If you are a native of Connecticut, you have probably heard of the infamous Fairfield Hills in Newtown, CT. If you have not, let me give you a little bit of background Fairfield Hills was a State Hospital that was created due to overcrowding at the other state hospitals in the early 1930s. The hospital opened and received its first patients from Connecticut Valley Hospital in June 1931. There were initially less than 500 patients and only 3 doctors but with in the next 30 years the facility housed more than 4,000 patients, 20 doctors, 50 nurses, and 100 assorted other employees.
Due to deinstitutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s, there was less of a need for hospitals like Fairfield Hills. With the high cost of running underused hospitals, state hospitals around the country shut their doors and in 1995, Gov. Rowland closed Fairfield Hills and all patients were moved to CT Valley Hospital located in Middletown.
This sign was at one of the buildings with the arrow pointing to a basement like entrace.
This was inside the entrace.....
Now, Fairfield Hills gained some hype through Hollywood
The feature film Sleepers used the hospital as a setting. Actors on location included Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon. Several scenes used local boys as extras. Actually Mikey who came to shoot with us actually remembered the whole casting process that took place while he was in high school. He was saying that Masuk and Trumbull High were where some of the extras for the film came from. So besides the now stereotypical idea that Fairfield Hills was a place for the mentally disturbed, in 2000 due to an episode of MTV's Fear, that was shot at Fairfield Hills. Many people began to think that the site was now haunted. In addition to the ideas that since the facility was closed in 1995 the facility has been the object of several paranormal investigations, and allegations that the buildings are haunted. And because several former patients have claimed that treatment there was very harsh, cruel, and abusive. The Town of Newtown denies the site is haunted, and has since closed off the facility to all film crews and even though the grounds are open to the public, it is only open during the day light and there are plenty of nosey security guards.
This is another inside shot...
Now besides the fact that this area already was appealing because of the cool history, and the ghost stories architecturally it is also a pretty cool place. Anyways after learning all of this super cool information Jason and I along with our friends Chris and Mikey decided we had to take our Saturday shooting adventures to this awesome place. So here are some of the pictures that we captured of our days experiences.
All the institutional buildings were of a modified colonial style, built of red brick and attractively accented with beautiful lights and large clocks. There were also a lot of copper, and marble finishing’s as well. Constructed largely in the 1930s, the buildings ranged in size from 2 to 3 stories, and every building is fireproof throughout which also is very interesting.
While walking around the Fairfield Hills Campus taking pictures we were stopped by a man in a car who wanted to know if we knew about the history of the facility. Of course we all said yes and then almost instantaneously the guy pulled his car off the road, got out and approached us. (WEIRD, yea we know) The guy gets to talking about the history of all the buildings and then he tells us he knows all of this because he was a patient there. Well at this point Chris excuses himself to go find a bathroom and because he thought the guy was a little tweaked. (And we know leaving the group is a total way a horror movie starts). Then Jason, my fiancé also decides he is going to go and wander and leave Mikey and I with the weird guy. Needless to say the guy was a talker and then Mikey and I said our good byes gave the guy our names. (yes our real names, I know “stranger danger” I already got yelled at lol)
So, we continue on with our journey and low and behold our new friend finds us at another building. And he proceeds to tell us he knew where we were because one of the painters let him in to the building and he was able to see us taking pictures of the building with the crow on top from inside. (side note: it was a Saturday and there was no workers on the property at all!) Anyways he left us again and said he was going to go and walk in to one of the other buildings that he spent some time in as a child to. It was all very, very weird.
All of the patient buildings were connected by a series of tunnels. These tunnels were mostly used to move large groups of patients between the buildings, especially during the winter months and on bad weather days. Doctors, workers also used the tunnels, and even corpses were also moved between hospital buildings by them.
They boys decided they would approach the security guard and ask him a little bit about the property and we found out that there was some construction being done on Bridgeport Hall. The town of Newtown, was in the process of renovating the building to be the new town hall. So we took the opportunity to take pictures of some of the awesome construction vehicles that were there.
All in all it was such an awesome photo experience that I can not wait to see what we do next week!!
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