Latest / Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories / Unearthing the Forgotten: Florence Blackwell's Haunting Journey in Kings Park Psychiatric Center

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Unearthing the Forgotten: Florence Blackwell's Haunting Journey in Kings Park Psychiatric Center · Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories

0:22
I grew up on Long Island, right outside of the Kings Park
0:26
Psychiatric Center, home of the legend of Cropsey.
0:29
I was always a good kid, never broke any rules, never really
0:33
pushed the limits of what was and wasn't allowed.
0:37
But recently I moved home after graduating from college and just
0:41
started looking for a job in NYC.
0:45
Throughout my college years I struggled with anxiety and
0:48
depression, which led me to being medicated to control it.
0:52
Through this entire ordeal, all I could think about was the poor
0:56
children of Kings Park and what they must have gone through.
1:00
Some of them just had anxiety, a common ailment in today's
1:03
society and one that's completely manageable.
1:07
And yet they were stuffed inside an insane asylum which was over
1:11
capacity by 1000 people and treated like animals.
1:17
This revelation that I got extremely lucky has always been
1:21
on my mind. If I had been born just a couple
1:25
of decades earlier and in the same area, who knows what may
1:28
have happened to me. On the hinges of self-awareness.
1:32
I decided to break the rules. For once in my life.
1:36
I had to visit Kings Park and see what it was like for myself.
1:40
For those of you who don't live in the New York area, Kings Park
1:43
is a gate around it. It's situated in the middle of a
1:46
wooded area, but it's not like there's guards or an electric
1:50
fence or anything. It's private property, so you're
1:53
not supposed to trespass, but I can't say that almost my entire
1:57
high school didn't go anyway. But I never did.
2:01
I was always too terrified of the legends, and Cropsy in
2:04
particular. I'll tell the story of Cropsy
2:07
quickly because it's relevant to the history, but not really
2:10
relevant to this story. Cropsy was a legend that popped
2:14
up in the Long Island area saying that one of the patients
2:18
from Kings Park had escaped and killing people in the woods
2:21
around the hospital. Only part of this was true,
2:25
there was someone killing young and mostly disabled children
2:28
around the hospital, but it wasn't an escaped patient.
2:32
It was an old ward of the hospital who was living in
2:35
tunnels and bunkers underneath the hospital.
2:38
There's a really great Netflix documentary on the whole story
2:41
if you're interested. Since the legend of Cropsey
2:46
turned out to be based on truth, I decided this was something I
2:50
just didn't want to mess with. Kings Park would just be another
2:54
broken down building in the area whose memory would pop into my
2:58
head at weird times. This all changed after College
3:02
in my diagnosis though. I know I wasn't diagnosed with
3:06
anything heavy, but I still felt a sense of responsibility or the
3:11
camaraderie of a sort, and had to see what they experienced.
3:15
So one night around 7:30 PMI headed over towards Kings Park
3:19
with a flashlight, a backpack, and a water bottle.
3:24
I figured I wasn't going to need anything else, but I did have a
3:27
small hunting knife with me in my pocket just in case.
3:32
I got to the broken down foundations of the psychiatric
3:35
hospital that tortured so many innocent children and I couldn't
3:39
find the strength to do anything more than just stare up at the
3:43
walls. This thing is truly massive if
3:47
you haven't seen it. It's got about 15 floors and it
3:50
just goes straight up. I decided I had to push myself
3:54
into the uncomfortable and I found a window on the ground
3:57
floor that was open and climbed in.
4:00
I will say in hindsight that it was stupid of me to go alone,
4:04
but I had to do this for myself. It was something that I was
4:07
conquering, or so I thought in my head.
4:12
As I wandered aimlessly around the corridors, looking at all
4:15
the graffiti on the walls, seeing the broken down bed
4:18
frames with rusted metal and fingernail claw marks on what's
4:22
left of the doors, I got real chills.
4:26
For some reason, I felt particularly drawn to the third
4:29
floor. I really can't explain what it
4:32
was, but my feet just moved on their own towards this one spot
4:35
on the third floor of the abandoned hospital.
4:38
There really wasn't anything special about it.
4:41
It was just a hallway outside of a couple rooms near a communal
4:44
bathroom. But since I was there, I looked
4:47
around. I smelled the stale Musk of the
4:51
abandoned building and scanned the exposed brick with my eyes.
4:56
As I was looking through the shattered drywall to the exposed
4:59
brick beyond, I caught a glimpse of a spot that was just slightly
5:02
darker than the rest of the brick and mortar.
5:05
Intrigued, I moved closer and shined my flashlight right onto
5:09
the dark spot. With a little poking, prodding,
5:13
and removal of even more drywall, I was able to fish it
5:16
free. A small string bound diary made
5:20
entirely out of loose leaf paper.
5:23
There wasn't a cover, so to speak, so it was able to be
5:26
folded up nice and neatly and tucked away into an empty brick
5:29
space behind the wall. My curiosity was thoroughly
5:34
peaked, but I wasn't dumb enough to start reading right then and
5:38
there. It was dark, and I was still
5:40
inside a supposedly haunted asylum.
5:43
I took one last look around the place, made peace with myself
5:47
and the patience of the building, and went home.
5:51
As soon as I got home and took a shower to rinse off whatever was
5:54
left of Kings Park, I opened up my backpack to retrieve the
5:58
diary. It seems to be the diary of a
6:01
young girl who was put in the hospital back when it was in
6:03
operation. I figured I'd write down the
6:06
first entry here and I'll share the remainder in the next couple
6:09
days. April 24th, 1918.
6:15
It is my first day here. Mama told me to keep track of
6:18
the days and who I am so I don't forget.
6:21
I am Florence Blackwell and I am 10.
6:25
Mama and Daddy made me come here to the hospital to get better.
6:28
They said I was sick and that's why I wet the bed at night.
6:32
Daddy said that once I get better the other girls in town
6:35
will want to play with me. Mama was sad when she dropped me
6:39
off. She had tears in her eyes like
6:41
she was going to cry. But I told her don't be sad
6:45
Mama, I'm going to get better for you.
6:47
And the nice lady in the nurse hat took me inside of the
6:50
hospital while Mama cried from the outside.
6:54
I don't know why Mama was so upset.
6:56
Daddy was happy to see me go to the hospital to get better.
7:01
The lady who took me inside the hospital said her name was Nurse
7:04
Wilson, but that I can call her Mary.
7:08
Mama and Daddy always told me to never call an adult by their
7:11
real names, but I think I can call her Mary.
7:14
She's nice to me. Not like that doctor.
7:18
I don't remember his name but that doctor was not nice.
7:21
Mary brought me into a big white room in the hospital and asked
7:25
me to take off all my clothes so he can put on a big white gown
7:28
and the doctor can take a look at me.
7:32
Mary helped me out of my dress that Mama made me and stand in
7:35
the middle of the white room with a vent on the floor.
7:38
Then Mary left and the doctor man came in, or at least I think
7:42
he was a doctor. He told me to stand with my arms
7:45
out, just like a starfish, and to close my eyes and hold my
7:49
breath. Then he took out a giant hose
7:53
and sprayed the water directly at me.
7:55
I fell backwards onto the floor from how heavy that water was.
8:00
He didn't stop the hose though. He kept spraying me with the
8:03
heavy water on the floor of the tiled room and he didn't stop
8:06
until I was crying and crying and shivering from the cold
8:10
water. The doctor man stopped the hose
8:13
and told me to get up. He put a white gown on the floor
8:16
in the puddles of water and told me to wear it.
8:19
I put on the white gown and Mary came back in.
8:22
I cried to her and she just pet my head and let me cry.
8:28
Mary brought me to my room where I'm going to get better in the
8:31
hospital. It had one bed and there were
8:33
two other girls in the room already.
8:36
They were both sleeping when I walked in so I didn't get to say
8:38
hi to them. But Mary slipped me back my
8:41
little diary and told me to hide it so the doctor cannot find it
8:44
again. I was so tired I fell asleep
8:48
next to the other two girls. But I didn't sleep for long.
8:52
In the middle of the night I opened my eyes to see one of the
8:54
other girls about 3 inches from my face just staring at me while
8:59
I was sleeping. She looked at me with really big
9:02
eyes and a big smile on her face and when she saw me looking at
9:06
her she turned her head to the right like a like a puppy and
9:11
said it's time. When she said that, someone in
9:16
the hallway screamed like their daddy was hitting them with a
9:18
belt. They screamed and screamed and
9:21
then someone else screamed too and then the entire floor of
9:25
kids were all screaming as loud as they could.
9:28
I don't know how I'm supposed to get better when all these kids
9:31
scream in the night. I hope they aren't hurt, but I
9:35
also need to get better so I can go home to Mama.
9:38
Mama said to write every day and remember who I am, so that's
9:42
what I will do. After I read the first diary
9:49
entry scribbled in a child's handwriting on a piece of loose
9:52
leaf, I was spooked to say the least.
9:56
I was actually holding a relic from a condemned insane asylum
9:59
dating back all the way to 1918. I immediately ran on my
10:04
computer. Surely there must be some kind
10:06
of record of these patients put in their care at Kings Park.
10:10
I know it was a hospital where patients were tortured and even
10:13
killed, but there should be at least some semblance of record
10:16
keeping. While I could find articles
10:20
labeled Kings Park patient records, I couldn't find an
10:23
actual list of everyone who was under care there.
10:26
Also, unfortunately, Florence Blackwell was a popular name and
10:31
Google searches of her name basically LED nowhere.
10:35
I figured since my modern day technology was striking out, the
10:39
only way out was through and I had to read more of the diary to
10:43
get anywhere. I will admit that I was scared.
10:46
I'm still scared to leaf through the whole thing and I'm not
10:49
reading farther than I really have to.
10:52
I'm terrified for little Florence and what may have
10:55
happened to her and the others in that ward and the
10:57
simultaneous screaming in the middle of the night.
11:00
Something was up and I wasn't sure I really wanted to know
11:03
what it was, but going back to the sense of camaraderie and
11:07
duty that I felt while exploring Kings Park in the 1st place, I
11:11
felt that same sense of duty to Florence.
11:13
Her story needs to be told and her memory needs to be honored.
11:18
So I kept reading. April 30th, 1918.
11:24
My name is Florence Blackwell or patient 0724.
11:29
I haven't written anything here in a while since I have just
11:32
been so busy learning all the new things in this hospital.
11:35
Mary comes to visit me every morning and gives me a little
11:38
cup filled with four different pills.
11:40
All these pills are pretty small and round and white, except for
11:44
a really big one that she gives me.
11:47
It's twice as big as the others and sometimes I accidentally
11:51
cough it up when I try to swallow, but Mary always helps
11:54
me. She pets my head, gives me some
11:57
water and tells me to tilt my head back and try again.
12:02
These pills always make me feel funny.
12:05
It feels like my head is static on the radio.
12:08
Mom always used to listen to the radio to see about the war and
12:12
when daddy was going to come home.
12:14
And sometimes the man on the radio would stop talking and
12:17
there would just be a loud static noise coming from the
12:19
radio. It was so loud, Mama would
12:22
scream a little if it scared her and run to the radio and turn it
12:26
down so it didn't hurt my ears. I wish Mama could help me turn
12:30
down the static in my head. After I get my pills in the
12:35
morning, Mary brings me and my other roommate down to the main
12:38
room for breakfast. This is always the scariest part
12:42
of my day. There are people all over in
12:47
wheelchairs and some of them don't even know they're a
12:50
person. At least that's what my roommate
12:53
0698 says. 0698 was the one who stared in my face that first
12:58
night. She's been here for two months
13:00
now, and she's almost 13. She wants to get out by her 13th
13:04
birthday so her daddy can take her out for a soda like a
13:07
teenager. The people in wheelchairs have
13:11
no hair, and they stare out in a space.
13:14
I think they're looking at their imaginary friend, but 0698 says
13:18
they're not looking at anything at all.
13:21
Sometimes the little drool falls out of their mouth and they
13:24
don't even notice when it drips onto their laps.
13:28
I had two roommates the first night I got to the hospital, but
13:32
the other girl besides 0698 was brought out of our room the next
13:36
morning by large men in white jackets.
13:39
She looked really scared, but they grabbed her by both of her
13:42
arms and dragged her away. I think she could have walked
13:46
there, but they helped her anyway.
13:49
That next morning at breakfast, my roommate was in a wheelchair
13:52
staring out at nothing at all. She had a big bruise by her
13:55
eyeball but 0698 said to look away and pretend we don't know
13:59
her. The screaming keeps happening
14:03
every night. I still don't know why everyone
14:05
is screaming in the middle of the night.
14:08
I am Florence Blackwell, I am 10 years old and I miss my Mama.
14:14
I'm going to keep writing my name so I don't forget it since
14:18
no one calls me that anymore. May 3rd, 1918 I am Patient 0724
14:28
or Florence Blackwell and I will be 11 years old in exactly one
14:32
month. I only know that because today
14:34
is a special day. When Mary came to give me my
14:37
pills this morning, she told me that today, May 3rd, we are
14:41
going to have a special doctor come visit and help us.
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I hope that this doctor helps me most because I want to go home
14:49
to Mama. I haven't gotten any letters
14:51
from Mama or Daddy, but I hope Mama is all right.
14:55
She had a couple of bruises on her face that she covered up
14:57
with makeup. Before I left.
14:59
She told me that she fell, but I hope she doesn't fall anymore
15:03
when I'm not gone. I don't want her to get hurt.
15:09
0698 and I made our way back to the main hall where the new
15:12
Doctor was going to be. I was pretty tired since the
15:16
screaming lasted an extra long time last night, and early in
15:19
the morning the two men in white jackets came to bring me back to
15:22
that room where I got blasted with the water.
15:25
This happens every couple of days and I'm getting good at not
15:29
falling anymore. I don't even cry when the water
15:31
accidentally leaves a bruise on me.
15:35
We got to the main hall in 0698 and I sat down in the back while
15:39
all the nurses and doctors were up front with the patients in
15:42
the wheelchairs. There was a little stage set up
15:45
and a doctor had a patient, a chair in front of him.
15:49
He said that his name was Doctor Freeman and he came all the way
15:52
from Pennsylvania to help us. Technically he's still in doctor
15:57
school, he said, but I think he can be called doctor anyway.
16:01
Doctor Freeman said he was sad to see all the patients like us
16:04
being so sad and sick, and he created a way to help us get
16:07
better. He said that he was the only one
16:10
who has done it so far, but it will be pretty popular once he
16:14
graduates from doctor school. Doctor Friedman used a bunch of
16:19
big words that I don't know, but I did hear one word I
16:22
recognized, brain. After a big show of Doctor
16:26
Freeman talking with big words, he took up an ice pick and moved
16:31
to the head of the patient strapped down on the stage.
16:35
In one motion, he shoved the ice pick into her eye and wiggled it
16:38
around. I lost my breakfast right there
16:43
and Mary had to bring me back to my room.
16:46
But on the way back all I could hear were screams and clapping.
16:50
Dr. Freeman had made the patient better by hurting her.
16:53
That doesn't make sense to me, but hopefully I will find out
16:56
what happens when I meet Doctor Freeman tomorrow.
16:59
I will be 11 in one month exactly, and I hope Doctor
17:03
Freeman can make me better soon so I can go home to my Mama.
17:12
After reading about Florence's latest centuries, I was chilled
17:15
to my core. I knew that lobotomies were a
17:18
part of life at that time, and especially part of life within
17:21
the mental health community, but that didn't make it less jarring
17:25
to read, especially from the view of a 10 year old girl.
17:29
What kind of mental health facility forces its patients to
17:32
sit and watch a lobotomy being performed by a man with an ice
17:36
pick? This man was literally injuring
17:39
people permanently for the rest of their lives and everyone
17:43
thought it was great because it turns patients into a less
17:47
violent type of patient. I decided to do a little bit of
17:52
research on the history of lobotomies and it looks like the
17:55
procedure wasn't even normalized until a couple years later,
17:59
which means this entire situation was completely
18:02
experimental. This man didn't have a medical
18:06
license and didn't have a clue what he was doing.
18:09
He was essentially just sticking a large object into someone's
18:12
eye socket and wiggling it around until the connections
18:15
between the prefrontal lobe were severed.
18:19
The more that I thought about the procedure being done in
18:21
front of an audience, the more I wanted to lose my lunch.
18:26
Before reading any further, though, I wanted to do a little
18:29
more research into who Florence was and if we know who she was
18:32
at all. If I couldn't find anything
18:35
online, I figured there must be some kind of written record that
18:39
just hadn't made its way to the Internet yet, so I went to my
18:42
local library. We have a historian that works
18:45
there, and I made an appointment and brought Florence's diary
18:48
with me for her to evaluate. I didn't want to exactly say
18:53
that I found the journal while trespassing on Kings Park
18:55
grounds, so I said it was a family heirloom of sorts and I
18:59
wanted to know more about who wrote it.
19:03
Immediately she was intrigued and after a little bit of
19:06
ruffling through a big bookcase behind her desk, brought out a
19:09
registry of people and families that lived in the area at the
19:13
same time that Florence would have.
19:15
This was a jump because for as far as we know, Florence wasn't
19:19
local. She could have been brought here
19:22
from almost anywhere. We searched and searched the
19:26
book for a birth record or something to prove that Florence
19:29
existed and we actually almost missed it.
19:33
There was a small entry from a nineteen O 8.
19:35
All it said was that William and Margaret Blackwell had given
19:39
birth to a baby girl named Unknown.
19:42
That must have been them. It had to be them.
19:45
Sure enough, there was a World War One draft registration card
19:48
for William and they were from a couple towns over.
19:53
These were too many similarities to be a coincidence.
19:56
I was convinced this had to be Florence.
20:00
I'm not exactly proud of what I did next, but I stalked the
20:03
Blackwell family on ancestry.com and let me tell you, there are
20:07
hundreds of people in the Long Island area with the last name
20:10
Blackwell. But after a couple of sleepless
20:13
nights in my college educated research skills, I found them.
20:19
With butterflies in my stomach, I sent a Facebook message to
20:22
what seemed to be a family member.
20:24
I'm withholding names for reasons because I don't want
20:27
anyone to bother him. He was the typical old guy on
20:31
Facebook sharing memes about President Trump and click bait
20:34
ads asking for thoughts and prayers.
20:37
And I really didn't think he was going to answer me, but he did.
20:41
William and Margaret were his great grandparents and their
20:44
daughter Eleanor was his grandmother.
20:47
She was born in 1919 and apparently had a hard life.
20:51
Her father was an abusive drunk who came home with shell shock
20:54
after the Great War. Her mother was too submissive to
20:57
say anything and took the brunt of his anger to protect her
21:01
daughter. Eleanor grew up thinking she was
21:04
the oldest and only in her family.
21:06
But on her mother's deathbed in 1929, when Eleanor was only 10,
21:11
she confessed that Eleanor wasn't the oldest.
21:14
There was a daughter before her, one with a physical deformity
21:18
that William had taken most of his anger out on.
21:21
This physical deformity actually makes a lot of sense in the
21:24
context of the next entry she had written.
21:27
She used to wet the bed, and William couldn't stand to look
21:30
her in the face. Eventually, he tucked her away
21:34
at a mental hospital, and that's all she knew.
21:37
Margaret had never seen her daughter again.
21:41
While there was a lot of information to share with a
21:44
stranger through Facebook, I think it was probably
21:47
information that this man wanted to get off his chest.
21:50
Imagine a family secret like that just burning a hole inside
21:53
your memory. I offered to let him see the
21:57
diary once I was done doing some research and figuring out what
22:00
happened, and he agreed because he also wanted to know exactly
22:04
what happened to Florence and figured with me being a good bit
22:07
younger I knew my way around a computer and the Internet.
22:11
So I decided to keep plugging along and sharing Florence's
22:14
story. May 4th, 1918 I met Doctor
22:21
Freeman today. He kept poking at my face.
22:24
Usually that makes me mad. Daddy used to poke my face and
22:28
try to make it look normal, he said.
22:31
But I didn't mind when Doctor Freeman did it.
22:33
He was a doctor after all. Maybe he really could make me
22:37
look normal so that I'd be pretty like Mama.
22:40
He asked me a whole bunch of questions, like did I ever get
22:43
mad or did I ever hit my Mama or daddy?
22:46
I said of course not, I wouldn't hurt my Mama, but I think he
22:49
thought I was lying. He kept writing a bunch of stuff
22:52
down on his notepad. He writes way faster than me,
22:56
but probably because he's an adult and knows a lot of stuff.
23:00
Doctor Freeman kept asking if I had a pet and I told him about
23:03
my Bunny and how she had to run away to be with her other Bunny
23:07
friends. But Doctor Freeman didn't seem
23:09
happy about that and wrote more stuff on his pad.
23:14
He asked me if I ever started fires and I said of course not.
23:18
There was a fire down the street from my house that killed a lot
23:21
of people back when I was 9. Then he asked me about my
23:24
wedding, the bed. I've told him that's why I was
23:27
here. I had to fix my problems so that
23:30
I could go home to Mama and Daddy won't be mad at me
23:33
anymore. He said that he thought I wet
23:35
the bed because I was just like some other very bad children he
23:39
met at the other hospitals and he had made them not to be
23:42
violent anymore and he could do the same to me.
23:47
I don't think I'm violent, but if Doctor Freeman says it could
23:50
happen, maybe it could happen. Maybe I could turn out to be
23:55
like Daddy instead of Mama. I just want Doctor Freeman to
24:00
make me better to go home to Mama.
24:03
PS I'm Florence 0724. After that second update, I had
24:14
a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
24:17
Something bad was going to happen to Florence.
24:20
In my heart I wanted to be able to hold her, to console her and
24:24
tell her everything was OK. But she lived 100 years ago.
24:28
She feels so real and her problems so relevant that it's
24:33
hard to believe this was so long ago.
24:38
With a heavy heart and a stomach full of butterflies, I continued
24:41
reading the journal. May 1918.
24:47
I'm not sure what day today is, but I think it's still May
24:53
because I don't feel 11 yet. I think if it was past my
24:57
birthday I would feel a whole year older, and I don't yet, so
25:01
it can't be June. I've been really busy getting
25:04
better lately. Mary comes in every morning to
25:06
give me my pills but lately she's got scratches on her arms
25:11
and when I asked her where they came from she just told me to
25:14
take my pills. I don't know if I feel better
25:18
yet but maybe it's because we're trying so many new things to
25:21
help me. We do the water blasting every
25:24
other day now but we started a whole new thing to make me feel
25:27
better. I don't went to bed anymore, so
25:30
I think I'm better, but Doctor Freeman says I'm not yet, so we
25:33
keep doing this new thing. They take me into a big, big
25:39
room with lots of machines and wires all over the place.
25:42
In the middle of all these machines is a chair.
25:45
They put me in the chair and strap my arms and legs in so I
25:48
can't hurt myself. Then they put a headband on my
25:52
head and there's two little circles that go on either side
25:55
of my forehead. I don't really like this part
25:58
because it hurts, but they turn the machine on and the circles
26:01
on my head start to hurt really bad.
26:04
They do this a couple of times and every time the circles hurt
26:07
more and more. Sometimes I scream because it
26:10
hurts, but most times I'm very brave.
26:13
Usually when we're done I take a wheelchair back because I'm just
26:16
so sleepy and I get bruises on my forehead.
26:21
Mary doesn't like when I get this treatment.
26:24
Her face goes all white and she helps me into the bed with a pat
26:27
on the head like she does my roommate. 0698 is gone now.
26:33
I don't know where she went and no one will tell me when I ask,
26:37
so I stopped asking. The screaming still happens in
26:40
the middle of the night, but I've seen that a lot of people
26:43
that were here when I came in aren't here anymore.
26:47
I don't know where they went either.
26:49
For now, I'll just keep doing my treatments and hopefully Mama
26:53
will come and get me soon. I'm 0724 June 1918.
27:02
Mary told me. I'm eleven now, I don't know
27:05
what day it is but Mary said it's past my birthday but I
27:08
don't feel 11, I still feel 10 and I don't feel very much
27:12
anymore. The painful circle treatment has
27:15
been happening more and more and I'm sleeping a lot after.
27:19
Mary always comes in late at night to stroke my head and
27:23
sometimes lays with me in my bed while I'm asleep and don't
27:25
realize it and I wake up with her next to me.
27:31
Mary came into my room late tonight after everything was
27:34
dark and told me she had a secret.
27:37
She said I have to write everything down in my diary and
27:40
hide it so no one can find out what we did.
27:43
She said that we have to go and leave really soon.
27:47
I don't know how I can leave, I'm so tired all the time.
27:51
But she said we have to because Doctor Freeman is going to put
27:53
an ice pick inside my eye just like that day on the stage.
27:58
That scared me because she screamed really loud and I don't
28:02
want to hurt any more than the circle treatment.
28:05
She said she doesn't want me to get the ice pick, so we have to
28:08
leave that She's going to take me far, far away, but I have to
28:14
pick a new name so that no one knows who I was here at the
28:16
hospital. I can't remember my full name,
28:20
but I think I'm going to pick Margaret.
28:23
I don't know why, but that's a pretty name.
28:26
Mary said we're going to go real soon so I have to go to sleep to
28:29
get enough rest to go far away. PS I'm sorry I forgot my name
28:35
Mama. June 12th, 1918.
28:42
My name is Mary Baker and I am a nurse at King's Park Psychiatric
28:45
Hospital. I felt the need to complete
28:48
0724's diary so that whoever finds this can get a complete
28:52
picture of the horse that we're done here.
28:55
There was nothing mentally wrong with 0724.
28:58
I knew it and the doctors knew it, but her parents dropped her
29:02
off here and we had to treat her like any other patient.
29:06
That is until Freeman came along.
29:08
He said that 0724 was some sort of psychopath and needed to be
29:12
dealt with. That's when he started to
29:15
increase the frequency of the hydrotherapy and even through an
29:19
electroshock therapy. That poor little girl doesn't
29:23
know what is happening to her, but she is the most brave girl I
29:26
have ever met in my 4 years working at this dreadful place.
29:32
I know that four years is a long time, but let me tell you,
29:36
whoever finds this diary, what I did to help the patients here.
29:41
Every night I would take a look at the list of patients to
29:43
undergo the terrible therapy that Freeman calls the lobotomy.
29:48
It's monstrous if you ask me. I will look at which patient was
29:51
next to receive that treatment and quietly slip into the room
29:55
and kill them, make it look like an accident so no one suspected
29:58
me, and silently save them from becoming a pawn in their game.
30:04
The patients call me an Angel since I come every night around
30:07
the same time and they've actually begun to scream when
30:11
they see me walking the hallways, but no one has
30:14
investigated because all these kids are just crazy.
30:18
I had to face the facts, though. Death is preferable to living in
30:22
a vegetative state, which is what most of them become.
30:27
And when I realized that 0724 was next on the list, I couldn't
30:31
bring myself to do it. I decided we're going to escape.
30:36
Her parents obviously don't care about her, and I do.
30:40
I'm taking her away and we'll live off the grid.
30:42
Change our names, move far away, and no one will ever know.
30:46
No one will ever miss us. So whoever finds this and reads
30:52
this, you know the facts. Mary Baker and whoever 0724 was
30:58
no longer exist. I handed the diary off to
31:03
Florence's family and needed a good while to wrap my head
31:06
around what happened. Mary was an Angel of death.
31:10
She killed the patients that were going to be lobotomized
31:13
because that's what she thought was the right thing to do.
31:18
She left this journal for someone to find so that she can
31:21
make amends with what she did. She couldn't keep it bottled up
31:24
inside and and couldn't just stop and leave without saving
31:27
Florence so she just left and took Florence with her.
31:33
I hope to God that Florence was safe and able to live out a
31:36
happy childhood but with Mary I just don't know.
31:47
Thank you for making it this far.
31:49
I hope you enjoyed the video. I just wanted to quickly let you
31:52
know about a couple things I have going on.
31:55
I have an Instagram where I post more personal things about who I
31:58
am. It isn't just all creepy stuff.
32:02
You can find me at Stories after midnight.
32:05
I also have a Twitter where I mainly retweet and like things I
32:08
find interesting. The handle for that is in the
32:11
description, but it is S under score.
32:15
A under score midnight. I should really find another one
32:17
because that's hard to say. If you really like what I'm
32:20
doing, consider joining the Midnighters.
32:23
That's my growing community, where we hang out and have fun
32:27
and talk about cats. You can find a link to our
32:30
Discord in the description below.
32:32
We'd love to see you there. Other than that, it'd make me
32:36
happier than a cat on a table full of antique glassware.
32:40
If you'd like the video and consider sticking around for
32:43
more, we'll see you in the next one.