Hi Everyone,
I'm new here, but was inspired to write on this subject (Insane Asylums), as I used to work in one, and have often wished I could go back and detect on the grounds of the one I used to work in. It was in central California, and they did not then call them insane asylums, in California. But when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, he closed down most of the State's Mental Hospitals (as they were called), and we put the 1,200 patients we had back out on the streets by sending them back to the counties they came from.
This was from Modesto State Hospital, about 90 miles east of San Francisco. It was built during WWII as an Army hospital. After WWII, it was converted by the state into a mental hospital, and joined with about two dozen other mental hospitals in the state. Ronald Reagan closed down all but abut a half dozen or so, to save the state money, in the mid-sixties. He was successful, he put the state back in the black, but at what cost to human society? Our patients are back out on the streets all throughout the state, and we were just one of maybe 15 or so hospitrals that were shut down.
Each hospital ward had a side yard, and they stretched for over a mile, down four long hallways, in four long rows of wards. I imagined all of those injured soldiers sitting in the sun in those side yards, and of course, they'd lose coins and jewelry in those grassy yards. By that time, I had found over 100 coins in my own mom's front yard with metal detectors just a couple miles from where I worked at the state hospital. I just KNOW those side yards would be productive! The state hospital was sold and converted into college grounds, and most of the buildings were removed and sold, many of them being converted into habitat for farm workers in that agricultral part of the state.
About Michigan:
I also had a mother-in-law who was raised in a Michigan Insane Asylum. I don't know where, but she was in a ward with about 40 or 50 other girls. Once, a new girl was brought in to live with them. But it was discovered in the showers, that she was not only a girl, but she also had the plumbing of a man, complete with a penis and testicles! You can guess what happened - The other girls fought over who would get to sleep with him/her each night. They kept her up all night, fornicating with her/him. As a man, he was verile too. As a result, many of the girls on the ward got pregnant, which astounded the doctors and nurses! So, as punishment for 'putting one over on the faculty', the decision was made to sterilize the entire ward, which was done. My mother-in-law was never able to have children, and it ruined her life. She never got over being arbitrarily sterilized as a teenager. My first wife was one of her three step-children.
In my estimation, that was truly an "Insane Asylum"!
I know there would be many good finds in such older places than where I worked, like those older "asylums" back east. It would be worthwhile getting permission to detect in them!
Dave T.
