Manteno Asylum II

Imagine that you were packed off to a place where you were supposed to go to get better. A place where you were to become more socially acceptable and perhaps more politically correct. Then imagine that you never left this place and that every aspect of your life was to be lived out within these walls. This is the place that you will eventually call home.

The courtyards are now overgrown. The trees reach inside through the shattered glass of broken windows. Leaves rustle like the mad whispers of patients whom once may have found a little solitude in their shade on a hot summer's day. Paint peels from every brick like a snake shedding skin. There isn't any fresh paint to take it's place only another layer of old paint. The process starts over again. It too, cracking, peeling and dropping away.

Wood has become damp and rotten. The air, stale and musty. Steel beams rust and crack. Doors hang loosely on their hinges, ceilings sadly droop and electrical lines hang powerless. Some roofs and floors have given up their strength entirely and collapsed. Over time, seeds have found their way into walls and onto floors. Plants have taken over and begun to aid in decomposition.

Teenagers, vandals, the curious, and urban explorers have frequented the place over the past decades. Some have caused great ruin to the place. Vandalism and arson are readily visible in many interior spaces. Even the smell of fire still exists where one finds burnt embers left behind. If it weren't for someone boarding it up once in a while and visitors at play within, the place might be a bit better off.

There doesn't seem to have been any private rooms here. It wasn't the Betty Ford Clinic, but it certainly was not Bedlam, either. It appears that there were probably large rooms with several beds. (Like the old photos I have seen of Elgin State Mental Hospital.) These rooms seem to have been at the ends of the floors in the larger, 3 story buildings. Off of these rooms, moving towards the center, are bathrooms, toilets, closets and the stair well. Some rooms appear to have been offices on either side of the wells. Attics or 3rd floors seem to have been off limits and guarded by the gates, bars and locks.

Other rooms are in various states. Some completely empty and others filled with hospital leftovers. A few rooms have a very eerie feeling to them. These are the rooms with things used by people in them. A room full of chairs in their upright and correct positions. Grouped as if a therapy session had just ended. Curtains still tied back only to reveal the plywood that is now blocking the view. If eyes are the windows to the soul, then the eyes that looked out on the world from these windows might have been the windows to a brain scrambled by an ice pick, electricity or narcotics.

Strange wooden hangers neatly grouped, make one think perhaps of hideous hospital gowns or private functions. There's a walker left in the basement hall as if the patient had just vanished from it. A gurney, jacked up at an angle. Shopping carts appear in strange places with the names of buildings on them. A food service cart. An examination lamp.

The nurses, doctors, interns, therapists, counselors and shrinks have all gone, now. They let out all the nuts or transfered them to other places. The patients have all gone too. Rumors have it that some still lurk around the old place. We speculate that this is only urban legend.

Long ago they were here. I have no idea as to what the place was really like then. My mind is filled with ideas, thoughts and scenes from movies, (mainly horror movies). I come here to find clues or play with my head. I am never sure exactly which. What is so mysterious about the human mind? What is so taboo about insanity? What is so frightening? What is so fascinating about the place?

Perhaps it is just the thought of loosing one's mind. Our minds are the only thing we seem to truly possess, and for many, are the only things that seem effortless to control. Sure, you might have to go to the gym to keep your body in shape. You might have to go to the dentist to keep your teeth clean, but the mind...well, that's sacred and should never need to be maintained or fixed! Right? Don't fool yourself.

The asylum was once the place of broken minds. Chances are you got committed or just maybe you had sense enough to commit yourself. What once was a feared place has become an empty threat. The "men in little white coats" have been replaced by Paxil, Prozac and Lithium. One will probably never see a straight jacket again unless it is in a museum.

Since the 70s and 80s we have been closing places like this. Booting people out or transferring them to other facilities. Now the madmen roam free, end up in prison or bag your groceries. Their lives are so much better now. Destined to battle their own demons or struggle against paranoia to remain numb on psych drugs. If the madmen now, had been born in an earlier age, this place might have been their home. They might have been taken care of. Or...they might have been tortured.

RELATED LINKS

The Manteno Project
http://www.themantenoproject.org/

Manteno Asylum I - February 2002

Furywork - Manteno State Hospital
http://www.chicagourbanexploration.com/furywork/comprehensive_furywork/mantenofile.html

IL-X : Manteno State Mental Hospital
http://www.geocities.com/ilexploration/MSH/msh.htm

MANTENO VETERANS HOME FINED AFTER
TWO RESIDENTS LEAVE THE FACILITY UNDETECTED
http://www.idph.state.il.us/public/press01/manteno.htm