Rustic Little Asylum

Over the Thanksgiving holiday Steve and I visited New Jersey. After our flight we had a few hours to kill and I didn't have anything planned. It wasn't enough time to go into NYC so I had to be creative! I decided to drive up to my high school and on the way is an abandoned mental hospital that I used to drive through to cut off morning traffic. As a precursor... when you are in high school and driving through the campus of an abandoned mental hospital on the way home from soccer practice when it's getting dark out and you are all alone in the car, it's terrifying. This time, it wasn't terrifying, but instead was super cool.

 I decided to do a bit of research on it, because I realized that no matter how many times I've driven through, I didn't really know anything about it. Alas, here is some awesome info on this odd NJ treasure: The official name of the hospital was the Essex County Asylum for the Insane and is apparently now closed to the public and persecutors or trespassers will be prosecuted (oops! but for all future explorers, explore my blog instead of the Asylum). At any given time in the 1940s and 50s, the Asylum would have thousands of residents (3,000 at one time), and even had its own stop on the railroad line so that the massive amount of coal and fuel needed to run the facility could be easily transported. The campus was referred to as a town within a town because they had everything they needed right there. They had a farm on the grounds where a majority of their food came from, they had a bakery, and they even had there own firehouse (which is still recognizable and awesome but I didn't get a chance to get a picture). After the introduction of new medicines and "wonder medicines" in the 1990s and 2000s the hospital enrollment quickly plummeted and it eventually shut down.

In the past decade or so, a visit to "The Asylum," "The Bin," or "The Hilltop" was considered a right of passage for some gangs and North Jersey teens. So I guess Steve and I are pretty tough and should probably form our own cool kids clique or something.

The multitude of visitors, stories of ghosts and escaped lunatics have cemented a local lore surrounding the Asylum and has solidified it as one of the most bad ass places to visit in NJ, in my opinion. The articles I read have photos of the insides of the buildings (no, I wasn't brave enough to go in) and they are still lined with decorated bulletin boards, patient charts, desks, constraining chairs, and even a piano. The insides look incredibly eery and I encourage you all to look up some photos and videos online.

It was the first time I actually stopped the car, got out, looked around, and took photos. Steve and I both thoroughly enjoyed the overgrown ivy and old, rusty equipment thrown around. Anyways, here are some photos from the day: