Eerie shadows float out of empty wheelchairs, trailing up cracked and peeling walls and slinking under doorways in a series of paintings in an abandoned mental hospital by Brazilian artist Herbert Baglione. These flowing black silhouettes in a ruined facility in Parma, Italy are part of a larger collection entitled ‘1000 Shadows,’ reflecting the essence of darkness that is often left behind in neglected places.

The creepy abandoned hospital is still strewn with furniture. Spirits appear to tussle with each other, tangling amid mildew spots on the walls. Baglione’s painted shadows capture, in visual form, the feeling many of us experience when standing inside such a facility.

Such morose, frightening imagery may not be an entirely accurate reflection of the very real, human people who were actually patients at the hospital, but it’s certainly an effective interpretation of the haunted mood projected by the buildings themselves.

Other settings in the series include abandoned apartments in Paris, and homes in São Paulo. See more from this series, and other works painted on urban surfaces, on Baglione’s Facebook page.

It’s not just the morbid and macabre horror movie ambiance of abandoned psychiatric facilities that makes them so haunting and fascinating; it’s the shadows of the people who often lived their entire lives there. Toothbrushes hanging on hooks, bedding still wadded on cots, wheelchairs and patient records are stark reminders of the humanity that once existed between these walls. Photographer Jeremy Harris has documented many of the structures still standing in a series called ‘Abandoned American Asylums: The Moral Architecture of the Nineteenth Century.’

Harris has been sneaking into abandoned asylums since 2005 to take his photos. The series includes just about everything you’d expect: peeling paint, foreboding hallways and a whole lot of rusting metal. But there are also faded murals, grand theaters and bowling alleys.

In the 19th century, a large number of people – whether seriously mentally ill or not – were institutionalized against their will, often left in hospitals their entire lives without visits from family. At the time, mental illness was often thought of as a moral or spiritual failing. Circumstances improved by the 20th century, in most facilities.

Mother Jones produced a video about the photo project. You can also read more about early psychiatric hospitals and asylums at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and see the rest of the photos at Jeremy Harris’ website.

Churches, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and courthouses given over to the elements can sometimes taken on a mythic significance, given a haunting, creepy beauty by the passage of time. Removed from their former functions, these institutional buildings become both architectural skeletons and snapshots of human activity, frozen in time. In their emptiness, the echoes of past patients, prisoners and parishioners seem louder than ever.

Carabanchel Prison, Spain

(images via: alex//berlin_alexander stübner)

One of the biggest prisons in Europe until its closure in 1998, Madrid’s Carabanchel Prison was built by political prisoners after the Spanish Civil War between 1940 and 1944. During the ten years of its abandonment, the prison was inhabited by homeless people and other marginal groups, and covered in elaborate graffiti. Despite its historical significance and the protests of many locals, the prison was demolished in 2008.

It represented one of the most impressive examples of the repressive panopticon design, which allows a watchman to observe all inmates without them knowing when they’re being watched. The panopticon arrangement was initially envisioned not just for prisons, but also for hospitals, sanitariums and daycares.

St. Agnes Church, Detroit

(images via: memories_by_mike 1 2, erik_mauer)

Abandoned in 2006 due to financial troubles, Detroit’s St. Agnes church remained in fairly good condition for three years, though it had been stripped to its bare bones. Even once all of the organ pipes, chandeliers and stained glass windows were gone, the church displayed much of its old grandeur.

But the structure underwent a striking transformation in 2009, when leaks in the roof led to extensive water damage and mold, causing the masonry to crumble. Textural details are revealed in stark contrast by a black grime of dirt and mold. Today, the church looks like much of the rest of Detroit; it has been looted and vandalized to the point of being unrecognizable.

Gartloch Mental Hospital, Scotland

(images via: strike4th, bigcagwell, justified sinner, skin-ubx 1 + 2)

In service for over a century, Gartloch Hospital is a sprawling Victorian complex located just outside the city of Glasgow, Scotland. From the time of its opening in 1889, it served as an asylum for the poor people of the city. Though its primary purpose was as a psychiatric hospital, it temporarily served as an emergency medical facility during World War II. It was the subject of many a Scottish ghost story long before it closed in 1996, and today its dark, empty hallways feel more haunted than ever.

Hellingly Asylum, Sussex

(images via: howzey)

Has any creepy old mental hospital ever been more fittingly named? Hellingly Asylum in Sussex, England opened in 1903 to relieve overcrowding at other institutions during a time in which people could be thrown into hospitals for the rest of their lives for being gay or having a child out of wedlock. Located on 400 acres, the complex included sex-separated wards, a villa for ‘mentally defective’ children, and a small isolation hospital for infectious diseases, which stood in the woods at some distance from the rest of the buildings. The hospital even had its own electric tramway.

Hellingly closed in 1994 and most of its buildings fell into rapid decline. Fires, vandalism and theft took their toll. Medical equipment and furniture could still be seen among the ruins during the years in which the only people who ever entered were urban explorers, graffiti artists, photographers and people with questionable intentions.

Today, only a few buildings remain. Most have been demolished to make way for new housing.

Next – Pripyat Schools, Bronx Borough Courthouse and Gary, Indiana’s City Methodist Church

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7 Abandoned Wonders Of Institutional Architecture

What’s creepier than an abandoned morgue? Places that have been left vacant to deteriorate and decay are already drenched in a sense of death, standing as reminders that even the inorganic things we build are not immortal. But in actual morgues and mortuaries – where autopsy tables, bone saws and embalming fluid often still litter the tables – push the macabre factor through the roof. These 14 abandoned morgues, mostly located in larger abandoned hospital complexes, will give you the chills.

Canisters of the Dead at Oregon State Hospital

(images via: book tryst)

The forgotten dead sat in corroding canisters in an abandoned outbuilding of the Oregon State Hospital for decades. The crematorium, autopsy room and hallways of the building were untouched until photographer David Maisel got a look inside to photograph these copper canisters, many so corroded that they looked like someone had painted designs onto them. Each of these 3,500 canisters held the remains of a patient. Maisel photographed each one for his series “Library of Dust.” They have since been placed in orderly rows of black boxes.

West Middlesex Hospital, England

(image via: opacity)

Built in 1894, England’s West Middlesex Hospital was once an infirmary for a nearby workhouse and then served as a community hospital before its buildings became so rundown that they weren’t safe for use anymore. A new hospital was built nearby, and the old one is due for demolition. Like so many abandoned hospitals, its rooms still contain linens and medical records – and the mortuary still bears its rows of embalming fluid and other chemicals, as if awaiting new bodies.

Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot, Hampshire

(images via: odin’s raven)

This military hospital features a reputedly mile-long corridor with its many rooms branching off to the sides, built this way in a bid to reduce cross-infection. The hospital has cared for injured troops through every major war England has seen since it was built in 1879, including World Wars I and II. Its morgue may be one of the creepiest in the world, rife with an amazing amount of decay, an old telephone sitting on the stainless steel table.

Mortuarium Schoonselhof, Belgium

(images via: andre joosse)

These photos captured the Mortuarium Schoonselhof in Belgium before it was demolished in 2007. Used for autopsies, the facility had a 12-cadaver freezer and two tables. Its tools and chemicals were also left behind, including electric bone saws.

Leidner Funeral Home, St. Louis, Missouri

(images via: vanishing stl)

Funeral homes can be just as creepy as cold and clinical morgues – especially when they’re literally crumbling ruins. The blog Vanishing STL chronicles two separate funeral homes that began as high Victorian mansions on St. Louis Avenue’s ‘Millionaires Row’, one lovingly maintained and the other left to decay. According to the blog, brick thieves have been taking the place apart piece by piece for years, destroying a huge portion of the mansion.

St. Mary’s Hospital Morgue, England

(images via: silver*rose)

Formerly known as the Gateshead Borough Asylum, St. Mary’s Hospital was built in 1914 in Stannington, Northumberland. It was finally closed in 1995, and according to urban explorers, many of the buildings are still in good condition and could possibly be preserved, but some are falling victim to neglect. Says photographer Christina Rose Howker, “This was the last time I saw this room with all it’s inside walls on the inside. Last I saw, the three front walls had been demolished, leaving the white tiles on the back wall exposed to world and the light of day. There was no sign of the once pristine mortuary slab.”

Funeral Home, Minneapolis, Minnesota

(images via: daniel letson)

Dark and dreary, this corpse prep room at an abandoned funeral home in south Minneapolis definitely has a creepy feel to it. The combination of the room’s history, the morgue equipment and the debris that litters the floor elicits visions that could come straight out of a horror movie.

Harold Wood Hospital Morgue, Essex, England

(images via: jordan kidman)

There’s no denying it – morgue fridges are extremely unpleasant. This one, at Harold Wood Hospital in Essex, England, looks like it could still be in service. Maybe that’s because it was only just abandoned in 2006, after 122 years of use.

Beelitz-Heilstätten Morgue, Berlin, Germany

(images via: uexplorer)

This may just be the most beautiful abandoned hospital in the world. Urban explorers travel from all over Europe to see and photograph the Beelitz-Heilstäten outside Berlin. Built in 1898 as a tuberculosis sanatorium, it was turned into a military hospital at the beginning of World War I. Adolf Hitler himself was treated for injuries here, an experience he wrote about in Mein Kampf. The hospital was occupied by Soviet forces between World War II and 1995, and by the turn of the 21st century it was abandoned altogether.

Hudson River State Hospital, New York

(images via: der krampus)

Once known as the Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane, this New York state psychiatric hospital features a beautiful High Victorian Gothic-style building known as Kirkbride that represents the first time this architectural style was used for an institutional building in the United States. The whole hospital has been abandoned since 2003, and one ward was seriously damaged in 2007 after lightning set it on fire. The morgue is actually in a separate building, on the northeast corner of the property.

Public Health Service Hospital, San Francisco

(images via: fecal face)

Photographer Tristan Savatier captured these and many more images of the Public Health Service Hospital in the Presidio district of San Francisco. The hospital was built in 1931 and closed in 1981; it’s been abandoned since 1988. San Francisco-based art website Fecal Face says, “In the eastern part of the basement, the morgue still has its freezer with six big drawers for the dead bodies, and the greenish autopsy room next door. Many rusted machines, pumps, pipes and tanks are still there.”

Unidentified Hospital Morgue

(images via: missinlinx)

The identifying information about this particular public hospital has been removed, possibly to protect the site from vandalism. Urban photographer ‘Laserbeak’ says the hospital was established in 1806 and was closed in 2001; he was able to photograph the morgue while demolition was taking place on other areas of the hospital. Other buildings on the site are still active including an STD clinic, drug treatment clinic and a medium-security jail.

Glenn Dale Hospital, Maryland

(images via: opacity)

Originally built as a tuberculosis sanatorium, the Glenn Dale Hospital is an abandoned complex on 216 acres in Maryland’s Prince Georges County. Many of the separate, crumbling buildings are connected by underground tunnels. Local legend has it that the buildings were once used to house the criminally insane, who were released into the streets when the hospital closed – and then made their way back to the abandoned structures, with nowhere else to go.

St. Peter’s Hospital Mortuary, Surrey, England

(images via: lula tahula)

With water-stained floors and identical steel morgue tables, St. Peter’s in Surrey, England is definitely creepy. It was built to serve the casualties of World War II, but the mortuary was eventually found to be too small to handle the influx of the dead, so it was shut down in 2009. See more photos at Derelict Places.

When you look at these photos, do you think death and derelict nightmare or do you think urban explorers’ dream? Explorers dared security guards and guard dogs to investigate and to photograph the decaying, otherwise forgotten, and rotten bedlam of massive Hellingly Asylum. Maybe these adventurers are just insane, or maybe they wanted to sift through the eerie and unspeakable beauty of the Victorian hospital complex. Hellingly Asylum even had an electrified railway, so let’s go off the rails on a crazy train to explore the decomposing mental hospital since it is at this moment being torn down. Here’s an ode to abandoned Hellingly Mental Asylum with 33 creepy photos. R.I.P.

Ode to Hellingly Asylum

(image credits: Luke Woodford,liamch)

Hellingly Hospital was designed by asylum architect George Thomas Hine and was one of the most advanced asylum designs ever constructed. Hellingly Asylum opened its doors in 1903 and then closed them permanently in 1994. Most of the psychiatric hospital is to be replaced by new housing. Good luck with that to those of you who think you will live peacefully on a land soaked with trauma.

Hellingly Asylum, Sussex

(image credits: Howzey’s Hellingly Photostream)

Patients and staff all lived in red brick buildings, villas of this gigantic asylum. Men and women lived in separate wings. There were big windows to let in as much light as possible. Even as “advanced” as it was thought to be, Hellingly was also a place where women who had children out of wedlock were incarcerated. (Unless otherwise credited, all images are from Howzey, urban explorer and photographer extraordinaire.)

The decadent ballroom is only a tiny fraction of an asylum tagged, explored, smashed, trashed and a target of numerous arson attacks. In the theater, facing the stage, near the front right door, there was a hatch where some urban explorers were brave enough to crawl around the creepy underground passageways.

For over 20 years, abandoned Hellingly has been dying, fading, and peeling, but there is a lovely quality that makes you shudder about the ruination. Some explorers have reported hearing unexplained noises up and down the many corridors. Of course, old buildings make noises. The hallway above is one that was in “better” condition than many others.

Besides having a farm, train, water tower, clothing store, boiler room, chapel, dentist office and so many others, there was also a Hellingly Hair Salon. This room has been heavily vandalized and photographed about as much too.

Arson left its smoky and charred touch to the kitchen and central stores, the administration block, medical officer’s residences and much more. There is substantial fire damage to the above Hellingly Hospital corridor.

There is something utterly creepy about seeing a child’s wheelchair in the decaying mental hospital. According to county asylum records, Hellingly Asylum had a special building just for “mentally defective” children. Of course, this was back in a time when people were locked away in isolation, people with mental illness or an illness in which the family did not want to deal.

Outside one of the roasted toasty corridors is one of the many padded cells rooms. Other “advanced” facility care therapeutics included shock treatments.

Hellingly Asylum even had its own morgue and the above body fridge. On the grounds, there could be found “body trolleys” for transporting human remains into this chamber of the dead.

Some folks call it vandalism and others call it art, but many graffiti artists have left their mark up and down the hallways, rooms, stairways, and spooky corners of abandoned Hellingly Asylum. The top two photographs showcase works by Snub.

(image credit: BBC)

Graffiti artists can have a great sense humor, placing the semi-undressed woman carefully above the bathtub. The rest of the black and white portions in this picture are a product of merging Hellingly Asylum in its glory with its decrepit and tagged state now.

Given its sad state of decay for 26 years, nature was trying to reclaim Hellingly. The paint had peeled, the ceiling had crumbled in places, and the glass had been smashed out of windows, exposing the once grand Victorian architecture to be a victim of the elements. If this urban explorer’s paradise was not being destroyed, eventually nature would have swallowed the abandoned asylum whole. Perhaps the asylum ghosts were acting at night as gardeners?

The top photo shows what was once a service area. Walkers, foam, mattresses, and clothing are scattered over the moss. The “Yellow Chair” in the bottom picture is in about the same state as abandoned Hellingly Asylum. Yet there is something infinitely sad about this decrepit hospital being demolished by wrecking crews for new construction.

If the walls could talk within Hellingly, could you imagine the tales you might hear? Would the building scream in terror at what has happened within those walls? If you want to stay updated with the progress of destruction and demolition, Hellingly Asylum has a Facebook page. Some former patients, some children during their stay at Hellingly, report recalling a distinctive smell and plenty of scary memories from this place.

Since the asylum has been abandoned and left to slowly rot, exposure to the weather was not the only thing hammering on Hellingly. Signs of vandalism were almost everywhere. In theory, that is why security guards were hired. But there was something scarier than guard dogs and ghosts within Hellingly . . . asbestos.

In its prime, Hellingly Asylum was a beautiful example of Victorian architecture. Just the same, that might not be overly comforting when having to bath in one of the many bathtubs along with many others in the “public” restrooms.

(image credits: Howzey’s Hellingly Photostream)

Goodbye Hellingly Hospital, where both good and bad happened. The huge complex will soon be nothing more than written stories and urban explorers’ documented photographs. Some people do not enjoy visiting the dentist. Add that with all that transpired at this asylum and it might send a shiver up your spine. Would you have gone down those spooky stairs, ready to bark at the moon and take on anything? Despite unexplained noises in the deserted and decaying asylum, would you have kept going if you ran into the ghosts in the lower right photo? Actually it is a trick of the trees outside and the moonlight . . . or is it? We salute urban adventurers in general and howzey specifically this time for sharing his pictures with us.