For many folks, a stay at the 500+ acre Norwich State Hospital for the Insane located in southeastern Connecticut was one they will truly never forget. While I have written about the history and current condition of the campus in the past, this article is centered upon the experiences of patients and doctors who worked at the hospital during its 92 years of operation.

A past patient of the hospital, who has the nickname “zen”, says the facility stirs up negative feelings.

According to her blog, she received court-ordered chemical dependency care at the Norwich State Hospital’s Eugene T. Boneski Treatment Center in June 1992. She admitted that those undergoing alcohol and drug treatment that had insurance or voluntarily went to Elmcrest in Portland or the Stonington Institute in North Stonington.

The Boneski Treatment Center dealt with patients who had chemical dependency including alcohol, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs, she said. The Treatment Center was located in a portion of the Gallup Building.

Treatment is usually given to those who were under the influence, or claim they were, when committing a crime.

The severity of the crime dictates whether this treatment is coupled with probation and while for some, this is their last punishment, for others this is the last step before being sent to prison.

This patient stated she was sentenced here for her string of vehicle stereo thefts and several times was charged with disturbing the peace, drunk and disorderly, and other larcenies.

While she did not stay in the Kettle Building, one of the most recently built buildings on the campus in the 1970′s, the patient explains that building was reserved for patients who heard voices and saw things coming out of the darkness. Amazingly I have found of the Kettle Building on the Internet, unlike that of the other buildings, show little decay, mold and mildew, and structural issues such as missing or broken windows, fallen in ceiling, or broken doors.

The six-story Administration Building beyond Kettle still stands at the main entrance of the facility as a gatekeeper and she stated when seeing that building, she knew it would swallow her for a 90-day stay.

The patient explains that she was in the detox unit, an experience that he described as “truly-hell-in-a-box” where homeless people would stay for three or four days before being released on the streets. This patient explains that those people had bad hygene and smelled terrible. Patients were only able to watch a television with five or six channels or read old books or magazines and were restricted to their rooms or the day room. She described the experience similar to prison except here patients had to wear pajamas and rubber booties.

The patient often spent hours looking out the window at buildings on the campus which were erected between 1910 and 1920 wondering what barbaric experiments and trials gone wrong were performed there. Most of these buildings, especially ones on the northern and central portions of the campus have been abandoned for some time when patients and facilities were moved from older buildings to newer ones.

A high-school student who volunteered at the hospital, an individual with the nickname “peegie.weegie” stated she vaguely remembered going to the hospital before it shut down.

According to a message board, he was in one of the buildings east of Laurel Hill Dr., across from the main campus. He remembers to a patient who had a history of drinking Liquid Draino but was unaware the campus was huge enough to support things seen in photographs found on the Internet that show a bowling alley and theater.

One former employee of the facility has decided to make a documentary to his experiences working there.

According to a news article, Steven DePolito he remembers first visiting the facility as a 5-year-old boy to see his dad, a cook at the Lipitt Building, where lobotomies were performed. The Lipitt Building was one of the original buildings built on the campus and is located near the Preston/Norwich line and can be clearly seen from Route 12.

DePolito later grew up to be a hospital mental health worker and his 57-minute documentary entitled “Brewster’s Neck: Memories of Norwich State Hospital” is currently in libraries throughout southeastern Connecticut. The video illustrates the bond that he said employees, and some patients, had at the facility. 16 workers and one patient were interviewed in the documentary which was shot by then security officer David Williams.

The video features a tour of the many tunnels that connect the buildings together. In fact, an old map of the property shows that the complex tunnel network employees to go between 26 buildings. However, the tunnel supposedly was cemented off to the older buildings when they became abandonded.

DePolito was originally set out to interview more patients, but admits that many did not wish to be interviewed since their experiences were quite traumatic.

Former worker Cheri Colonni recalls when she worked at the facility and convinced a to give smoking privileges back to a patient who had lost them because of misbehavior. Colonni then stated the two were smoking when suddenly the patient turned around and put the cigarette out in her eyeball.

Former worker Fred Potter, who was one of the staff members placing patients in restraints, admitted that the restraints were necessary to provide a safe environment and that everyday a patient was in restraints.

Psychologist Dr. Van Der Velde, who worked at the facility in the 1960′s, who helped developed lithium to treat manic depressive patients, stated he personally saw the generosity of staff members. These employees would Christmas gifts for all 50 patients in their ward even though they had tiny to come and go on.
DePolito working in a hospital was always a way of life since his dad, mom, stepmom, two aunts, two uncles, and brother worked in hospitals and he met his wife in one.

DePolito hopes his documentary will dispel myths that the facility is a haunted asylum and that patients did not receive proper treatment while staying there.

A blogger nicknamed “KKKKatie” stated on a message board, that her former husband was a Resident Physician, psychiatrist in training, at the facility in the early 1970′s.

They lived with their four children for three years in one of the “cottages” on the property which she claimed were “actually very nice houses for the Hospital Administrator and various senior physicians.” The neighborhood was located north of most of the hospital grounds in Norwich and consisted of about 10 houses, many of them two-stories.

The fully-furnished house partially offset the fact that Resident Physicians are not highly-paid. The house had linens, kitchen utensils, laundry service, and food for the entire family including fresh meat made to order, staples, fresh fruit and vegetables, and canned goods, she said. Every week, the entire hospital grounds and neighborhood were mowed and snow was regularly plowed. She stated that the neighborhood has become decayed just like the rest of the hospital grounds.

According to a blogger nicknamed “Childhood”, whose real name is Wendy Andrews, on a message board , her was a psychiatrist there and they lived in the faculty housing for a while, which was located a half mile from the hospital at the top of a hill. These homes had housekeepers who were hospital patients going through a rehabilitation program and the program also granted patients to work as gardeners. The blogger claims that the hospital utilized a nearby hog farm to rehabilitate patients for work experience and pork was donated to the hospital’s kitchen.

The family moved to the doctor’s grounds located in a circle of three colonial homes and lived at the end of a cul de sac near the railroad tracks and the Thames River. This is close to the Lipitt Building on the north side of the campus. The blogger remembers going through the hospital tunnels to such a degree that she has memories of what buildings they connect to.

Even when the facility first opened in 1909, it was not uncommon for the facility to have a rehabilitation program to assist patients and according to the book, “Alcholism in America: From Preconstruction to Prohibition”, some patients were transferred to a say farm where they prepared food, tended the furnace, maintained farm buildings, managed livestock, poultry and an assortment of crops.

These patients also received experience in construction projects such as the enlarging of the hospital’s dam and reservoir.

In the fact, a program that began in fall 1915, granted patients to be part of the State Inerbriate Farm, an early voluntary intervention program, where these patients were treated differently than the “insane.”