Menlo Abandoned Mental Institution

ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS A SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL, three of my friends and I decided to go exploring. My friend Bob told us about the abandoned mental hospital in Menlo Park, so we all drove up there one night. The moon was illuminating everything, so the silhouette of the building in the middle of the field was pretty intimidating.We slowly made our way to the building and entered.

The inside was littered with debris. We checked out a few of the rooms, some of which still had furniture in them. We wanted souvenirs so I found a form that had a patient’s name on it with a list of his medications and the utensils he was allowed to use for meals (Spoon, yes; knife and fork, no).

We made our way into a large room that had a giant pentagram on the wall and what looked like blood stains on the floor. That, however, was only the tip of the iceberg of freaky things to come.

We made our way down a corridor that led to a door, leading to a courtyard. Bob went out first, and proceeded to come back in immediately. We had been looking for the way out, because the place is so big we got disoriented. Well, Bob comes back in to lead us out, but tells us not to look up. The way it was laid out, was once we went outside, you could look up to your left and see the rest of the building which was a couple of stories high. Of course, the first thing we all do? Look up! On the roof was a group of people staring down at us.

Now Bob says they were wearing all black. I couldn’t tell since it was dark and all we could see was their outlines. Whatever they were wearing, we were defecating ourselves. Bob had told us stories of cults gathering there and stuff so our first inclination was that they were Satan-worshippers. We were fenced in. While we’re walking and simultaneously praying and trying to get out, the group on the roof was slowly walking along with us. We counted about a half dozen or so of them and we were absolutely petrified until we saw them stop and what looked to be the leader guy talking to another guy. All of a sudden that guy turns and walks away from them. We immediately realized that the guy was probably coming downstairs to do something to us, so we ran like a bunch of scared little girls.

We scampered up the fence, where Matt got his watch caught and ended up losing it, but we weren’t going to stop to look for it. We ran all the way to the car and didn’t stop for anything. Looking back on it, it was pretty exciting. I wear it like a badge of courage every time someone tries to tell me a scary story. This one has topped most.- Sean B.

Shackled to the Pipes in Edison

The building was still in good shape when I went there, despite its popularity with the local teenagers, and still housed the records of former patients and lots of creepy antique medical devices. The most spine-tingling areas was the old cells with shackles still hanging from the pipes! –John Trembly

Pulling Teeth and Punching Doors in Menlo Park

We spent days exploring the floors of this institution--from the wing for medical and dental care, in which we found teeth lying around a dental chair, to the wing which appeared to be solitary confinement that had four-inch-thick steel doors that had knuckle prints in the inside of the doors. A friend tried to make some of his own knuckle prints in the door and it only earned him a trip to the fully operational hospital down the road! –Jeep360