A Monster In Fact
Copyright © 2005, The Ladd School.com - Written by The Curator

Surely the stories and superstitions which surround the Ladd School are as much a part of it's legacy as is it's factual base in history; however, it has been our contention from the very beginning of this project that the reality of the Ladd School far outweighs the fictitious ghost stories that preceed it. What we mean is, it isn't necessary to deal in exaggeratations when telling an account of one's experiences there. For to our sensibilities, The Ladd school, like it's contemporaries, has about it a certain kind of mana - call it spirit, if you will - that permeates the very atmosphere, within and about it's buildings and grounds. There is a definite signifigance about it; you can feel it in the air.

That being said, we have been inside all seven of the abandoned structures that remained at the turn of the 21st century, most of them more than once, for a total of 13 entries having been made, each one beginning just before midnight and expiring shortly before daybreak. We have shot in excess of 4 hours of video and have taken more than 200 still photographs, and have expended countless hours over several years researching the origins and circumstances of its existence. Certainly, we have had experiences there that seemed to us strange or remarkable; certainly there were moments during which we were frightened. However, in all our time there, we have never been able to account for an apparition or anything so overt in evidence of the presence of ghosts, so to speak.

Surely then you can understand how some certain descriptions of entities, as have been circulating, to us sound more like charactures of actual places and events. For instance, while we would agree that it is puzzling to decipher the former role of some rooms at the hospital, we have never come across any sure evidence of the inclusion of padded rooms. In fact, in such cases, we have been able to refer to maps and documented descriptions of the contents of each the Ladd School buildings. Granted, the rooms we have been able to identify as isolation rooms are not identified in any description of a building's construction; but likewise, there has been no evidence or indication of the presence of cages at the Ladd School. One good reason for this is because the Ladd School was a State School; sterilization, electroshock therapy and the incarceration of the insane were all conducted some 20 miles away at the State Hospital. Therefore the tall, wooden, padded wheelchairs that some folks have found at the Ladd School are not "shock chairs", but rather they are "vegetable carts", specialized wheelchairs of some antiquity serving to prop upright the physically paralyzed.

So as you can see, much has been blown out of proportion, it seems. This observable phenomenon we understand to be the inner working of urban legend, and as such do not mean to reduce it's role by examining it's every constituent. Instead, by recognizing the elements of this thing, we hold truer to the contention that what the literature and word of mouth seem to indicate indeed is the existance of a monster in fact.

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