Latest / The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales / Ghosts in the Asylum

Transcript

Ghosts in the Asylum · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

0:12
Kristin: Good morning and welcome to the Grim.
0:14
Kristin: I'm your host, Kristin.
0:16
Kristin: On today's episode we'll be opening the gate and entering Medfield State Hospital Cemetery, located in Medfield, Massachusetts.
0:24
Kristin: So grab your favorite mug, cozy up and let's take a dig into history.
0:30
Kristin: This isn't the first time on the Grimm, we pushed open the gates to a lesser-known cemetery, and it won't be the last.
0:37
Kristin: But Medfield's grounds hold a familiarity for many, even if they don't know it.
0:42
Kristin: Featured in films like Shuttered Island, the Box, x-men's, new Mutants and Knives Out, its presence lingers on screen, haunting in its starkness.
0:52
Kristin: The landscape isn't scenic in any traditional sense.
0:56
Kristin: It carries the weight of scars left by a history we often try to forget the stigmas, the silence and the suffering tied to mental health's troubled past.
1:06
Kristin: It's worth remembering that nearly every state hospital had its own burial ground, a quiet, deliberate way to erase those who didn't belong, who were misunderstood or who came seeking help and found something else entirely.
1:20
Kristin: These grounds speak louder than any monument.
1:23
Kristin: They tell of mistreatment, malpractice and a system that too often failed.
1:28
Kristin: The vulnerable Menfield's future lies in redevelopment, its grounds transforming into residential housing.
1:34
Kristin: But for now, its abandoned buildings stand up as one of the most unusual parks you'll ever wander, a place where the past presses in from every corner and every step feels like walking through the remnants of forgotten lives.
1:48
Kristin: This is the only abandoned psychiatric hospital in the country where, for now, the public is free to roam its grounds without restriction.
1:56
Kristin: Medfield State Hospital, once more starkly named the Medfield Insane Asylum, stands quietly at 45 Hospital Road in Medfield, massachusetts.
2:05
Kristin: It's eerie calm masking a long and unsettling history.
2:09
Kristin: It began in 1892 when authorities selected an isolated stretch of land at the northern edge of Medfield, taking over the sprawling Bishop Estates and Morrill Farm.
2:20
Kristin: More than 300 acres of quiet field and shadowed woods included the storied Rocky Narrows.
2:27
Kristin: What emerged solely from the soil wasn't a place of healing but one of isolation and containment, massachusetts' first facility built specifically for the chronically mentally ill.
2:37
Kristin: Architect William Pitt Wentworth oversaw its construction between 1896 and 1914, deliberately abandoning the imposing fortress-like Kirkbride model and seemingly softer cottage plan.
2:49
Kristin: Yet beneath its village-like facade, small separate wards meant to mimic homes and community, the patients endured lives of monotonous labor and enforced routine.
2:59
Kristin: This fragile illusion of normalcy was little more than a veneer over profound silence and hidden suffering.
3:06
Kristin: On May 1st 1896, acting Governor Roger Walcott read the proclamation that formally established the Menfield Insane Asylum for the chronically insane.
3:16
Kristin: Only half the buildings were complete when the first 120 patients arrived.
3:22
Kristin: Transferred from Taunton, danvers, northampton, westboro and Austin Farms, it had begun the slow filling of this isolated world with forgotten people, misunderstood minds and the stories that would echo through its halls for over a century.
3:37
Kristin: It was the kind of place as it was for the norm of the time, where if your child had a disability, you dropped them off and never saw them again, said Johnny Dalton, the lead audio engineer for one of the hospital's current attractions and an expert on the hospital's history.
3:53
Kristin: At its peak, the asylum sprawled across 1.4 square miles, a grim empire of 58 buildings meant to hold up to 2,200 souls.
4:02
Kristin: It was a self-contained world, raising its own livestock, growing its own crops and generating its own heat.
4:05
Kristin: Light,200 souls.
4:06
Kristin: It was a self-contained world, raising its own livestock, growing its own crops and generating its own heat, light and power, cut off from the outside, as if forgotten by time.
4:13
Kristin: Water, a necessity for life, became a quiet struggle.
4:16
Kristin: The hospital's 20 wells along the Charles River ran dry too quickly.
4:21
Kristin: A solution was found in Sherbourne's farm pond and a pipe was leaked to siphon its lifeblood directly to Medfield.
4:27
Kristin: For over a decade, the hospital drank deeply from it until it drained the pond nearly dry.
4:32
Kristin: By 1910, new wells were dug off of Harding Street and a pumping station was built.
4:37
Kristin: The new system delivered over 300,000 gallons a day double what the asylum required.
4:43
Kristin: Water now flowed freely.
4:45
Kristin: Even hope did not.
4:47
Kristin: In 1914, it was rebranded as the Medfield State Hospital, but a new name couldn't scrub the shadow of what had come before.
4:55
Kristin: In 1918, the Spanish flu tore through the hospital's wards, claiming lives and tightening the grip of despair, exasperating the already grim conditions within its walls.
5:05
Kristin: The Spanish flu's impact on Medfield State Hospital mirrored the broader devastation experienced across Massachusetts.
5:13
Kristin: In nearby Boston, the epidemic claimed over 3,500 lives by mid-October 1918.
5:20
Kristin: Health officials implemented measures such as closing schools, theaters and other public venues to curb the spread, but the virus continued its deadly course.
5:32
Kristin: This harrowing chapter in Medfield State Hospital's history underscores the vulnerability of institutional settings during pandemics and serves as a somber reminder of the profound challenges faced during the 1918 influenza outbreak.
5:47
Kristin: The Spanish flu of 1918 didn't discriminate, but within the walls of Medfield State Hospital it found a population particularly vulnerable Forgotten souls living in overcrowded wards cared for by an already overworked and thinning staff.
6:02
Kristin: The hospital, already a place of silence and routine descended into something colder and heavier.
6:09
Kristin: The virus struck hard.
6:10
Kristin: Records say that 308 patients and 95 staff members were infected.
6:15
Kristin: Of those, 55 patients and 5 workers died, although one wonders how many stories went unrecorded.
6:23
Kristin: How many final breaths were taken in shadowed rooms unnoticed until the stillness gave them away.
6:29
Kristin: There were days when more than 75 staff members were too ill to work and patients became almost non-existent.
6:36
Kristin: Graduate nurses from surrounding hospitals were rushed in, called upon to do whatever they could, but it wasn't enough.
6:43
Kristin: The disease moved fast, leaving sunken eyes and bloodied handkerchiefs in its wake, hallways once filled with a drone of routine now echoed with coughing fits and low groans from the dying.
6:55
Kristin: Before the outbreak, those without family were buried quietly in Medfield's Vine Lake Cemetery, nearby in unmarked graves.
7:02
Kristin: But the death toll during the flu became too much and too fast.
7:06
Kristin: The town grew uneasy.
7:08
Kristin: The state was urged to find another way, and so it did, carving out a corner of land near Charles River on the hospital's own grounds to serve as a final resting place.
7:18
Kristin: Thus the Medfield State Hospital Cemetery was born.
7:22
Kristin: The cemetery would come to hold the remains of 841 former patients, many of whom had no family to claim them or means to be buried elsewhere.
7:32
Kristin: The graves were originally marked with only small numbered metal markers offering no names, just digits, located less than a mile from the main hospital.
7:41
Kristin: For decades, the cemetery at Medfield State Hospital was a place of silence.
7:46
Kristin: Grass grew, tall markers rusted and the names of the dead, if they had ever been spoken at all, were on the wall.
7:53
Kristin: We're lost to time.
7:54
Kristin: No headstones mark their final resting place, just cold, stamped numbers on small metal stakes driven into the earth like forgotten page numbers in a book.
8:04
Kristin: No one wanted to finish.
8:06
Kristin: The field wasn't hidden, but it was ignored.
8:08
Kristin: Rumor took the place of memory.
8:10
Kristin: The 841 souls buried there lay nameless, their lives erased by neglect and the weight of stigma.
8:16
Kristin: This was how society chose to end the stories of the most vulnerable, with numbers instead of names and silence instead of mourning.
8:25
Kristin: But time is a way of unsettling even the deepest of graves.
8:29
Kristin: It wasn't until much later, through the quiet persistence of local historians, mental health advocates and the descendants of the forgotten, those efforts began to reclaim what had been lost.
8:40
Kristin: Some of the markers were cleaned.
8:43
Kristin: A memorial stone was raised at the entrance, carved with the inscription Remember those buried at Medfield State Hospital, for they too have lived, loved and laughed.
8:53
Kristin: But it was a boy, a boy from Scout Tube 89, who struck the first true match in the darkness, a part of his Eagle Scout project.
9:02
Kristin: He sifted through decades of hospital records, matching numbers to names, names to dates, stories to silence.
9:08
Kristin: What had once been a ledger of the lost became a list of the known.
9:12
Kristin: One by one, the dead were restored, not to life but to identity.
9:16
Kristin: Each number now has a name tied to it, a date, a history.
9:17
Kristin: Today, the cemetery were restored not to life but to identity.
9:18
Kristin: Each number now has a name tied to it a day, a history.
9:20
Kristin: Today, the cemetery remains quiet, but no longer quite so forgotten.
9:23
Kristin: The number markers are still there and the memorial stone stands watching over them.
9:28
Kristin: It's a place of reverence.
9:30
Kristin: Now, if still uneasy, the air feels heavier here, though the trees don't seem to move the same way, and the wind, when it does come, carries something with it.
9:45
Kristin: Because this is not just a cemetery.
9:46
Kristin: It's a record, a record of how the world once turned its back on the broken, the misunderstood and the unwanted.
9:49
Kristin: And though the hospital grounds are now open from dawn to dusk, most visitors don't wander this far.
9:55
Kristin: They always don't understand what they're walking past or why the cemetery was even established.
10:01
Kristin: Outside the gates, the rest of Massachusetts was drowning in its own crisis in 1918.
10:07
Kristin: But inside Medfield the isolation was absolute.
10:11
Kristin: No family visits, no farewells, just the cold hands of orderlies and the steady ticking of clocks that didn't care who died, making the cemetery feel grimmer to many once they know the truth behind it.
10:23
Kristin: Over the course of its existence, medfield State Hospital married the shifting tides of mental health care in America.
10:31
Kristin: By the 1930s it evolved into a teaching facility, partnering with Tufts Medical Center to offer hands-on training for medical students.
10:40
Kristin: But the years that followed brought more than just bodies.
10:43
Kristin: They brought bruises, blood and disease.
10:45
Kristin: According to the Historical Society, reports of beating surfaced alongside the formation of a prison camp on the grounds where inmates from the Charleston jail were held like ghosts within the system.
10:57
Kristin: Justice was swift.
11:04
Kristin: In some cases prosecution for assaults were recorded, but the pain ran deep and wide.
11:06
Kristin: Stories rarely made the headlines.
11:07
Kristin: They were scribbled into, reports passed quietly through the halls or buried beneath official language.
11:13
Kristin: But the truth, like the dead, has a way of lingering Listeners.
11:17
Kristin: Before I continue, I need to advise.
11:19
Kristin: In the next few minutes we'll be recounting suicides and some disturbing content.
11:23
Kristin: Please note that this episode in the next few minutes contains depictions of violence that some people may find disturbing.
11:30
Kristin: If you find yourself squeamish, I advise not listening ahead or skipping to the next chapter.
11:35
Kristin: Listening ahead or skipping to the next chapter If you or a loved one is struggling with mental health crisis.
11:40
Kristin: Call or text 988 to connect with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, a free, confidential service providing 24-7 support.
11:50
Kristin: When morning a body was found at Medfield State Hospital, cold still and grotesquely mutilated hospital Cold still and grotesquely mutilated a patient did by his own hand, his neck nearly severed by a safety razor.
12:04
Kristin: There was no note, no farewell, just blood, silence and the unmistakable finality of despair.
12:09
Kristin: It wasn't the first and it wouldn't be the last.
12:12
Kristin: Another patient a few months later chose the rope.
12:15
Kristin: They found him hanging in one of the wards, his body swaying gently, as if rocked by the ghosts that kept him company.
12:23
Kristin: The cause of death was clear, the cause of suffering less so.
12:28
Kristin: The hospital continued as it always did, grinding forward on the bones of those it failed, even outside its gates.
12:34
Kristin: The fractured showed.
12:36
Kristin: A man was found drunk and unconscious in a doorway on North Street.
12:40
Kristin: Just another lost soul, it seemed.
12:42
Kristin: But he wasn't a patient.
12:44
Kristin: He was an attendant, a man meant to care for others, now broken by the very place he served.
12:50
Kristin: They picked him up and brought him back to Medfield, back into the belly of the institution that had drained him.
12:56
Kristin: These weren't just incidents.
12:57
Kristin: They were echoes, quiet confirmations that the suffering behind those red brick walls didn't stop at the patients.
13:04
Kristin: It seeped into everyone, staff, caretakers, witnesses.
13:08
Kristin: No one was left untouched.
13:10
Kristin: By 1938, the walls had grown colder.
13:13
Kristin: Electroshock therapy was introduced, jolting patients into silence to meet the guise of progress.
13:19
Kristin: Leukotomies, too, became routine, a crude, chilling procedure that left many emptied of themselves.
13:26
Kristin: Medfield had become a place not of recovery but of control.
13:30
Kristin: Records show a minimum of four patients per week passing away routinely.
13:35
Kristin: By the 1940s, medfield State Hospital had begun to collapse under the weight of its own design.
13:41
Kristin: What was once a sprawling, self-contained world of order and silence had become overcrowded and understaffed, its systems buckling as World War II pulled its doctors, nurses and attendants away from its halls.
13:55
Kristin: The corridors filled with more patients than hands to help them.
13:59
Kristin: The words, once rigid in routine, frayed at the edges.
14:03
Kristin: But in the midst of this decline, a glimmer fate and uncertain happened Under the guidance of Dr Harold Lee new psychiatric drugs and progressive treatments were introduced.
14:15
Kristin: The age of permanent warehousing gave way to a cautious hope.
14:18
Kristin: Some patients were stabilized, others discharged, and the community-based mental health clinics began to rise in surrounding towns like Wesley and Quincy.
14:28
Kristin: For the first time in decades, the asylum showed signs of evolution.
14:32
Kristin: The 1950s brought psychotropic medications that changed the very shape of psychiatric care.
14:38
Kristin: With these pills came massive discharges, some patients walking free after years inside.
14:44
Kristin: Others simply vanished into outpatient programs.
14:47
Kristin: By the 1970s, medfield's population had dwindled to just 150.
14:53
Kristin: The once teeming empire of the forgotten had grown quiet.
14:57
Kristin: Talks of closure began and the institution's purpose seemed to evaporate.
15:02
Kristin: In 1994, the hospital was added to the National Register of Historic Places a distant clinical gesture of remembrance.
15:10
Kristin: No restoration, no redemption, just a name on a list.
15:14
Kristin: By April 2003, the final doors were shut, the lights went out and the wards were emptied, sealed and left to the silence they had always known.
15:23
Kristin: The voices that had once echoed here, some in anguish, others in confusion or longing, completely faded.
15:31
Kristin: For a brief time, tours were offered up until 2020.
15:35
Kristin: The public could walk the grounds and glimpse what remained.
15:38
Kristin: But then came another plague COVID-19.
15:41
Kristin: Unlike the Spanish flu of 1918, there were no patients here to fall ill.
15:46
Kristin: No nurses collapsing at bedsides, only emptiness.
15:50
Kristin: This time, the disease didn't kill within these walls, but it still left a mark.
15:55
Kristin: The gates closed again, this time to protect the living from the memories of the dead.
16:00
Kristin: Today, the grounds are restored, their paths cleared and open.
16:04
Kristin: From dawn to dusk.
16:05
Kristin: People stroll, unaware or unwilling to ask what lies beneath their feet.
16:09
Kristin: Buildings remain locked, off-limits, but not forgotten.
16:14
Kristin: Medfield State Hospital has been called many things historic, condemned, preserved but more than once it's earned the title of the creepiest places in the Bay State, and it's not hard to see why.
16:27
Kristin: Wandering through the grounds long enough and something begins to press in, visitors speak of ghostly figures glimpsed through shattered windows, faces or silhouettes in buildings that haven't had electricity in decades.
16:39
Kristin: Yet lights flicker within them all the same.
16:42
Kristin: There's no power running through these halls, but something pulses in the dark, something that doesn't want to be forgotten.
16:48
Kristin: Footsteps echo behind solitary walkers, always just behind, always out of reach.
16:54
Kristin: Some turn and find no one.
16:57
Kristin: Others don't turn at all.
16:58
Kristin: The hospital's haunting presence drew Hollywood to its doorstep.
17:02
Kristin: The New Mutants, a curse production in its own right, filmed here.
17:05
Kristin: Director Josh Boone didn't mince his words.
17:08
Kristin: Literally every single person on my crew had weird things happen.
17:12
Kristin: The crew, hardened professionals, refused to walk to their cars alone after nightfall.
17:17
Kristin: Something unseen stalked the set and when the camera stopped rolling, the silence was deeper than it should have been and some say it may have followed them home From the outside, the boarded up buildings.
17:28
Kristin: People report strange noises bangs, whispers, voices too far off to understand, yet too close to ignore.
17:35
Kristin: No one goes in, no one comes out, but the sounds remain.
17:40
Kristin: Unlike other cemeteries, medfield's dead didn't arrive in hearses.
17:44
Kristin: They lived here, suffered here, died here and when they were buried, just a few hundred steps away in a field marked by only numbers.
17:52
Kristin: The argument that cemeteries aren't haunted because the dead don't die where they're buried simply doesn't apply here.
17:58
Kristin: The cemetery is the scene of their final breath.
18:01
Kristin: Signs nailed to doorways now warn of a bestest, but the real danger isn't what you breathe, it's what you feel when you linger too long.
18:08
Kristin: Ghost hunters still show up with their gadgets and bravado.
18:11
Kristin: Curious visitors come, especially in the fall, chasing Salem's shadow, mostly with nothing but chills.
18:18
Kristin: A few leave changed, and then there are the joggers, the dog walkers, the ones who don't look too closely, those who pass beneath rusted signs urging them to leash their pets to stay on the marked paths Most obey.
18:31
Kristin: Some wander.
18:32
Kristin: They laugh, scrolling through their phones, treating like any other park.
18:36
Kristin: Beneath their feet lie stories buried but not forgotten 841 numbered graves, crumbling stairways, whispers behind boarded windows.
18:46
Kristin: The land is quiet now, but not at peace.
18:49
Kristin: It's waiting not for justice, not for forgiveness, but just to be remembered.
18:54
Kristin: The grave grind for Medfield Hospital Cemetery was a cinnamon bun shaken espresso latte from Twist Bakery in Millis.
19:03
Kristin: For more honorary grinds in the area, please visit the-grimcom.
19:08
Kristin: For now we're closing the gate on Medfield Hospital Cemetery.
19:12
Kristin: We hope you enjoyed our dig into history, if you did subscribe today, to join us next time when we open the gate on the Grimm.