Today, I share with you the quiet, empty halls of the abandoned Brecksville VA hospital. This hospital was simply discarded one day, and left to Mother Nature’s hands. The passing of time has pushed normality from these halls, filling them with darkness and decay.

As we inch towards Halloween day-by-day, I figured it would be as good a time as any to share the numerous collections of photos I have taken over years of eerie, abandoned hospitals, asylums and the like.

The Brecksville VA facility held 999 beds for veterans and sits on 87 acres of land once filled with chatter and foot traffic. Though the grounds now sit void of human interaction, life here was once the complete opposite – in fact, when the hospital was constructed and opened in 1961, it was one of the United States’ largest VA hospitals.

This hospital was one of many built using left over money placed by the federal government in 1945. One billion dollars were set aside, and would be used to build facilities to serve the mass number of veterans in need of care.

The hospital was heated by the burning of coal, which would have to be burned 24/7 in order to heat the entire complex, which contained dozens of buildings. In 1970, the hospital was faced with accusations of polluting the city’s air, forcing them to make the switch to cleaner-burning materials such as oil and gas. By 1971, the hospital had complied and converted to cause less pollution.

Pollution was not the only issue faced by this hospital, but problems linked to backlash by the community surrounding it. During the 1970s, many US citizens were less than supportive of returning veterans of the Vietnam War.

Mental patients placed in the hospital were finding ways to wander from the grounds and into the public, which frightened many people. Complaints continued through the years, and by the early 1980s, the hospital had compiled several dozens of convictions, including scandals involving the theft and sale of prescription drugs.