since 1994, and no one was able to keep up with the grounds, so paint is peeling, floors are starting to rot.......Just look at how this paint is coming off this door....

The Seclusion Room......a place they'd put 'rowdy' patients to calm down.......Nothing in here but a drain in the floor...

Well.......one room did have this: So they could chain them to the wall so they wouldn't hurt anyone or them selves.

But what I don't understand....You'd think the room would be padded or something......But instead, it's all tiled.....So it could be easily cleaned, hence the drains in the floor. Love that blue door!!
This window is rotting out....You can see all the way down to the brick.
Hehehe......Here's the bf posing for us. I think we'd of fit right in here, LOL!

LOL....BF also noticed that I took a lot of pictures of windows....wonder what that says about me?? LOL....Not that this building didn't have like 200 windows or something.....Yes, it was designed to have lots of windows. The theory was that the sunlight would make people happier.........I think they were on to something there!!

And on the fourth floor, there were sky-lights! If you looked up, you could see the clock tower.....the staff lived up here and were able to see the time as they came through the hall.

I thought these heating grates were neat....I love what paint does over the years....


And now what I think was the strangest picture I took. Now let me tell you that when we were in here, neither I, nor the bf got any sense that we were surrounded by anything abnormal. My camera, however, acted like an idiot the whole time. It wouldn't turn on when I wanted it to...or off for that matter.....When I turned it on, the lens would come out, then go right back in, or it would pop out but not pick up anything but a black screen....I tried to ignore it, but this nonsense followed me right though the asylum. Never once did I feel odd.....actually felt quite comfortable in this big 'Home away from home'! So......it wasn't till we got back that I got a chance to actually look at my pictures, and when I got this picture loaded up, I spotted this: Go ahead make the picture bigger, and look....there's 4 of them......one in the middle, on the left....one in the middle of the floor...and 2 on the right....

They look little halos/bubbles.... floating through the air. As you can see I didn't have any spots on any of my other pictures, so I know it wasn't the camera. The bf thought maybe it was dust particles.....But when I blew up the picture.....it didn't look like dust, See.......(Look at the right hand side, in the middle of the first picture...see...that's the area I enlarged for you~ I put a green circle around it so you could find it easier!) It looks like a 'orb' of light or something.......Can you see what I'm getting at here?? Pretty eerie, huh?? Makes one wonder!
I hope you enjoyed these pictures...... I tried to show you things that may help jog your imagination~ I know it's got me thinking. All the texture, the peeling paint and the rust....the bars on the windows......the circus out front.......What an interesting trip!!

I'd love to go back to this place. Hopefully the people who bought it, can bring back some of it former beauty!! I think it would be neat to do different rooms from different periods of time. Show us how far we've come in this 'profession'...They need pictures on the walls of the renovation projects to show people what happen when it was abandoned, and how they brought it back. I'd like for the grounds to be open so one could walk around and take pictures of all the buildings. Listen to me....Like what I want matters, lol.....Just hoping someone out there reads this, and goes: Hey! That might be a neat idea!!!.....Hopefully next year, we can return to this place:)

9 comments:

Debbie said...

Katie if you look closely at the orb in the bottom photograph to the right hand side you can see a face.
I have a photograph of Ben when he was a baby pointing at something, when the photograph was developed there was a large orb and that's what he was pointing at, he could see it but the other's in the room couldn't..

Katie said...

I see the face, too Debbie, but I think that is where the paint has faded of the wall...I at first thought it was another orb, until we looked at it several times. I have never had this happen to me, but my Mother in Law was just showing me the other day that she has seveal pictures of the grandkids in the/ and only in the upstairs room of their house. They're oldest son past away years ago, and she says it's him:) watching over the kids:) And well, I just don't know what to think, but it's neat!

I think it was cool that Ben could see it when you guys couldn't...that really makes you think, huh!!! So neat!! :)

Caseymini said...

Katie, I don't usually watch Ghost Hunters, but strangly, I caught some of it last week and a woman was saying that the orbs ARE ghosts. She was showing some photos that looked a lot like yours. Maybe your camera was sensitive to the inmates!

rudoo said...

These pictures are really cool! I love to visit old places like this too!

Kim said...

I love, love, love when orbs and forms show up in pictures. How cool that some showed up in yours! I have really enjoyed all of these pictures- I am going to go check out the website later when I have some time to myself :) All of the pictures sure are a huge inspiration- such beauty in decay, isn't there? Thank you for posting- it was a great tour!!

PS- Great pic of BF trying to escape too :)

nikkinikkinikki72 said...

Spooky halo's... quite scarey.
I see the face and how spooky!
I can't look again because i'll have nightmares.
Loving all the decay, green and rust.
I'd have been a bit frightened walking around this building.
Inside those walls are so many lives and stories we know nothing of. So many horrors and perhaps good endings too.
I'm always frightened of anything unseen or unknown and hate dark.
But i once had a lady stop me to tell me she could always see two males with me. She said one was a man about 45 ish ish and the other a young boy. I too knew this long before she told me and thought maybe i was mad, but she confirmed she could see them as a haze. I saw them as an outline that were sometimes with me and sometimes not. These days i see very little of them but instantly get a feeling and know when they are.
I'm such a scared person of everything but this doesnt bother me one bit. I believe they are my Dad and brother and so it makes me feel safe.
Perhaps its my own imagination and the lady that saw them too.
But, like Debbie said about Ben my nephew when he was a baby pointed at them too. I saw the outline and he couldnt stop looking and pointing.
But i am still unsure and try to think its my imagination playing tricks with me.
Lovely photos though in a scarey way. Oohh i'm frightened now.
Nikki x

CA Verstraete said...

Very interesting. I love old places like this. I've read those 'orbs' are supposedly ghostly images; you decide. How neat!

Jo Raines said...

Wow! Spooky beautiful. I doubt there are any orbs/ghosts/spirits with me--if so, I wish they would do their part around here as far as house cleaning, cooking and say, building dollhouses! LOL! When DH and I first moved in, we kept seeing a fleeting image from the corner of our eyes and felt we had a ghost. Our property was a large farm that for some reason wasn't passed on to the son of the original owner--mystery there? A friend and I went to the registrar of deeds and searched the history. However, they must have not liked us for we haven't caught sight of our spirits in several years. We may have a ghost at the quilt shop where I work also a multi-generational little building. Sometimes the back door bell rings when no one is there and often, things are knocked onto the floor with no apparent impetus. I would like to believe there are spirits among us.

Jody
http://minileapsandbounds.blogpsot.com/

Chris said...

Thank you for sharing these photos Katie, I found them fascinating. I am working in a mental hospital myself and cannot believe this pictures a situation that normal in 1994 (only 15 years ago!!).