Ghosts in the Asylum

The Grim is opening the gate and entering Medfield State Hospital Cemetery located in Medfield Massachusetts. Revealing a haunting landscape where 841 former psychiatric patients lie buried beneath small numbered markers – their identities erased even in death. What began as the "Medfield Insane Asylum" in 1892 evolved into a sprawling mental health facility that operated for over a century before finally closing its doors in 2003, leaving behind a legacy of isolation, mistreatment, and forgotten lives.

Beyond its troubling history as a psychiatric institution, many visitors recognize these grounds from popular films like Shutter Island, Knives Out, and X-Men: New Mutants. Yet few realize they're walking across the same soil where patients lived, suffered, and died – their stories silenced by stigma and institutional neglect. When the devastating Spanish Flu swept through in 1918, claiming 55 patients and 5 staff members, the hospital established its own cemetery rather than continue burying their dead in the town's Vine Lake Cemetery.

For decades, these graves remained anonymous, marked only by cold metal numbers driven into the earth. It wasn't until a determined Boy Scout from Troop 89 undertook the painstaking work of matching numbers to names that these forgotten souls began to reclaim their identities. Today, a memorial stone stands at the entrance with the poignant inscription: "Remember those buried at Medfield State Hospital, for they too have lived, loved and laughed."

As the only abandoned psychiatric hospital in America where visitors can freely roam the grounds, Medfield offers a unique window into our troubled approach to mental health care. Film crews report unexplained phenomena, with one director noting "literally every single person on my crew had weird things happen." Whether you're drawn by historical curiosity, cinematic connections, or paranormal possibilities, this Massachusetts landmark invites reflection on how we remember – or fail to remember – those society once chose to forget. Listen as we dig deep into the stories beneath our feet and restore dignity to those who were numbered rather than named.

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Episode Transcript

Kristin (00:12):
Good morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode we'll beopening the gate and entering
Medfield State Hospital Cemetery, located in Medfield,
Massachusetts.
So grab your favorite mug, cozyup and let's take a dig into
history.
This isn't the first time onthe Grimm, we pushed open the

(00:36):
gates to a lesser-known cemetery, and it won't be the last.
But Medfield's grounds hold afamiliarity for many, even if
they don't know it.
Featured in films likeShuttered Island, the Box,
x-men's, new Mutants and KnivesOut, its presence lingers on
screen, haunting in itsstarkness.
The landscape isn't scenic inany traditional sense.
It carries the weight of scarsleft by a history we often try

(01:00):
to forget the stigmas, thesilence and the suffering tied
to mental health's troubled past.
It's worth remembering thatnearly every state hospital had
its own burial ground, a quiet,deliberate way to erase those
who didn't belong, who weremisunderstood or who came
seeking help and found somethingelse entirely.
These grounds speak louder thanany monument.

(01:23):
They tell of mistreatment,malpractice and a system that
too often failed.
The vulnerable Menfield'sfuture lies in redevelopment,
its grounds transforming intoresidential housing.
But for now, its abandonedbuildings stand up as one of the
most unusual parks you'll everwander, a place where the past
presses in from every corner andevery step feels like walking

(01:46):
through the remnants offorgotten lives.
This is the only abandonedpsychiatric hospital in the
country where, for now, thepublic is free to roam its
grounds without restriction.
Medfield State Hospital, oncemore starkly named the Medfield
Insane Asylum, stands quietly at45 Hospital Road in Medfield,
massachusetts.
It's eerie calm masking a longand unsettling history.

(02:09):
It began in 1892 whenauthorities selected an isolated
stretch of land at the northernedge of Medfield, taking over
the sprawling Bishop Estates andMorrill Farm.
More than 300 acres of quietfield and shadowed woods
included the storied RockyNarrows.
What emerged solely from thesoil wasn't a place of healing

(02:30):
but one of isolation andcontainment, massachusetts'
first facility builtspecifically for the chronically
mentally ill.
Architect William PittWentworth oversaw its
construction between 1896 and1914, deliberately abandoning
the imposing fortress-likeKirkbride model and seemingly
softer cottage plan.
Yet beneath its village-likefacade, small separate wards

(02:53):
meant to mimic homes andcommunity, the patients endured
lives of monotonous labor andenforced routine.
This fragile illusion ofnormalcy was little more than a
veneer over profound silence andhidden suffering.
On May 1st 1896, actingGovernor Roger Walcott read the
proclamation that formallyestablished the Menfield Insane

(03:14):
Asylum for the chronicallyinsane.
Only half the buildings werecomplete when the first 120
patients arrived.
Transferred from Taunton,danvers, northampton, westboro
and Austin Farms, it had begunthe slow filling of this
isolated world with forgottenpeople, misunderstood minds and
the stories that would echothrough its halls for over a

(03:36):
century.
It was the kind of place as itwas for the norm of the time,
where if your child had adisability, you dropped them off
and never saw them again, saidJohnny Dalton, the lead audio
engineer for one of thehospital's current attractions
and an expert on the hospital'shistory.
At its peak, the asylumsprawled across 1.4 square miles

(03:56):
, a grim empire of 58 buildingsmeant to hold up to 2,200 souls.
It was a self-contained world,raising its own livestock,
growing its own crops andgenerating its own heat.
Light,200 souls.
It was a self-contained world,raising its own livestock,
growing its own crops andgenerating its own heat, light
and power, cut off from theoutside, as if forgotten by time
.
Water, a necessity for life,became a quiet struggle.
The hospital's 20 wells alongthe Charles River ran dry too

(04:20):
quickly.
A solution was found inSherbourne's farm pond and a
pipe was leaked to siphon itslifeblood directly to Medfield.
For over a decade, the hospitaldrank deeply from it until it
drained the pond nearly dry.
By 1910, new wells were dug offof Harding Street and a pumping
station was built.
The new system delivered over300,000 gallons a day double

(04:42):
what the asylum required.
Water now flowed freely.
Even hope did not.
In 1914, it was rebranded asthe Medfield State Hospital, but
a new name couldn't scrub theshadow of what had come before.
In 1918, the Spanish flu torethrough the hospital's wards,
claiming lives and tighteningthe grip of despair,
exasperating the already grimconditions within its walls.

(05:05):
The Spanish flu's impact onMedfield State Hospital mirrored
the broader devastationexperienced across Massachusetts
.
In nearby Boston, the epidemicclaimed over 3,500 lives by
mid-October 1918.
Health officials implementedmeasures such as closing schools
, theaters and other publicvenues to curb the spread, but

(05:31):
the virus continued its deadlycourse.
This harrowing chapter inMedfield State Hospital's
history underscores thevulnerability of institutional
settings during pandemics andserves as a somber reminder of
the profound challenges facedduring the 1918 influenza
outbreak.
The Spanish flu of 1918 didn'tdiscriminate, but within the
walls of Medfield State Hospitalit found a population

(05:54):
particularly vulnerableForgotten souls living in
overcrowded wards cared for byan already overworked and
thinning staff.
The hospital, already a placeof silence and routine descended
into something colder andheavier.
The virus struck hard.
Records say that 308 patientsand 95 staff members were

(06:15):
infected.
Of those, 55 patients and 5workers died, although one
wonders how many stories wentunrecorded.
How many final breaths weretaken in shadowed rooms
unnoticed until the stillnessgave them away.
There were days when more than75 staff members were too ill to
work and patients became almostnon-existent.

(06:36):
Graduate nurses fromsurrounding hospitals were
rushed in, called upon to dowhatever they could, but it
wasn't enough.
The disease moved fast, leavingsunken eyes and bloodied
handkerchiefs in its wake,hallways once filled with a
drone of routine now echoed withcoughing fits and low groans
from the dying.
Before the outbreak, thosewithout family were buried

(06:57):
quietly in Medfield's Vine LakeCemetery, nearby in unmarked
graves.
But the death toll during theflu became too much and too fast
.
The town grew uneasy.
The state was urged to findanother way, and so it did,
carving out a corner of landnear Charles River on the
hospital's own grounds to serveas a final resting place.

(07:18):
Thus the Medfield StateHospital Cemetery was born.
The cemetery would come to holdthe remains of 841 former
patients, many of whom had nofamily to claim them or means to
be buried elsewhere.
The graves were originallymarked with only small numbered
metal markers offering no names,just digits, located less than

(07:39):
a mile from the main hospital.
For decades, the cemetery atMedfield State Hospital was a
place of silence.
Grass grew, tall markers rustedand the names of the dead, if
they had ever been spoken at all, were on the wall.
We're lost to time.
No headstones mark their finalresting place, just cold,
stamped numbers on small metalstakes driven into the earth

(08:02):
like forgotten page numbers in abook.
No one wanted to finish.
The field wasn't hidden, but itwas ignored.
Rumor took the place of memory.
The 841 souls buried there laynameless, their lives erased by
neglect and the weight of stigma.
This was how society chose toend the stories of the most
vulnerable, with numbers insteadof names and silence instead of

(08:25):
mourning.
But time is a way of unsettlingeven the deepest of graves.
It wasn't until much later,through the quiet persistence of
local historians, mental healthadvocates and the descendants
of the forgotten, those effortsbegan to reclaim what had been
lost.
Some of the markers werecleaned.
A memorial stone was raised atthe entrance, carved with the

(08:46):
inscription Remember thoseburied at Medfield State
Hospital, for they too havelived, loved and laughed.
But it was a boy, a boy fromScout Tube 89, who struck the
first true match in the darkness, a part of his Eagle Scout
project.
He sifted through decades ofhospital records, matching
numbers to names, names to dates, stories to silence.

(09:08):
What had once been a ledger ofthe lost became a list of the
known.
One by one, the dead wererestored, not to life but to
identity.
Each number now has a name tiedto it, a date, a history.
Today, the cemetery wererestored not to life but to
identity.
Each number now has a name tiedto it a day, a history.
Today, the cemetery remainsquiet, but no longer quite so
forgotten.
The number markers are stillthere and the memorial stone
stands watching over them.
It's a place of reverence.

(09:30):
Now, if still uneasy, the airfeels heavier here, though the
trees don't seem to move thesame way, and the wind, when it
does come, carries somethingwith it.
Because this is not just acemetery.
It's a record, a record of howthe world once turned its back
on the broken, the misunderstoodand the unwanted.
And though the hospital groundsare now open from dawn to dusk,

(09:53):
most visitors don't wander thisfar.
They always don't understandwhat they're walking past or why
the cemetery was evenestablished.
Outside the gates, the rest ofMassachusetts was drowning in
its own crisis in 1918.
But inside Medfield theisolation was absolute.
No family visits, no farewells,just the cold hands of

(10:15):
orderlies and the steady tickingof clocks that didn't care who
died, making the cemetery feelgrimmer to many once they know
the truth behind it.
Over the course of itsexistence, medfield State
Hospital married the shiftingtides of mental health care in
America.
By the 1930s it evolved into ateaching facility, partnering

(10:36):
with Tufts Medical Center tooffer hands-on training for
medical students.
But the years that followedbrought more than just bodies.
They brought bruises, blood anddisease.
According to the HistoricalSociety, reports of beating
surfaced alongside the formationof a prison camp on the grounds
where inmates from theCharleston jail were held like

(10:56):
ghosts within the system.
Justice was swift.
In some cases prosecution forassaults were recorded, but the
pain ran deep and wide.
Stories rarely made theheadlines.
They were scribbled into,reports passed quietly through
the halls or buried beneathofficial language.
But the truth, like the dead,has a way of lingering Listeners

(11:17):
.
Before I continue, I need toadvise.
In the next few minutes we'llbe recounting suicides and some
disturbing content.
Please note that this episodein the next few minutes contains
depictions of violence thatsome people may find disturbing.
If you find yourself squeamish,I advise not listening ahead or
skipping to the next chapter.
Listening ahead or skipping tothe next chapter If you or a

(11:39):
loved one is struggling withmental health crisis.
Call or text 988 to connectwith the 988 Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline, a free, confidentialservice providing 24-7 support.
When morning a body was found atMedfield State Hospital, cold
still and grotesquely mutilatedhospital Cold still and

(12:01):
grotesquely mutilated a patientdid by his own hand, his neck
nearly severed by a safety razor.
There was no note, no farewell,just blood, silence and the
unmistakable finality of despair.
It wasn't the first and itwouldn't be the last.
Another patient a few monthslater chose the rope.
They found him hanging in oneof the wards, his body swaying
gently, as if rocked by theghosts that kept him company.

(12:23):
The cause of death was clear,the cause of suffering less so.
The hospital continued as italways did, grinding forward on
the bones of those it failed,even outside its gates.
The fractured showed.
A man was found drunk andunconscious in a doorway on
North Street.
Just another lost soul, itseemed.
But he wasn't a patient.

(12:44):
He was an attendant, a manmeant to care for others, now
broken by the very place heserved.
They picked him up and broughthim back to Medfield, back into
the belly of the institutionthat had drained him.
These weren't just incidents.
They were echoes, quietconfirmations that the suffering
behind those red brick wallsdidn't stop at the patients.

(13:04):
It seeped into everyone, staff,caretakers, witnesses.
No one was left untouched.
By 1938, the walls had growncolder.
Electroshock therapy wasintroduced, jolting patients
into silence to meet the guiseof progress.
Leukotomies, too, becameroutine, a crude, chilling
procedure that left many emptiedof themselves.

(13:26):
Medfield had become a place notof recovery but of control.
Records show a minimum of fourpatients per week passing away
routinely.
By the 1940s, medfield StateHospital had begun to collapse
under the weight of its owndesign.
What was once a sprawling,self-contained world of order
and silence had becomeovercrowded and understaffed,

(13:49):
its systems buckling as WorldWar II pulled its doctors,
nurses and attendants away fromits halls.
The corridors filled with morepatients than hands to help them
.
The words, once rigid inroutine, frayed at the edges.
But in the midst of thisdecline, a glimmer fate and
uncertain happened Under theguidance of Dr Harold Lee new

(14:11):
psychiatric drugs andprogressive treatments were
introduced.
The age of permanent warehousinggave way to a cautious hope.
Some patients were stabilized,others discharged, and the
community-based mental healthclinics began to rise in
surrounding towns like Wesleyand Quincy.
For the first time in decades,the asylum showed signs of

(14:32):
evolution.
The 1950s brought psychotropicmedications that changed the
very shape of psychiatric care.
With these pills came massivedischarges, some patients
walking free after years inside.
Others simply vanished intooutpatient programs.
By the 1970s, medfield'spopulation had dwindled to just

(14:52):
150.
The once teeming empire of theforgotten had grown quiet.
Talks of closure began and theinstitution's purpose seemed to
evaporate.
In 1994, the hospital was addedto the National Register of
Historic Places a distantclinical gesture of remembrance.
No restoration, no redemption,just a name on a list.

(15:14):
By April 2003, the final doorswere shut, the lights went out
and the wards were emptied,sealed and left to the silence
they had always known.
The voices that had once echoedhere, some in anguish, others
in confusion or longing,completely faded.
For a brief time, tours wereoffered up until 2020.

(15:35):
The public could walk thegrounds and glimpse what
remained.
But then came another plagueCOVID-19.
Unlike the Spanish flu of 1918,there were no patients here to
fall ill.
No nurses collapsing atbedsides, only emptiness.
This time, the disease didn'tkill within these walls, but it
still left a mark.

(15:55):
The gates closed again, thistime to protect the living from
the memories of the dead.
Today, the grounds are restored, their paths cleared and open.
From dawn to dusk.
People stroll, unaware orunwilling to ask what lies
beneath their feet.
Buildings remain locked,off-limits, but not forgotten.
Medfield State Hospital has beencalled many things historic,

(16:23):
condemned, preserved but morethan once it's earned the title
of the creepiest places in theBay State, and it's not hard to
see why.
Wandering through the groundslong enough and something begins
to press in, visitors speak ofghostly figures glimpsed through
shattered windows, faces orsilhouettes in buildings that
haven't had electricity indecades.
Yet lights flicker within themall the same.
There's no power runningthrough these halls, but

(16:44):
something pulses in the dark,something that doesn't want to
be forgotten.
Footsteps echo behind solitarywalkers, always just behind,
always out of reach.
Some turn and find no one.
Others don't turn at all.
The hospital's hauntingpresence drew Hollywood to its
doorstep.
The New Mutants, a curseproduction in its own right,

(17:05):
filmed here.
Director Josh Boone didn'tmince his words.
Literally every single personon my crew had weird things
happen.
The crew, hardenedprofessionals, refused to walk
to their cars alone afternightfall.
Something unseen stalked theset and when the camera stopped
rolling, the silence was deeperthan it should have been and
some say it may have followedthem home From the outside, the

(17:27):
boarded up buildings.
People report strange noisesbangs, whispers, voices too far
off to understand, yet too closeto ignore.
No one goes in, no one comesout, but the sounds remain.
Unlike other cemeteries,medfield's dead didn't arrive in
hearses.
They lived here, suffered here,died here and when they were

(17:48):
buried, just a few hundred stepsaway in a field marked by only
numbers.
The argument that cemeteriesaren't haunted because the dead
don't die where they're buriedsimply doesn't apply here.
The cemetery is the scene oftheir final breath.
Signs nailed to doorways nowwarn of a bestest, but the real
danger isn't what you breathe,it's what you feel when you
linger too long.

(18:08):
Ghost hunters still show up withtheir gadgets and bravado.
Curious visitors come,especially in the fall, chasing
Salem's shadow, mostly withnothing but chills.
A few leave changed, and thenthere are the joggers, the dog
walkers, the ones who don't looktoo closely, those who pass
beneath rusted signs urging themto leash their pets to stay on

(18:29):
the marked paths Most obey.
Some wander.
They laugh, scrolling throughtheir phones, treating like any
other park.
Beneath their feet lie storiesburied but not forgotten 841
numbered graves, crumblingstairways, whispers behind
boarded windows.
The land is quiet now, but notat peace.
It's waiting not for justice,not for forgiveness, but just to

(18:53):
be remembered.
The grave grind for MedfieldHospital Cemetery was a cinnamon
bun shaken espresso latte fromTwist Bakery in Millis.
For more honorary grinds in thearea, please visit the-grimcom.
For now we're closing the gateon Medfield Hospital Cemetery.
We hope you enjoyed our diginto history, if you did

(19:15):
subscribe today, to join us nexttime when we open the gate on
the Grimm.