Quotation Blog Six

'Salem's Lot by Stephen King 

“There may be some truth in that idea houses absorb the emotions that are spent in them," (King 413).

Ben Mears, the main character, is referring to the Marsten House, where a murder suicide occurred decades before this story takes place. A man named Hubie Marsten killed his wife with a shotgun and then hung himself in their home. Upon discovery of the bodies, the shotgun was placed at the front door with a string attached to the trigger that would be pulled if anyone opened the door. He was clearly a deranged man that was violent, and terrorized his wife. Behind closed doors of their home, before the Marsten's deaths, it is easy to assume unspeakable things happened. Mears is saying that these heinous actions left behind a negative energy in the home that stays there forever.

I have moved many times in my life, and I have not always been comfortable all of the places I have lived. I am very sensitive and particular about places I feel comfortable living and sleeping in. When I was about eleven, I lived in the Bradlee Danvers apartment complex. This complex is huge, consisting of thousands of individual apartments. Seemingly a beautiful place, with a pool, gym and nice architecture, there is a very dark history to it. 

Bradlee Danvers is built on the land that was originally Danvers State Hospital. Most of main building (shown above) is still there, but heavily renovated. Danvers State Hospital was an insane asylum with some of the most horrendous, inhumane conditions and treatments in history. Some sources claim that this hospital created the lobotomy, which is a brutal procedure in which the frontal lobe of a person's brain is removed or damaged. The frontal lobe controls  emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behaviors, which makes up a person's personality. The procedure resulted in a vegetative state. They used other "treatment" such as electroshock therapy, straight jackets and more. I personally believe "doctors" unjustly and sadistically used people for surgical experimentation. With the building of the hospital, they created underground tunnels that connected all the wings of the massive hospital, which are claimed to still be there to this day. With a rapidly increasing number of patients, staff became overwhelmed and could not handle the stress of the job. With stress and lack of knowledge about mental illness and how to treat it, the patients were treated horribly. Patients were drugged, tortured and held in the hospital against their will. Due to the extreme overcrowding they were not cared for, living without food or a way to bathe. There were bodies buried on the property with only numbers for headstones. There are tons of stories about the hell of all mental asylums at this time period that go deeper than what I have discussed. Both of my parents grew up in Danvers, and I asking my  mom if she remembered when it was still open. (It closed in 1992) She was in high school at the time, and told me that her friends drove past and saw people banging on the barred windows and screaming. It was a place of complete misery, and we will never know the entire truth about what happened to people in there, which is heartbreaking.

When I lived at Bradlee Danvers, I constantly felt uneasy. Even now just writing about it gives me an unsettling feeling. It is hard to put in words, but I felt like I was never alone. I was always extremely anxious, on edge and hyper vigilant. During the nights I would stay awake, usually in a panicked state. I was always a little scared of the dark, but it was way more intense at Bradlee Danvers. When I did sleep I had nightmares and weird dreams. I ended up having to sleep with my brothers or my dad most nights. There was no particular reason for this fear, and it seemed my younger brothers may have had some similar feelings as well. I truly hated it there and argued with my mom to stay at her house instead of going to my Dad's apartment. 

When I learned the history of Bradlee Danvers, I started to think that it was the reason for my anxiety when staying there. It could have definitely been other things, I just find it interesting that my mental state when living there was so strange considering the disturbing events that happened there. Depending on what you believe, the Bradlee Danvers apartments may have absorbed some of the negativity from what transpired there years before, just like the Marsten House.