The Morgue and Abandoned Hospital

[ Warning! ] - This blog post contains some graphic but informative reading regarding Human Cadavers, if you prefer to keep morgues a mystery, do not continue on. 

-The Morgue...and the Hospital-

For a long time now, for reasons I am still unsure of, I have been intrigued by death, horror, tragedy and the anatomy of the way a body decays once the soul disappears...it all fascinates me. It would seem to me that death is the ultimate mystery which a lot of people fear, for the simple reason that is in fact a mystery, people don’t like not knowing. I would be lying if I said the thought of dying didn't keep me up late at night from time to time, but not enough to sway me away from researching the workings of funeral homes and crematories. But in all of my reading on the topics, what is especially interesting to me is the way that humans have adapted and changed in their handling of death through the centuries. The things that happen to a human body after the person is no longer using it, (I imagine most people are happier not knowing the gory details) We know of course if someone dies in the hospital a Doctor calls the time of death and pulls the sheet over the corpse to be wheeled off, usually to the basement floor for autopsy or storage. (most deaths do not require autopsy which can cost between 3,000-5,000 dollars). What most people don’t know and what the hospital Tv shows don't depict is what goes on between the sheet pull and the funeral. If an autopsy is indeed needed, it will be preformed by a pathologist to determine the cause of death. They preform numerous tasks such as searching the body for residue like gun powder, they note all identifying marks and tattoos or exterior injuries, they also take samples from the subject to be tested later. The Internal exam is a bit more..intrusive. If an internal exam is required, many of the chest, abdominal and pelvic organs are removed and in some cases so is the brain . It starts with a Y-shaped incision, cut into the subject so the examiner can properly remove the vital organs and dissect them for samples later. ( The movies make the arms of the ‘Y’ too short on bodies, they need to extend to the shoulder joint.) The next step is removing the rib cage using a rib cutter to examine/remove the deeper organs. If the brain is called to be examined (as mine should be;) then a cut will be made across the crown of the head from behind one ear to the other, they will then open the skull with a special saw that leaves the soft tissue unharmed. Once all of the vital organs have been removed they are weighed and examined up close. After the many tests conducted on the organs and dissected tissues, the organs as well as the breast bone and ribs are returned to their original place in the body (Except in cases of organ donations those are removed and properly stored / shipped immediately). The body is then lined with cotton or wool, sewn shut and prepped for the funeral director. 

The funeral director is the most important person in everyone’s process of dying. By now if you have read this far you have certainly concluded it is indeed quite the process. Let's say now the subject has died of know causes and the family does not require all the glory of an autopsy, how are the dead handled from there? Well that is where your funeral directors come in. The funeral director does much more than just plan and organize the big day, they are responsible for most everything, from picking up the body discretely from wherever it was they passed (be it home or hospital), to the embalming and prepping of the subject for viewing by the family. (those who choose cremation are often sent to a crematorium though some funeral homes do preform those services as well, if proper ventilation equipment is on site). Once in the possession of the local funeral director, it is their job to preserve and embalm the body. The first step in this process is again prep work, the subject is washed in disinfectant, the limbs are massaged to relieve rigor mortis and the facial features are set, closing the eyes with caps to prevent them from flying open and scaring the relatives. (If I was going to be viewed I would like my eyes to pop open as a last good joke ). Next, The jaw is sewn shut with the string threaded though the gums and nostrils. Once the jaw is sewn the mouth can be shaped into the desired look of sleep or peace. (I would also like to add that I want my face sewn into a look of shock to match when my eyes fly open). So, There are two ways to go about embalming a body, which is not only necessary for preservation but also to help give the body a look closer resembling that of a living person.  For the arterial embalming, the blood is removed through the veins and replaced with the embalming solution. The cavity embalming is a bit more involved, with incision placed near the belly button and a trocar is used for drainage, organs are punctured and drained of gas, then the embalming fluid is inserted and the incision is closed. The embalming fluid is a mixture of chemicals and formaldehyde with some dyes to help give the skin living color. Once the subject is properly preserved, they are stored in the notorious containers that have made their way into horror movies and people's nightmares everywhere...until the funeral when they than dressed in their best are placed in the coffin for the final fair-well.

 Now that you better understand the work of those who make the dead presentable for the rest of the world, understand that the reason I have enlightened you on the topic is not just because I am a creepy weirdo, (though I am that) It is because the next adventure I want to tell you about is one where my friends and I find ourselves in an abandoned morgue in an old tuberculosis sanitarium that has been empty since 1992. I want you to be able to look at the things we saw and know what they are, because I like to know what things are and how they work, including morgues and death. So maybe you would like to know as well. This Hospital was so large that we actually had to make two trips to see it all! Opened in 1910 as a place for people infected with tuberculosis, they also admitted patients with poliomyelitis, spastic paralysis, and crippled children. In 1963 it was officially changed from a sanatorium to a hospital to meet the needs of the times. This place will always hold a special place in my black heart because it had the very first morgue I've ever seen in person. We were so excited when we found it that we shot it and left and didn't see the rest of the hospital, leading us to go back later. The hallways were long and squishy with mold and wet ceiling dust, the tiles that were no longer glued to the floor crunched under our feet. Wenpassed a few empty rooms and nurses stations littered with crappy graffiti and then we found it! Pitch black and windowless,  we had to light the room ourselves,!but when we looked around we saw a gem hiding in the dark. The infamous table where the body fluids were drained and washed away in sat slightly off center. It had a grate on the table to drain the blood and fluids, with tubes connected at the base for suction, (not to be confused with the tubes that are used to pump embalming chemicals at funeral homes) and to right of it were four body storage units, complete with the metal trays that rolled in and out, with heavy doors attached sitting wide open. Despite this place being abandoned for over a decade, there was minimal graffiti. Several metal cabinets lined the walls but but all were empty and dusty,  there was a bucket looking sink near the door I imagine used for washing the internal organs when removed. There were some connecting rooms that sat empty, I picture an office desk for the paper pushing to be done. The first thing I did when we found this room was lay on the body storage tray, because how often do you get to do that?!! To be conscious and fully be aware that you are laying in the same place everyone winds up someday. See, You can buy a fancy coffin and have an elaborate headstone and the biggest funeral but no matter what, we all end up on the body tray, naked, exposed in an embarrassing state of being left in the fridge like last nights leftovers, and there is nothing that you can do to change that. (even those who get cremated have a bit of waiting around to do in storage).I suppose now I should tell you about the rest of the hospital, it was huge! Several buildings laid out across the property, most of them gutted or heavily damaged, minus the main building where all the fun stuff was. I believe that main building we were in was four floors total if you include the basement. But up on the top floor, tucked away in a corner of the building was the most beautiful surgical light I've seen so far. It was hallow so we could put our own light inside it to imagine what it looked like lit up back in the day,?and it was on a track so we could swivel and move it back and forth a bit which was really cool as most of the time when you find these they are smashed or rusted in place. It was there in the operating rooms that I took one of my favorite shots to date of Amber in my plague mask (handmade by me). A lot of the rooms were empty, though we did find a few more gems such as equipment used for setting broken bones, a medical incinerator used to sterilize equipment, a few kitchens, a safe, a children’s ward, classrooms, we even found an old film room with old school projectors for a small theatre complete with a red curtain . Another part of the hospital we spent quite awhile in was the hydrotherapy room. Hydrotherapy is an alternative medicine that involves the use of water for pain relief and can be used to help treat aliments such as arthritis, spinal cord injury, burns, stroke and paralysis. Which makes since to me because when I am sick a nice hot bath always makes me feel better. As you can see from the photos these were not your average bath tubs, they were deep, oddly shaped and full of pipes. The shiny metal stood out in contrast to the pale yellow walls. We decided to bring a bunch of red balloons and blow them up for our shots there, which was a task between the two of us but worth it. we left them there for other explorers to use.  Something else worth knowing was that this hospital was also know for its capability to provide heliotherapy, another alternative medicine which involves the therapeutic use of sunlight. It was once thought that you could expose TB patients to sunshine and fresh air to help cure them, that is why a lot of these places were in remote areas, many of them on mountain tops.  Inside one of the more destroyed buildings was a room with a giant circular light inside which I now believe to be part of their light therapy as it resembles some examples of the equipment I found online, as well as room with a giant mosquito painted on the window, I could't find much info to say for sure but supposedly there was studies and experiments involving mosquito’s here. From the dark smelly basement all the way to the roof and everything in between, it may have taken us two trips but we saw and shot everything.  As I said before, this place will always be special to me as it contains my first morgue, which has been since vandalized and unfortunately a lot of the good stuff like the body trays have been removed. Nothing stays the same forever though and I am just glad that I got to see it all before the hospital gets demolished. There were several trucks and construction equipment leading up the road to the hospital and I read that a local funeral home chain was going to purchase the property and plans to build another facility on the site. ( At least it's not being turned into condos).  If you have made it all the way to the end let me congratulate you on being brave enough to dive into the details of dying and exploring a hospital morgue with me. Be sure to check out all the photos in the more galleries page and stay tuned to my friends youtube channel ‘The Need For Exploration’ to see best videos from this place and more we have explored! Also check out our instagrams!

@chaotiquephoto @the_need_for_exploration @xurbanxxamberx

cell phone footage of the first time we walked into the morgue (please excuse the quality brandon’s video will be out soon)