the rear face of the building, with a beautiful overhead.
What once was a hub for mental health services for people of all ages, now stands as a decaying fortress of broken memories and eerie corridors. Spanning a course of nearly five-and-a-half decades, the building offered the services to those chronically mentally ill. it closed its doors in 2008, as plans for a bigger campus started to bear fruit.
an image of the old campus when it was still open. (courtesy of hospitaldata)
I had come here twice, once in the daytime, and once at night. I'll be sharing my night story (the first time I went) while providing photos I took in the daytime.
it was around 11pm in august of 2021, and I had just hit up an old friend I used to explore with to make the drive from queens so we can explore this huge psych center that I had stumbled across just driving around in the bronx. it has an active security presence (as this building stands next to the active psychiatric campus) with functional security cameras in the parking lot in the front.
The entrance to the children's section of the psychiatric center.
A dim-lit hallway on an upper level.
A nurses station in one of the many wings occupying the facility.
we had decided to go in through the front, bypass all the security cameras and dodge the security, and luckily, we made it to an open window in the nick of time, as the security car passed through the parking lot. we were in, so I started up my GoPro and I got to shooting with my camera.
in the nighttime, the psych center gets pretty dark. however, due to it being on an active campus, certain areas were still running on electricity, so we didn't need to rely on our flashlights as much. we traversed through the main building floor by floor, being sure to take photos along the way. there was a large pharmacy, with all of the equipment still inside. an unused X-ray machine lie dormant, unplugged, lifeless, next to what would have been revolving doors to the outside of the building. rooms full of beds, desks, and other miscellaneous medical goodies lie in our wake.
Revolving doors to what would have led to the side of the building.
Surveillance rooms in the children's section.
An indoor pool in the children's section, littered with miscellaneous items.
we went up a few flights of stairs and found a lit hallway with a nice painting on the wall, so we stopped there to take photos. after this, things went south very quickly.
we went to the wing right across from this hallway, and I made the first mistake by allowing myself to enter first before my friend. I had not mentioned this before, but he decided to bring one of his friends that had absolutely zero exploring experience, and unfortunately for us he was the last one to enter the wing. the door was already propped open with a wooden door stopper, and his friend entered the wing but forgot to prop the door open. golden rule for exploration, never let a door close behind you.
I didn't think much of it at the time. we continued exploring the wing until we had seen everything, and when we returned to the door at which we entered, we quickly realized that it would not open. His friend started to freak out, and I needed to think of something fast, so we could escape this harsh reality and call it a night. I proceeded to spend the next hour and a half breaking the door piece by piece. I removed the box at the top of the door using my bodyweight and bashed the 3 layers of plexiglass to try and reach for the knob on the other side, but no dice.
A gymnasium in the children's section.
A theatre in the children's section.
Elevators in the main building.
Chairs set in a circle in the main building.
I proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes repeatedly bashing the door knob in the hopes the security couldn't hear it from the outside. After I had managed to remove the doorknob from the door, I fiddled with the lock mechanism until it finally broke loose and I pulled the door open with the doorknob hole. a sigh of relief came from all three of us, knowing that we had danced with the devil and emerged victorious. We quickly gathered our belongings and proceeded to leave posthaste.
this was by far the worst experience I've had in my years of exploration, and I've been to some pretty damned places.
I hope you enjoyed the story, as I certainly didn't while it was occurring.
A chair set in the middle of the room in the main building.
What appears to be either a classroom or a faculty room in the main building.
"The Quiet Room." We can only imagine what that entails.
A room storing a weight scale.
@Notacop3.7 walking down the corridor that connects the main building to the children's sector.
A room in the children's section that has a nice mural and a surveillance camera.
Myself in the corner of one of the isolation rooms in the children's section.
One of many staircases in the main building.
