Where the World Stands Still

Building 93 - August 2008

I hope no one is tired of pictures from King's Park, because I certainly never get tired of visiting there. I don't know what fascinates me more: the mere size of the abandoned facility, given its immediate proximity to suburban development, or the thought of all the people who spent their entire lives on these grounds before the world began to reclaim the roads and pathways and the buildings started collapsing on themselves.

November 2008

I came across this tricycle just as you see it here, leaning on its broken wheels amongst the weeds. Weeds that sprout through the cracks of the hopscotch pattern in the playground behind one of those deteriorating buildings. Where obviously the youngest patients lived, beginning their lives at this century-old institution.

August 2008

It's always deserted here, wherever on the property I go. A few times I've run into people; last spring there were some kids asking me if I'd seen any open buildings (I told them I hadn't - I lied - and warned them that jail wasn't fun and the State Police have no sense of humor) and just last week I met a woman who feeds the stray cats that live in one of the staff houses. (She assured me that everyone was spayed, though mostly feral.)

August 2008

But most of the time it's a ghost town, like being in the middle of a 1950's science fiction movie about the aftermath of nuclear or biological mayhem. There's hardly any sounds of nature even; a few birds chirping, and the wind blowing through the trees with the unsettling rustle of something unseen darting in the undergrowth. Once I heard a sound, a clink, clink, like someone sorting through a cutlery drawer, that seemed to come from the upstairs window of one of the houses. But sounds like this are always in the background: it's impossible to deliberately hear the spirits.