Dejarnette Sanitarium Exploration - "Virginia's Darkest Secret"

Comments · 107

• BE

  @beckywatkins5392 · 1 year ago

  I was a patient there in the 80's you were on the unit I was on. I can't believe I remember as drugged up as I was.

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• BA

  @BATA-Jason · 1 year ago

  I feel strange seeing this place after so many years. If y&apos;all think this place looks wild now, you should have seen it back in the 90s as a patient... I was a patient there. I&apos;m not insane, but back in the day if you eat a bunch of pills and try to take yourself out of this world and go to the hospital to have your stomach pumped they don&apos;t just let you go home after that. Honestly, I don&apos;t think I was trying to leave this world. I think I was just looking for attention,but the attention that I got was not what I was looking for. I experienced some crazy things while I was in Dejarnette, but I just assumed it was the medication that I was on. If I wasn&apos;t crazy when I got there I was definitely driven slightly crazy while I was there eating handfuls of medications 3 times per day. At night after my final dose, I was strapped to a metal fold out cott with velcro straps and I stared at the wall and ceiling while foaming at the mouth... Ironically I was put into that place for eating a bunch of pills and then after I was made a patient there, I was force-fed pills for breakfast lunch and dinner. I remember having a problem with the orderlies because they were taking my blood so much and I was getting tired of it. I thought they were trying to exsanguinate me. I definitely experienced some things while I was there, but most of what I remember was just honestly a sense of dread and depression. There&apos;s also a green room upstairs... I had never seen anybody get beat in there, but I heard them when they did and I was told by other residents that the color green covers up blood stains. For the most part things were calm in that place, but if you got unruly you were put in check real quick. I watched a kid get slammed to The ground by four suits before jabbing him in the buttocks with a syringe which took him to night night land real quick. The guards had black rubber sticks. They don&apos;t feel too good especially if they&apos;re cracked across your fingers for reaching out to grab something or if you were cracked across your shoulder for not moving fast enough... My generation was the guinea pigs for all of the medication that today&apos;s younger generation takes. I had forgotten about this place for decades and then my mother bought it up a little more than a year ago and it was like presto..... Instant flashbacks. I do remember one night myself and several other residents had earned the right to go into town late one night to get a pizza from a local pizzeria somewhere in the surrounding town. I remember when we loaded up into a white van the driver turned on the radio and for the first time I heard smashing pumpkins bullet with butterfly wings. Talk about a weird time to hear despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage. That was literally the first time I heard that song and a little bit into the song I spoke up to the driver and said could you turn that up. He looked to the lady in the passenger seat and she shrugged her shoulders and said sure and cranked it up. So there we were...a bunch of crazy teenagers with several orderlies from the hospital heading to a local pizzeria listening to smashing pumpkins for the first time. I&apos;m now a 46-year-old man and I live quite a normal life and have never been considered insane by anyone though some of my closest friends would probably say I&apos;m crazy like a fox.😅<br>I hope Youtube allows this comment to get out. I have felt this strange desire for about a year now to go back to this place. I guess my curiosity is just wanting to see what it would feel like if I walked back through those doors again. I don&apos;t know why I would really want to go back to this place there&apos;s not really any good memories from that place or that time in my life. Anyway merry Christmas everybody. I hope people get to read this and I hope that it&apos;s interesting to say the least. It is a true story. And yet still not as crazy as the drones flying over New Jersey right now 🤷🏽‍♂️

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• BO

  @booger4203 · 9 months ago

  I was a patient here in the Late 80&apos;s. I was one of the few that took off from the facility. I was gone for a couple of hours , but to return because It was cold. My privileges were taken away from me obviously. I was there for about a year maybe less. It&apos;s a time in my life that my memory seems to block out bits and pieces. &nbsp;I remember a patient there by the name of Brandy ( My name is Danny by the way ) we were good friends. I remember one of the staff members his name was Frank , I remember him cause he used to hum the song &quot;call me Al &quot; all the time. I remember sled riding out front of the facility ( they would let us outside if we all good. Some good memories out of a bad place.

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• DA

  @danielpollard7088 · 10 months ago

  I was there at 9 years old there were 1 per room it was 89 to 91. Very hard to remember

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• MA

  @managingmentalhealth6572 · 1 year ago

  I need to see this..<br> The abuse and mistreatment of &nbsp;these patients is &nbsp;just heartbreaking.. I almost was sent there in the 70s and 80s but thank God a hospital in Richmond took me

  2

• BI

  @billieprice6023 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Dejarnettes is still in &nbsp;Staunton VA. It&apos;s on the right at the top of the hill when you go to Western state hospital. The town is actually pronounced as Stanton. I was born there.

  3

• JA

  @jasonwilson3243 · 1 year ago

  I was a patient there from April 1992-September 1992. My room was shown in what was known as The Peery building. &nbsp;P2, 2nd room, facing the front of the building, to the left of the big dayroom.

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• NA

  @NarlyLyfe · 1 year ago

  I have a memory of when I&apos;m probably like 7 so it&apos;s 94 or 95 and I&apos;m visiting my Granny for about two weeks, she was still employed there, and she had a bunch of Sonic the Hedgehog color book papers that she had taken away from the Dejarnette Center because she thought Sonic was some type of bad character and when I found them I was so amazed and only wanted to color those and I was able to tell her about that no Sonic was cool, so after that she let them have the Sonic coloring books.

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• DA

  @davidcody9547 · 1 year ago

  I was a prisoner/patient here in the early 90s the shit i was made to endure in that building is awful. And I will always believe that place is the single reason why I was never able to have children. I&apos;m 48 years old be 49 this year still no kids. If i wasn&apos;t mentally ill before I definitely was after.😢😮

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• NA

  @NarlyLyfe · 1 year ago

  It was always called the Dee-jarnitt Center here in the Shenandoah Valley.

  2

• LO

  @Longbourngirl · 8 months ago

  Thanks for taking the risk to explore and share this video! &nbsp;I always wonder what those old abandoned places look like on the inside. &nbsp;I’m a nurse too, and the lay out is interesting. &nbsp;Maybe some of those big rooms were play areas? &nbsp;The colorful murals hopefully made the patients feel a little better. &nbsp;The small windows were probably pharmacy or lab. What went on here is so sad. &nbsp;I’m glad the explorers got away without the po po catching them!

  1

• VK

  @VKSasquatch · 3 months ago

  My great great uncle William Beckner was sent here after he left the Poor House in Roanoke. he was a little slow and had mild schizophrenia and epilepsy. He was here probably in the 1950s to the 70s or 80s. My cousin remembers visiting him and he hated it there he called his sister a Ole Witch B*tch for sending him there. After it closed he ended up in Martinsville at an assisted living facility and died in 1995.