Indiana State Sanatorium. I've been wanting to come check this place out for years and recently I made it happen. I love a good old abandoned building to explore. Especially one that's riddled with crusty lead paint peeling from the walls and the lingering threat of asbestos (I kid). 

If only these walls could talk, I wonder what they would say. Built in 1908 to be a large tuberculosis hospital, one which the doctors and nurses also lived on the premises.In the 1950's the tuberculosis vaccine rendered the virus curable. While that is fantastic news, it wasn't great for the hospital which would no longer be needed and therefore closed. 

Sometime in the 1970's the hospital reopened. This time it was a nursing home and mental hospital until 2011 when the facility closed its doors for good. It's strange how every abandoned hospital I've explored has been left as it was the very day they closed. All of the medical equipment, furniture, and sometimes even medical records, left to wither and rot away.

It's been said that this is a highly active paranormal location. Which, if you're like me and you believe in that sort of thing, it just makes the place that much more intriguing. There were a few spots that definitely had an unexplained heaviness. In one hallway we walked past a door that was closed. We tried to open it and all of us agreed the vibe was just not right so we continued on after not being able to get the door open. We were about 5 steps away when something tugged my hair. At first I thought maybe my hair got caught in my backpack. But no. My hair was pulled upwards and nobody was behind me. It pulled it so had that it even pulled my ponytail up higher on my head. Shortly after we came upon the nurses station, the one that's rumored to be a hot spot with paranormal activity. The morgue was somewhat creepy, it's a morgue afterall, but the hallway outside the morgue is where heebie jeebies are at. 

We also explored the steam tunnels and the three houses on the property. It looks like the new owners are rehabbing those houses. They will be so nice when they're done. One of the houses even had a lot of family photos left behind. It was cool to match a face to who I imagined lived there in the past. There's also a utility building where much of the maintenance would take place along with a large laundry room that is said to be haunted by a woman who used to work there. We ran into some paranormal investigators and they were telling us about the EVP's they captured in there and in the morgue. I'd love to come back with some paranormal investigators some day.

With over 110 years of history, 200 acres, 1000's of deaths, including a murder and a suicide, these walls have stories to tell. My imagination ran rampantly wondering what this place looked like throughout the time it was open. I found myself curious what the patients were like, was the care like, and all the while being thankful that I never experienced it firsthand but could rather walk the halls with my camera and wonder.