Danvers Herald
October 29th, 2003
The lore, and lure, of Danvers State
Hospital
by Michael Puffer / MPUFFER@CNC.COM
The Castle on the Hill. The Palace on the Hill. The Haunted
Castle. The Witches' Castle. The Kirkbride.
The massive red-brick gothic landmark that stands atop
Hathorne Hill has been given many names during the past 129 years. These names
stand as evidence
of
the special place the building, and Danvers State Hospital, holds in the
minds and mythology of the people of Danvers, the North Shore and beyond.
Many believe it to be haunted. Others are simply intrigued
by its history, its unusual architecture and grand scale, with its fortress-like
central "tower" section
and eight branching wings.
An internet search of "Danvers State Hospital" quickly yields a long
series of web sites. The hospital grounds hold a prominent place in the online
pages of New England-area paranormal research groups. It is also a staple in
many web sites dedicated to "urban exploration" - a type of
subculture dedicated to sneaking into abandoned facilities.
The building has long been a favorite target of area youth,
many of whom travel there seeking a good scare in its rotting hallways or in
the deserted
tunnels
running underneath the hospital grounds.
In 1992, when the hospital closed, the National Guard helped
by sending 80 ambulances to move the last of the patients to other facilities.
Since then,
the hospital has been a draw for other people, including dozens who
have been arrested for trespassing on the abandoned hill.
A dozen people had been arrested as of mid-October this
year.
Today, the Kirkbride stands out like a towering, red-brick
beacon, regularly attracting the state's allowed maximum of 20 people to
the twice-monthly,
two-hour tours of the grounds.
Among the 15 or so people who visited this Tuesday could
be found a mix of those people enthralled by the intricate detail of the Kirkbride
and
those
who are drawn to it because they believe it to be haunted.
Frank and Colleen Short had traveled from New York. Frank
is an avid horror movie fan and was familiarized with Danvers State through "Session 9," which
was filmed at the hospital. His wife, a mental health professional, was interested
in the building due to its history.
"
I just think it's amazing," Frank Short said as he gazed at the Kirkbride. "It's
10 times bigger than I thought."
Most visitors on Tuesday were architecture enthusiasts,
eagerly snapping pictures of the building's many right angles, its gray slate
roof,
the green copper
roof trim, its spires and many gables.
There were also those who came up in search of ghosts, like
Rose Peters, a Middleton writer working on a book on haunting.
"
I find it fascinating there are so many people who claim to have experienced
or seen something up here," Peters said.
Haunted
Jeralyn Levasseur's family would hear footsteps in the second
story hallways of their home when nobody was upstairs. Doors would
open and close, lights
would flicker on and off.
Levasseur grew on the grounds of Danvers State Hospital,
in a house lent to her father, hospital administrator Gerald Richards.
Now 52, Levasseur clearly remembers one day in her youth
when her sister and a brother were playing upstairs in the attic and
saw
an apparition
of an older
woman angrily scowling at them. They were too scared to move
until their mother ordered them to come down, Levassuer said.
Levasseur was in high school when her bedcovers were pulled
completely off her bed. Nobody was in the room. She was petrified, but said
she always had
the feeling no real harm would come to her.
Today, Levasseur works as an assistant to the chief nurse
executive at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, a career she said was inspired
by
her father's teachings
about the importance of caring for the mentally ill and sick,
as well as to the experiences she had growing up at the mental
hospital.
While Levassuer generally had a good experience there, she
admitted there were some unsavory practices that took place - most often
the result
of misguided efforts to treat patients, such as primitive electric
shock therapy
and hydrotherapy.
"
If you think back to the beginnings of medical science and the things done
to people, not because they thought they were doing bad, but because they were
trying to do right, you have to wonder, did people think they were being tortured?" Levasseur
said. She believes it is the tortured spirits that knew Danvers
State as their home that linger on the grounds.
Historical reasons
Certainly the history of the hospital grounds lends itself
to haunting lore. Jonathan Hathorne, who is perhaps the most fanatical
judge
of the witchcraft
delusions that saw 19 innocents killed in the 17th century,
is said to have lived in a house built by his father in 1646 on
the spot
where the
Kirkbride
was later constructed.
The Kirkbride and Danvers State Hospital started as an enlightened
attempt to bring patients out of their delusions through beautiful
surroundings,
complete with plenty of fresh air and sunshine. By the early
1900s, this enlightened
ideal was being subverted by overcrowding and under-funding,
a problem that grew steadily worse as the century progressed,
according
to
Michael Ramseur,
a technical adviser to "Session 9" and perhaps the
foremost expert on the site's history.
A social worker by trade who works currently at Balpate
Hospital, Ramseur's interest dates back to a chance visit in 1986, when
he delivered a
patient from a halfway house in Haverhill. Enthralled with
the building's foreboding
architecture, Ramseur began a 17-year quest to unravel the
history of the place, through careful study of hospital records
and interviews
with
former
patients
and staff. He shortly expects to publish a 300 page online
book on the subject.
The hospital was designed for a maximum of 600 patients,
Ramseur said. In November 1945, one evening shift of nine people was
expected to
care for
more than 2,300
patients, he said.
Faced with overcrowding and understaffing, hospital staff
depended on the primitive, and often brutal, psychiatric treatments
of the day, including
early-style
shock treatments, hydrotherapy and lobotomies, to control the
burgeoning population, Ramseur said.
It was the pain born of these treatments and the decay that
accompanied overcrowding and tight budgets that caused the
haunting that
exists today, agreed all
the believers in haunting who were interviewed for this article
by The Herald.
There are more than a few stories from people who believe
Danvers State Hospital to be haunted, and plenty of anecdotes
from
those who believe
they felt or
heard something go bump in the night.
It is "one of the crown jewels in the paranormal history of Massachusetts," said
Chris Balzano, of the Massachusetts Paranormal Crossroads,
one of the groups that lists Danvers as haunted. Balzano said there
isn't much information on
spiritual activity on the site because the police and the private
security agency hired by the state keep it well locked down.
The site is listed as haunted on the web-pages of several
paranormal research groups. One of these, the Rhode Island Paranormal
Research group, claims
to have done a study of the site in 1997, but refused to share
their findings for an article.
Current curiosity
The staff of the Massachusetts Department of Capital Asset
Management can well attest to the interest of lovers of ghost
stories and
spirit seekers.
In the
past year alone the agency has received more than a dozen
requests by people wishing to perform séances there, DCAM spokesperson
Kevin Flanagan said in a recent interview. The requests were turned
down, as DCAM hopes to discourage
anything that would fan the interest of people in the place, leading
to more trespassers sneaking in and possibly getting hurt in the
failing floors of
the buildings.
"
It has always been a problem," Flanagan said.
Salem resident Bob Murch made one of the dozen requests
to conduct a séance
at the hospital site. A financial researcher for Fidelity Investments
by day, Murch invented and sells a Ouija board, called Cryptique,
decorated with artwork
from Salem-area grave-sites. He also helped organize the Festival
of the Dead, a semi-commercial attempt to promote better understanding
of the afterlife
as seen by the Salem community of witches, mediums and other paranormal-minded
people.
"
I think the state has done its own part to create the dark, secret or spooky
part of Danvers State by saying it's off limits," Murch said. "They
say it's off limits, now everyone wants to go there."
Like a good number of area youth, Murch, now age 29, had
visited the hospital grounds to drink alcohol with friends
while in
high school
in Peabody.
Even then, the place left an impression.
"
It was spooky as hell," Murch said. "The whole thing is creepy
really, just the thought of the insane asylum."
Murch is of the opinion that the hospital is haunted, if
not in the traditional sense, then by the negative energies given
off by thousands
of mentally
ill who suffered there.
"
I believe whether enough good things or bad things happen in a place - I don't
know whether the feelings get trapped in the walls or the building - but they
just stick there," Murch said. "There have certainly
been enough bad things that happened there that it will stick around
for awhile."
This emotional energy is felt by visitors, Murch said, and
the effects are magnified by the site's imposing architecture.
"
It's a very dark place; you feel it," Murch said. "With the
huge, tall, buildings and everything being oversized, you feel very
insignificant
there."
Murch's understanding of the haunting of Danvers State is
shared to a degree by practicing Salem witches Sean Poirier
and Christian
Day,
co-hosts
of
the Festival of the Dead.
"
Danvers State is definitely an epicenter of haunting energy, largely due to
the confusion of the people who were there when they died, which is why there
is such a draw" Day said during a recent interview.
Day claims his talents lay in an innate natural ability
to sense and control spirits. To him and Poirier, witchcraft
is not a
religion, but more of
a honed talent.
A decade ago, just before the last hospital building closed,
Day visited the grounds with some friends.
"
I just felt a very intense foreboding; you could feel there was a lot of pain
there," Day said. "You really felt the pain and confusion
of the people who had been there."
Poirier said he'd visited friends at the asylum before its
closure. During his visits he felt the energy of the place,
though whether
it was haunted
by actual spirits or just an emotional charge of energy,
he couldn't say.
While Poirier and Day concentrate on the spiritual and psychic
aspects of the paranormal, their friend and fellow Salem
businessperson Mollie
Stewart
concentrates
on scientific proof.
Stewart was trained as a para-psychologist and licensed
as a "ghost hunter" by
the International Ghost Hunters Society. In June she opened
a museum of the supernatural in Salem, from which she also leads tours of
haunted areas.
Her profession and passion being what it is, Stewart was
drawn to Danvers State. In early October Stewart attended
one of
the regular
site visits
the state
allows. Stewart said she managed to photograph a spirit "orb" by
a stand of trees using high speed film during her visit.
Since its closure, the hospital's reputation as a haunting
ground has undeniably grown. In the way the state guards
it against
intruders, the publicity
it has achieved and the native draw of the architecture,
Danvers State
and the
Kirkbride
have moved beyond the realm of a haunted place and become
local legend, Poirier said.
He described it as "deified."
"
There is definitely some energy up there," Poirier said. "What
people think about, we often make happen."
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