The Norwich State Hospital, originally established as Norwich State Hospital for the Insane and later shortened to Norwich Hospital, was a psychiatric hospital that is located in Preston and Norwich, Connecticut. The hospital, which sits on the banks of the Thames River, began with a single building on 100 acres (40 ha) of land and expanded to, at its peak, over thirty buildings and 900 acres (360 ha).[1] Parts of the hospital were first deserted in the 1970s before the entire hospital closed in the 1996.
Coverage[]
Norwich State Hospital is featured in Crypt of Civilization, where 40 years after people have seen the future where mankind made no attempt to preserve his memories cause of the places being horrible that its better to forget. Kent Borner, along with Judith A. Riley and Steven S. Ross, tour the site and explain its history and the abandonment. Norwich State Hospital was abandoned and still stands on a sprawling patch of land in southeastern Connecticut. Kent Borner explains that if there was a fire drill and nobody came back making it spooky.
Cold Opening[]
It was opened in 1904 and among it's patients were some of the worst criminally insane offenders in the state. Men like Ernest Skinner, a teenager who attacked his neighbor with an axe before sitting him on fire, and Matthew Naab who stabbed his 85 year old grandmother to death with scissors because he thought that she was possessed by the devil. It's a reason why there are many reported strange happenings at the abandoned hospital. Kent Borner stated that there's a lot people thinking that the buildings were haunted. The souls would have reason to be restless even for patients who weren't criminals making life at Norwich a terrible. Kent Borner stated that back in the turn of the century, people weren't sure how to deal with mental illness while Judith A. Riley stated that the facility utilized straitjackets, rubber rooms, and all things that people think are horrible and she imagine the cost of treatment in the early years was very punitive. Judith Riley's mother was a nurse at Norwich in the 1930s and everyday as she passed the building, she heard the screams of the criminally insane. Judith A. Riley thinks it must have been very chaotic and noisy nonstop.
The cells of the hospital.
Steven S. Ross shows the room where windows is consists of a grate inside and steel bars on the outside where it have a thinner grate. He continues that there's a lot metal between the people inside and the beautiful view outside. Most of Norwich's criminally insane were transferred to Connecticut's prison system in the 1970s and the building that once held them was abandoned to everything but nature. Kent Borner stated that the vines, trees, and shrubs infiltrate anything that has water and if plants can get to a crack in the building, it is in.
Damage to the buildings of the hospital.
Steven S. Ross shows a wall behind him that is three bricks thick, and while it is a small imperfection, it has a missing piece of downspout that has extra water into the bricks. He then explains that during winter, the water freezes, expands, pushes the bricks out making more water to get in and the entire wall to collapse. He continues that the building itself was abandoned in 1970 but the downspout went mission about 15 years ago and took 15 years to do all the damage.
Other Facilities[]
Norwich in the past, still thriving.
Typewriters still fill an abandoned room.
At it's height, it covered a thousand acres with 5,000 staff and patients, it also had it's own farm, livestock, powerplant, movie theater, chapel, and bowling alley. Norwich shutdown for good in 1996 but parts of the hospital had been deserted since the 1970's. Judith Riley followed in her mother's footsteps to become a nurse at Norwich in the late 190's, but medical practices had changed like once popular surgical procedures like lobotomies were halted and other controversial treatments like electroshock therapy were administered with greater care. Judith A. Riley recalls that it was done inhumanely and she thinks that people are anesthetized properly before it wasn't always true making people suffered while Kent Borner heard that third-hand of people have been tortured and experimented on. No one knows all the secrets Norwich hides with abandoned rooms like accidental time capsules are still being discovered like a basement fill with suitcases and clothes from patients who came to Norwich many decades ago and a room from the 1970's stacked high with typewriters. Kent Borner thinks as if somebody snapped their fingers and everybody was gone.
Equally eerie are the deserted tunnels once connected to every section of the hospital, it carried hot water pipes and more. Steven S. Ross stated that they have to move patients around the building to building in the dead of winter or late at night while Judith A. Riley stated that the tunnels were not always brightly lit and have to make way through with caution making patients to be not happy and its spooky.
The administration building, constructed in 1904, was finally abandoned in 1996, and dust blown in from the outsider mixes with peeled plastic from water soaked walls. Kent Borner stated that the decay is not a straight line but more a linear progression and exponential. He recalls that he was on the site six months ago and was deplorable and falling apart and when he was recently a few weeks ago where he couldn't believe the difference. Judith A. Riley stated that the state closed the door and took off, the hospital shows disrespect, and she thinks for the years that people were in the area.
Exploration Conclusion[]
The exploration end where the place once were people like Judith Riley in hoped to help others find their way back to society in the modern civilization have made Norwich to be under the care of nature and may never be discharged.
Gallery[]
