State Hospital Number Two
The Glore Psychiatric Museum has always had a calling for me to respond to. This year, I finally got to answer it, twice. Both visits left me feeling an extreme case of bitter-sweetness. This last trip was with my sister and her friend. The whole time I had my hands wrapped in the strings of my winter hat. The whole visit had this eerie feeling and yet a sense of progress. "We've progressed," is all I could say, like a pathetic excuse to my sister every time she's look at me as if to ask, "And, you want to go into this?" Question is have we really progressed?
Pull up along the road into a semi-secluded and let the chill in from the prison next door. Make sure you peer at the three story high red-bricked dinosaur. Okay, so it's not really a dinosaur, it's only 135-years-old. Not bad for an old lunatic asylum, right? Good thing that our kind hearted George Glore helped build this old state hospital into a museum. It doesn't help that the other buildings of the hospital became that afore said prison. Oh, and in case you're wondering, this was in working order up until 1996. And, the new facility is actually just across the way.
A meter-by-meter case that contains the unexpected and numerous contents of a woman's stomach from an unsuccessful surgery greets you on the right side of the second floor. Go ahead and peer inside the wooden room and notice how the mannequins seem to have the odd feel of imprisonment with their steel shackles and straw bedding. The mannequin on the stake is just hanging around waiting to be proven human. To her left sits the enclosed wooden human hamster wheel titled "Hollow Wheel", for "running out the insanity". Don't forget to visit the dousing tub for a nice chill. Oh, and the doctor will help you feel better with such things as a dentist like surgery room and electrocution therapy. "Relax; you're quite safe here…"1
Meet some more of our charming characters. Such as the sculpture of a mouth with a protruding tongue titled, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." A blanket full of sewn in words of a schizophrenic woman's thoughts hangs gracefully on a wall, near where a mock up of a man's television diary. A note of interest, you might want to poke your head in at the morgue. It's actually a formerly used morgue, not one of those tacky set up ones. Don't mind the body, it doesn't move much. Make sure to take note of the utensils our mortician uses and the prepared headstone. Before you leave, don't forget to visit the Yellow Rose and Jukebox Hero down stairs where other various antiques are stored, down in the basement.
As you decide to leave, make sure that you stop by the little gift-shop on the first floor, and get yourself a squishy brain or perhaps a postcard showing a map for the use of Phrenology. Oh, and do us all a favor and thank the kind people whom are working there. They don't really have to work a creepy and awe-inspiring building. If you don't believe me, go visit the Glore Psychiatric Museum and experience the trip yourself.
1 Quote from "Paranoimia" by The Art of Noise, 1986