{"id":1677,"date":"2015-04-25T16:26:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T16:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mywalkabout.net\/2015\/04\/25\/tala"},"modified":"2021-09-25T03:44:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T10:44:34","slug":"tala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mywalkabout.net\/?p=1677","title":{"rendered":"TALA"},"content":{"rendered":"
Past the rolling hills of West Virginia I ride for three hours until I see the sign for Weston. This small town is home to the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, a place that had been in operation from 1864 until closing it’s doors in 1994.<\/h5>\n
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Initially it was the architecture that spurred my desire to travel here, to see this historic building with my own eyes, feel it under my own experience. As I approached the front gate though, men and women in stark white nursing uniforms of old let me know that there was much more to this place.<\/h5>\n
I slowly walked up the entrance steps and in to TALA<\/a>.<\/h5>\n
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We start by strolling the hospital grounds and learning the history of the place here, from Civil War stories to the types of people that were put in this place. A building that housed only patients with tuberculosis, a children’s ward, the lock down rooms of those unfortunate souls that received lobotomies, blood letting, and other “cures” for mental illness in the late 19th and early 20th century.<\/h5>\n
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As Macey, our guide, shows us the different floors, you can see the remains of the torturous souls that resided here. Marks on the inside of metal doors and plumbing pipes where a persons head was repeatedly pounded by self infliction, \u00a0most likely trying to expel the demons in their mind.<\/h5>\n
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Surrounding these hallways are the Doctors quarters, where whole families of the treating physicians would stay. It’s a stark contrast to the bleak and empty patient rooms, filled with beautiful artwork and comfortable living rooms. I wonder how the screams of the thousands of patients were blocked out though…..<\/h5>\n
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It’s a place where you fill in the emptiness with your imagination, trying to picture what the faded paint and peeling wood would say if it could speak.<\/h5>\n
Iron bed frames and gurney straps, lone wheelchairs and broken rockers.<\/h5>\n
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I come to the patient art gallery, where paintings show some insight of the people that were here.<\/h5>\n
Lonely writings to scary self depictions, you can see their thoughts strewn onto paper.<\/h5>\n
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It makes you wonder about the power we give to human beings to choose who is Sane vs. Insane.<\/h5>\n
Mentally ill vs. Normal.<\/h5>\n
Crazy vs. Fine.<\/h5>\n\n\n
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