Abandoned By the Sea Seaside Sanatorium, Waterford, CT -

Warning: I’m on a mission to post all of my blog drafts in a very short period of time. If ever there was a time to “unsubscribe” or set boundaries on your V.V. screen time, it would be now. But I am quite excited for the ‘draft purge’ as it will ready me for posting during the longest road trip I have ever attempted. And I hope you’re excited too!

The Seaside Sanatorium in Waterford, Connecticut is a gorgeous place to photograph. Its beauty and location are unparalleled in an abandoned mental institution! The fences around the structures, which are condemned and are off-limits, do nothing to take away from the its beauty. I am pleased I was able to capture it, finally feeling more adept with my lens and my camera’s manual settings.

The enormous structure faces the deep expanse of the Long Island Sound, which glimmers without disturbance. Now part of Seaside State Park, the grounds are busy with dog walkers, fisherman on the shore, and regular park folk. So it is easy to come and see, unlike other institutions in decay. All seem intrigued by the hovering structure that catches the sea air and looms its heavy history against the strong rays of the sun. Peep that group of gals enjoying the shore on the left. I waited and waited but they were adamant about being in my shot.

The building was first utilized as a sanitorium for children suffering with tuberculosis, the first in the nation actually. They utilized heliotropic treatment on their young patients back in the 1930’s. The sun and sea air was thought to cure TB. As advances in treatment progressed, the sanitorium next became an home for the elderly, and finally a hospital for the intellectually disabled–named Seaside Regional Center for the Mentally Retarded–which was operational until 1996.

Though web searches claim it had a horrific reputation of maltreatment and high mortality rates in its final use, I wasn’t able to find much detail on these claims. Ghost hunters claim the buildings to be quite active which I suppose can sort of indicate distress and damned souls. In my exploration of the grounds I bumped into a father and his young son. We stopped and had a chat about the interior, which they, both enthusiasts of ghost hunting, had seen in a previous visit. The father even showed my an image that he had taken where the silhouette of a head appears in one of the windows.

But I didn’t feel as unsettled as I had felt in other historic and abandoned mental institutions. Perhaps because one of the most terrible institutions, Pilgrim State on Long Island, has been a place I have explored since the very early days, like the 90’s. The palpable shine of psychic pain there, even after the razing of many of the campus’s buildings, far exceeds any other site I have visited. Its treatment history boasts the most lobotomies performed in the country; hundreds of quiet, lonely and shamed interments still sit within the neglected Potter’s Field on its property, their numerical placards underneath inches of overgrown grass. Seaside felt different. Creepy, but not as heavy, for a lack of a clearer explanation. Nonetheless, I am re-motivated to write about Pilgrim State, which I started to do many years ago but never finished. To be continued…

Gorgeous from every angle… and you pass through such a delightful town on the way to the park. Niantic, CT has a tremendous used book store called Book Barn with a few sister more specialized locations nearby. Next time.