This was our first trip with another UE group. Earlier in the week Starman of Cereal Trespassers asked if we’d like to join him on a trip to Taunton State Hospital. We of course jumped at the chance knowing TSH would soon become pretty inaccessible. Not to mention it’s always nice to hang out with other explorers.

We head to Dunkin Donuts where we arranged to meet. After a little while they call and say they are nearby, so we head outside. They pull up a few minutes later in a minivan. Starman is in the middle seat, and two people in the front. Both Keti and I have no idea who the people in the front are (we met Starman briefly before). After some conversation we figure that the guy in the front is Ratfink Dan, the girl in the passenger seat was his girlfriend.

We arrive at the hospital and right away we notice the fence posts going around the building. We all run up to an entrance that Starman was familiar with. That didn’t work out, so we ran around to another entrance. One that I had already been in and thought was a dead end.

What was different for me about this hospital that others as soon as I walked in was the amount of light everywhere, there was no boards on the windows. Before this I hadn’t been in one without NEEDING a flashlight.

The First stop was the cafeteria (or at least I think that’s what it was). After a few pics I knew the camera I had that day was going to be putting out some shitty photos. We walk down some halls and check out the various rooms. After that we head out to the courtyard to get some pics there.

Next Starman shows us to the raised walkway. This is one of the things that makes TSH so unique. I notice there’s a bunch of old Polaroid’s on the floor of the walkway as we walk by. We wander around for a while. On the way back I grab on of the Polaroid papers and it ended up still having the negative attached. Pretty nice pic too.

We make our way to the auditorium. This place was pretty cool we posed for a group pic here. We all held hymnbooks for the pic. I got a pretty cool pic in the attic through a window of a part of the building.

After getting into the hospital I had forgotten about the collapsed dome in the center. That’s where we went next. It was insanely cool. I love structural damage. I’d have taken some nice pics if I had my camera that day. As I was walking over a ladder used as a bridge to a section, on of the rungs broke and I had to grab a nearby door to not fall a story down into a pile of debris. I’m pretty sure no one noticed.

We head down to the basement, but the door is stuck. As Dan is trying to push it open we hear a “ding ding ding” the noise a car makes when a door is left open. We rush back up the stairs and peer out a window, we must have been right at one of his checkpoints. After narrowly escaping a confrontation with security we find another way into the basement, then find an exit and take off.

~Matt Fallout