Did you assume I was perfect? There was only one perfect man, and look what they did to him...

Childhood innocence/human nature satire here people, please read more thouroughly, least you miss the author's intent.

A feeling of certain doom? Surely "Certain Doom" would inspire more than a FEELING?

I mean, if I even HEAR a creak in my house at night, i go into "fight or flight" mode.

Put it this way, if I see doom looking a bunny rabbit, does that make me insane?

I am the very definition of contradiction, like my namesake. I was listening to NIN "The Day the Whole World Went Away" while reading your reply...

I saw this show the other night on one of those "edutainment" stations like Discovery, it was about "Real life" Vampires. I then thought of how seriously and rigidly I took myself when I was a teenager, and how much freer I had become as I aged.

It makes you wonder if those that reach Nirvana just get so free, that they just cease to exist as a physical being, since the constraint of living life itself is overcome? Just musing here of course, I don't have a clue what I am talking about.

What gloom, besides the self-imposed kind do you see?

I would wager a lot of money that it was shoved out of the way by some security guy who didn't want to trip on his route, or an inspector checking to see if the building was still safe enough to leave standing.

Its not like there was this The Ring-like person screaming in the chair, and then some exaggeratted horror-cliche orderly came in and chopped them up, while their family waited outside in a white minivan waiting for their daughter to be released, which of course she never was....

Stop being so darn gothic and sensationalistic.

Yeah....ghosts.

Does anyone actually beleive that the spirits leave behind anything?

Feelings and emotions you get from viewing a picture, or from looking at something in real life are just that, constructs of your humanity. Its the same as color, there IS no color, its just light being reflected back to our eyes being interpreted by our brain.

So there IS no emotion without life, therefore any emotion you feel while looking at such picture is NOt a remnant of the past any more than looking at a broken pencil is.

"TIme stopped, the people disappeared and left everything behind..."

So what, its Marilyn Manson, dyed black stringy hair, no deoderant, and black fingernails as required by the "Death-Lovers Gothic Handbook" this year right? I wasn't sure if it was Ok to still liek Trent Reznor, now that hes middle aged, chubby, and has short hair.

"I must say people are projecting their own issues onto this picture"

Replace "this" with "these", add an "s" to picture, and apply it to the entire site, and you have a truth that applies to most, if not all of the user comments.

Wheelchairs, and so that you can push it open with your foot, if your arms are..full.

i visited a prison (drug offenses, assaults, break and enter, etc) as part of a university course, I was stricken by how all they have to do is walk around all day in circles in rooms just like these, marginalizing furthur.

I don't sympathize with criminals, but I DO comdemn the notion of "social punishment" as a tool other than deterance, which doenst work ANYWAY. POSITIVE reinforcement, as B.F. Skinner showed, is a MUCH easier and reliable tool than negative reinforcement.

Don't you think OTHER wannabe "vampires" come here as well? Of course, since most gothic people are immature teenagers, I guess while "Prince Arathor" wasn't looking, his buddy "Coven Moranon" succumbed to a little teenage potty humor urge.

Green? Ever see trees?

I daresay like most other institutions, the patients were mostly calm, just a bit "off" so to speak. The people commenting on here seem to have this romantic "gothic" view of these buildings, as in, that everything is dark, and full fo THEMES. Sometimes, crazy just means unable to adhere to soceities norms.