Exploring an abandoned building can be incredibly sad sometimes. The way belongings have been left behind, and furniture scattered about; the way windows and doors sag and lean out of proportion. Some decaying places just reek of dismay. This was overwhelmingly the case with an abandoned summer house-turned nursing home we documented recently in downstate New York. This 3 story, wood framed lodging building sits nestled in the woods of a hilltop, and is deceivingly large. Filled with numerous small bedrooms and shared bathrooms, it still contains the clothing and hangars in the closets which the last residents left behind.
The former hospital building was a residence for elderly patients and has stood since the 1800's, when the progress of the small town seemed like it would increase over time for decades to come. Unfortunately, a summer boarding home was no longer necessary after the railroad was built in the next town over, essentially cutting it off as a tourist or traveler's stop forever. The town decreased in both population and economy over the next hundred years, and in the mid-1900's it was converted to the residence home it was last used as.
Walking around, we noticed it seemed to have nearly no updates installed inside it besides drop ceilings and linoleum flooring. The entire complex of several buildings, situated on a steep hill at the edge of town, shut down entirely in 2008. This one still contained a 1950's refrigerator in the kitchen, and an old chest freezer for supplies. For a medical facility caring for elderly residents in the early 2000's, it looked like strangely like a Mid Century era time capsule. The bed frames, in nearly every room on the second and third floors, were brass or wood and seemed like they'd been in the building since it was a summer boarding lodge. The stacks of Christian themed books on the first floor gave us a clue to the authority of the old nursing home, and were amusing to peruse the covers of, but still cast a melancholy color over the adventure.
The basement was too decayed to access, and could have resulted in injury. We peeked into the attic and found even more bed frames cast aside to the walls, and wondered if that dusty top floor was in fact used to house overflow patients. The sinks in every room were rusted or torn from the walls, but seemingly placed on the floor on carefully, not to be stolen. If scrappers had ever known about the building, they didn't do much, or they didn't find anything worth taking. That could just be a further insight as to how outdated the former hospital facility really was, as the main structure was in violation of nearly 150 health code violations from the state when it was forcibly shuttered.
What's left behind by the patients of the former nursing home, and the architectural features of its former summer house heyday remain surprisingly untouched inside. It was intriguing to walk the corridors as they twisted through the length of the building, each room nearly intact but for the organic decay. It felt somewhat eerie the entire time we were inside, even though none of us are particularly "attuned" to that sort of thing on purpose. We didn't look for anything strange, but we all voiced our confusion or concern with the vibes in that building at different points in the hour or so that went by.
What we didn't realize until after we had looked at our cameras, was that someone else might have been there with us. Several someones, perhaps? Our exploration video shows the reality of our walk through the building from both mine and Ryan's cameras. While we were on the second floor, we peeked out an open back door to see a small white chapel just behind the boarding house. The intense 100 degree F heat finally got the better of us after a while and we had to exit the confines of the suffocating structure before venturing on. While we prepare the paranormal videos for our channel, enjoy the urbex side of our creepy adventure.
Stay weird,
