Spooky Asylums turned into condos ...

[Steve Dubya]

More story fodder for you ...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/11/asylum ... index.html

The old asylums ares a really, scary, unsettling places if you ever have the chance to tour them.

Don't these people watch horror movies???

[Jefffar]

I toured a building called a House of Refuge a while back. Big old 19th century brick building with huge honking timbers inside for braces, floors, stairs, etc.

If you don't know, the House of Refuge is the polite way of saying Poor House and Asylum.

The enlightened idea of the time was that being poor was a medical condition. By isolating all the poor people (who also had a high incidence of mental illness) and forcing them to work for a living (never really worked, since these people were all either insane, crippled or ill) you could cure their condition and help them develop into normal people.

What happened instead was basically a cross of imprisonment, slave labour and a breeding ground for the worst infectious diseases avaialble. Inhabitants usually died of TB or Typhoid within the first 6 months of their arrival. Less than 10% of those committed escaped with their lives.

Paitents were physically, emmotionally and sexually abused by their keepers and by each other. Female inmates were typically raped by the male inmates or staff and were lucky if they survived the abortion or delivery. Entire families were committed - mother, father, children.

I swear I could hear the screams the entire time I was in there.

[Library Ogre]

Try touring some of the communities outside of Boston... Waltham, MA has a former institution that still has the remains of its graveyard (unmarked), and they did some... "pioneering" work on mental illness in that place.

[Lazlo Kid]

I'd buy a condo like that, if I could afford it. Think of the Halloween night BTS sessions you could have in a place like that.

[Lazlo Kid]

If it was truly haunted, we wouldn't even have to do anything.

If this is the same one they showed on Sci-Fi's "Ghost Hunters" show, they actual caught movement of a humanoid figure on a thermographic camera but only the legs had any heat to them. It's not conclusive, but it was freaky to watch.

So if there is really activity, it would freak the trick or treaters out if you just turned of the lights in the hallways and common areas.

[Stattick]

In the 20's to the early 40's, the US imprisoned thousands of people in asylums/"farms" like this. They were experimented on, and many were sterilized. The US talked about the possibility of euthinazing many of the patients, but there was never an official "ok" to go this far. There were cases of euthanized patients, but never in a systematic way. Nazi Germany was doing the same thing at the same time that we were. Only they decided to start euthanizing people, while we weren't quite that dedicated to "saving humanity".

When WWII broke out in Europe, it was debated long and hard in the US Congress whether to get involved in the war, and if so, whether to help our allies the English, or to help our allies the Germans. We tentatively decided to help the English. It wasn't until after Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese allies of the Germans attacked us that the debate ended. Just think, if things had happened a little different, it would have been the US, Germans, and Japanese against Europe, The Soviet Union, and China.

[Jefffar]

In the Early to mid 1930's, the logical scenario was Britain, France, Italy and Germany vs Stalin. The other expected conflict was Japan vs USA or Japan vs the Soviets. Nobody seriously expected Britain and France to declare war on Germany over Poland before 1938.

However Adolph played the Brits and Fraench as fools one too many times with that whole annexation of Czechoslovakia and the Brits and French felt a need to draw a line.

As for debates in the US about going into the war, the main debate was whether to stay neutral or to support Britian. Only a small minority felt that Germany (who had been making various agresssive and distastefull moves over the past half decade) was in the right.


Post Count 10 000 - 10

[Vrykolas2k]

More story fodder for you ...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/11/asylum ... index.html

The old asylums ares a really, scary, unsettling places if you ever have the chance to tour them.

Link didn't work...

[Vrykolas2k]

Try this link:
http://www.banderasnews.com/0604/re-scary.htm

Danke.

[Mike Taylor]

Not sure if you guys already covered this as I merely skimmed the thread, but there are those people who will actually buy a residence due to its creepy reputation. It could be an interesting way to start off a BTS campaign.