As you walk down a dark hallway the smell of death and decay ambushes your senses. Faint screams in the background set your heart racing. Satanic markings cover the halls like demonic wallpaper. You notice blood stains on the floor and wonder, "Where the HELL am I?" You’re not in hell, but close. You’re in Byberry Mental Hospital.
In the eighteenth century a man named Benjamin Rush made major advances in the field of psychology. He believed that insanity was a disease rather than a spiritual symptom. He was from a tiny suburb of Philadelphia called Byberry. Although he died in 1813 his influence would live on.
If you were insane and lived in Philadelphia in the 17 and 1800's, you would probably be placed in the Philadelphia Almshouse. Opened in 1732, the Almshouse housed orphans and the elderly as well as the insane. The Almshouse was moved and expanded several times. Then in 1883 it was relocated to the Blockley section of West Philadelphia, where the institution became known simply as Blockley. On the night of Feb 12, 1885, disaster struck when the Blockley had a fire. Since all of the patients were shackled together, many burned to death. After the fire the city started to look for a new location to house the insane.
More than 20 years later the City Council bought 874 acres of farmland to build a new facility. The new location was in the suburb of Byberry, the former home of Benjamin Rush. They began construction on a new facility, which would become known as Byberry City Farms. On July 3, 1907 six patients were moved from Blockley to Byberry City Farms. Relatives of the insane were excited about the new hospital because it was a much-needed improvement over the old insane asylum in Philadelphia. It would not be long before their minds would be changed.
Over the years the City of Philadelphia added more buildings and changed the name of the facility to the Philadelphia State Hospital. The asylum soon became over-crowded and under-staffed and reports of patients being abused and killed were not uncommon. Patients would sleep naked on the floors, in hallways and in the basements. Some became extremely violent and started to kill each other or commit suicide.
In his book Great and Desperate Cures (Basic Books, 1986), Elliott S. Valenstein described the state of mental care in the U. S. at the time:
“It was a hopeless, depressing atmosphere; and psychiatrists themselves had to struggle not to be engulfed by it. A series of exposes in the 1930s and 1940s describing the “ugly,” “crowded,” ”incompetent,” “perverse,” “neglectful,” “callous,” “abusive,” and “oppressive” conditions in state mental hospitals effected little change.”
Patients were beaten, choked and spat on by attendants. They were put in dark, damp, padded cells and often restrained in straightjackets at night for weeks at a time. Life magazine’s article “Bedlam 1946” vividly described the deplorable conditions that existed in most of the 180 state mental institutions. The conditions were said to have degenerated “into little more than concentration camps on the Belsen pattern.” A photograph taken at Philadelphia’s Byberry Hospital showed nude male patients on concrete floors: they were given “no clothes to wear and live in filth,” with neither exercise nor any other activity or therapy to relieve them.
Not only did patients kill one another, attendants were often responsible for raping and killing those in their charge. After many such instances the Federal government decided to take over Byberry. Still the abuse and torture continued, and after much legislation the decision was made to shut Byberry down in the 1980s.
About thirty buildings were abandoned at that time and left just as they were. After Byberry was shut down, people looted the buildings and made a killing on the copper pipes that were left. There have been numerous bodies found in or around Byberry and the police have stated that they think the murders/suicides had something to do with the abandoned hospital. Some people even claim that Byberry is possessed. We don't know if this is true, but many who have visited there report having had supernatural experiences.
Allegedly a satanic cult took over Byberry and desecrated the hallways with their evil markings. You can still see the corpses of animals used as sacrifices for their rituals. Dogs hang from ceilings, chickens with their heads cut off lie on the floor, and bloodstains serve as a testament to the horror of this cult. It got to the point where the police found bodies around Byberry all cut up like they were part of a satanic sacrifice. It got so bad that my neighborhood organized a meeting with the Philadelphia police to get rid of the devil worshippers. The big field in front of my house and right behind Byberry was filled with cop cars and my neighbors were right behind them. I think that the raid must have worked, because the satanic cult didn’t last that much longer. But who knows, the cult could have just moved deeper into the darker recesses of the forlorn buildings.
–Mark Werner
I have been in Byberry three times. Me and my friends go there for fun, I am not a Satanist. The first time we went in nothing special happened, it was basically a feeling-out process. We, a group of seven, wanted to see where we could park, how long we could stay, and what we should expect.
The second time was when we decided to let our balls out, so to speak. We parked by a corner store about 1/4 mile from our entrance. We were in there about four hours and we covered a lot of ground. We were in one of the buildings north of Byberry Road and west of Roosevelt Blvd., where the majority of
them are. The place is destroyed, and you can tell this is where a lot of people have been, and most of them had to be drunk. There is graffiti all over the place. All the windows, inside and out, are busted (the outside ones are boarded up).
This was the trip that freaked me out. We were on the third floor and there was a room that was burnt to a crisp. It had a huge steel door blocking the entrance. We wanted to see what was inside. Every inch of the room was burnt. I didn't see anything but I definitely felt something when I opened the door of this room. It was just like this presence that didn't want us there. Me and a couple of my friends felt it, it was like pure hatred.
Not that night, but the next, I had a really weird dream. I was lying in my bed, and (in the dream) I woke up. There was this little boy standing in my room. He looked like a normal nine or ten year old; black pants, red T-shirt, and dirty blond hair that looked messed up. I couldn't move or talk. He just looked at me and said, "I don't come into your house, don't come into mine." All I could do was nod, and he turned around and walked away. Then I woke up in a cold sweat.
This may sound like a lie but it happened and I haven't been able to explain it. Although it freaked me out, it didn't stop me from going back to Byberry.
–Dennis
Abandoned and decaying, the massive ivy covered brick structures of the Philadelphia Hospital for the Insane, or Byberry State Hospital as it is more commonly called, were built in the early 1900's. They are massive buildings, over ten of them. There are tunnels in the basement where the patients where transported. There are the cells where they slept, the cafeterias where they ate, and most terrifying of all, there is the morgue, which was their final exit from the petrifying lives they lived.
Walking in you see nothing but piles of broken cement from the slowly cracking ceilings, and desiccated walls. The floor is covered with broken glass from doors and windows. When you look down the long dark hallways, every door is open, or broken off and laying on the floor. It is disturbing, knowing you are in what was once a functioning insane asylum, where people were so sick that they had to be locked up away from family and friends. Some of the rooms have windows that would let light in, if the big pieces of wood that were able to open and shut weren’t in place. Now, a lot of the windows are boarded up, keeping light out forever.
In the patients’ rooms, there are scraps of wallpaper glued to pieces of wood, which provide a bizarre and depressing ambience. What once was a cot where a patient slept is now just a rusted frame. The ceilings are mostly gone and the lights are lying on the floors.
Tunnels connect all the buildings with each other. People have dubbed the tunnels the "Catacombs," and say they are the best route of travel. However, a lot of homeless have been reported living in these buildings and in the Catacombs, so you take a great risk in entering these places.
Going down the tunnels from the patient wards you come to the Mortician's building. The Morgue, however, is not in the Mortician's building. Straight down the Catacombs is a place called the “Echo Hallway,” named as such for obvious reasons. After you pass that hallway, straight ahead is the Refrigeration building and to the right of it is the Morgue Building. The “Black Hallway” connects the Refrigeration and the Morgue Buildings. In the Morgue, there are ten freezers that once held the bodies of dead patients.
To the right of this building is what is called "Old Byberry." These buildings are not able to be seen from Roosevelt Boulevard. There are five buildings that are parallel to five other buildings with about five more in the middle. In the left five buildings is what is called by the explorers the “Haunted Hallway,” which leads into a large auditorium. The only safe way to enter the large auditorium is through the Catacombs.
So, when you visit, be prepared with flashlights, and extra batteries because once your lights go out, you, like so many others who have stayed at that hospital, will be left confused, frightened, and worst of all, in the dark.
–Sarah G.
Supposedly some strange stuff happened at Byberry, you know the typical sacrifices, kids getting lost in the tunnels and never coming out, etc. One story has stuck with me over the years. Supposedly, in one of the buildings (there are at least twelve on the grounds), there is a hole torn through the floorboards. The story says that gangs would tie a new joiner to a rope and lower them into the hole. The next morning, if the new guy was still on the other side of the rope, he was welcomed into the gang. I've heard many guys never were pulled back out.
–Jill
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