Marlene Tenney
As a kid, Marlene avoided the Weston State Hospital. It wasn't because her great aunt died there, it was because of the scary stories that were told to kids. "You walked by and you could hear them yelling and screaming," she remembers.
Later, Marlene started working at the hospital. When she first started, she recalls, "the worst thing was when I walked on the ward and that door locked behind me. I knew exactly how those patients felt."
When Marlene lead tours there, she would tell the people with her about the patients slamming doors when they got upset. "They took both hands, all they got, and slammed it." She would reach over and show them, slamming it shut. And it would "kaboom all the way through that place."
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Marlene remembers the nights when a patient would be upset. They would go "hollering up and down the unit and slamming doors. Sometimes you didn't get much sleep over there." The next day, the other patients on the ward would be irritable from lack and sleep. And usually "the one who caused all the ruckus slept the next day."
While Marlene was working there, her unit would joke around with the unit below. There was a hole in floor where the telephone cord went down. There was a male nurse in Marlene's ward who was dating a nurse on the floor below. Marlene and the other nurses in her ward would drop notes down the hole, telling the other nurse they were holding her boyfriend for ransom. "We used to do all kinds of ornery things like that," Marlene said, "but we didn't do things that got people hurt or bad things to embarrass them or anything like that. It was just little things to pass the night away because the nights were long.
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In front of the hospital there used to be an L-shaped pavilion where patients would go in the evenings. Marlene remembers that sometimes when she worked the evening shift everyone would go out there, sometimes in the afternoon, and come back out after supper, and sometimes stay until eight or nine o'clock, when it got dark. Sometimes they would take a radio, and other times bands would come in and play. "We had some people that could really sing. We had times where we had karaoke." Marlene said. There were "awesome voices."
The hospital also had its own green house and the patients were allowed to plant flower or other plants there. "Of course when we had the greenhouse," Marlene said, "some of them liked doing the plants, and properly did them, and others didn't, and some of them tried to drown them."
By the time Marlene started working at the hospital, it had already ceased to be a social place for the town, but there were still a few events that went on. For Christmas in July people in the town would "pull together" and donate clothing, make-up, and other things. Today there is still a craft show which sells patients' art from Sharpe, the new hospital.
In some of the earlier days however, there were many more events at the hospital. There would be masquerade balls, picnics, and even weddings held there. The "stairwell was to die for," Marlene said, "for a bride to come down that stairway was just out of this world." The town people even saw their first movie at the hospital in the multi-purpose room.
For Marlene, the Weston State Hospital is more than just a building. To her, it's almost human. "A building needs people. A building deteriorates faster in the time that the children are out of school in the summertime than it does in all the rest of the years when they're running in and out. People moving around, dusting and cleaning and being in a building keeps a building alive." It's also a "tribute to all those people that did all that work, to be able to hand-cut all those stones and get them hauled up there and get them placed."
Click here to listen to Marlene.
Ghost Stories
Some believe there are ghosts at the Weston State Hospital, others don't. Marlene does believe in them, because of what she and others have seen. Several years ago, Marlene was taking a woman through the building. The woman was spooked by the old building, and said, "Get me out of here. I don't like it here, it's spooky here." According to the woman, she saw a man dressed in early 1900s clothes, and heard footsteps follow them through the building. They never found anyone.
Guards at the hospital used to hear people walking in the building, but when they searched the whole building, no one was ever found. Another time guards were in the main building and could see someone in the window of the TV building hanging. When they went over there, they couldn't find anyone.
Other times, the piano would occasionally "strike up and play one chord or two and that was it."