Sunday

THE LEGEND OF PENNHURST ASYLUM

"Pennhurst school opened in 1908 and flourished for almost 60 years until allegations of mistreatments of residents surfaced. Over the next decade, these allegations were proven to be true and by 1986 the entire complex was abandoned and left to rot. As nature began to reclaim the property, an effort was launched to see if there was any feasible use for these buildings. Nothing was found until now.

Nestled in the mountains of Easter Austria lies the town of Neustadt, a small hamlet that is renowned for its medical research facilities. Dr. Heinrich Chakajian was one of the leading physicians at the premier Neustadt Center for Cranial Research and was a psycho surgical genius. Over the years Dr. Chakajian performed hundreds of operations on patients with brain injuries and diseases. But what few people know, the good doctor also conducted radical experiments in his secret laboratory, located 30 miles away. His surgical experiments began with corpses of people who donated their bodies to science. However, he soon realized that he needed live humans to further his experimental surgeries and discover the cure for brain ailments. His staff quietly made suggestions to Eastern European prisons in search of live patients to work on. The prison wardens were happy to release the worst of their inmates into the hands of Dr. Chakajian with the agreement that they would never be released back into society. Convicted murderers, rapists, and sociopaths streamed into the gated complex and were secured in stone cells that lie beneath the laboratory. And so began two decades of radical experimentation with untried drugs, new procedures and open brain surgery.

Over the years, several problems began to arise; word was getting out about the unorthodox experiments that often resulted in intense psychotic deterioration of the patient and in many cases even death. The cells were filling up with people whose experimental surgery had gone terribly wrong. With the Austrian government and the European Medical Association closing in on the rumors of horrible experimentation going on at his lab, the doctor began a global search for a secure location to hide the worst experimental failures. After months of research, he came across a deteriorated complex in Southeastern Pennsylvania, just outside of the town of Spring City. The once majestic campus of Pennhurst State School, having fallen into ruins and almost destroyed by vandals, appeared to be the perfect location to house the victims. After purchasing the property from the State, Dr. Chakajian began a program of restoration of some of the buildings in hopes of secretly moving his problems out of Loeben and across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania. Roofs were mended, windows replaced, asbestos and lead paint were abated and the building began to take shape. Soon, the former criminal monsters of Eastern Europe, now tragically altered by radical experiments began to flow into Pennhurst. With a strong security force and hospital staff in place, the experimentation continued. Electro-convulsive shock therapy is routinely conducted on the first floor, in room 29B. Psycho surgery is performed on level two, in the well equipped operating room. Other experiments include body suspension, light deprivation, and intense drug therapy.

For several years Pennhurst was alive again with activity but no one knew what was going on behind the walls and under the complex. One night Dr.Chakajian was killed along with several other patients when a fire broke out on the second floor of the Administration building. In the ensuing chaos, the inmates mounted an escape and many of the staff were killed in the processes. Some of the patients escaped, never to be seen again. The patients that didn’t escape were locked in cells deep under Pennhurst and left to die by the staff who survived the bloody uprising. With Chakajian dead, the buildings were once again abandoned. Its believed that some of the escaped inmates returned to Pennhurst and are living inside, waiting for explorers to enter the abandoned complex. It’s said that the ghosts of Dr. Chakajian, his staff and inmates are still there too, continuing his experiments and, as the number of missing people in the area would attest, the good Doctor is always looking for new test subjects."

via wsus

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