13 eerie photos inside abandoned mental hospitals all over the US

Christopher Payne

Harlem Valley State Hospital, Wingdale, New York.

Massive mental hospitals, some of which once housed hundreds of thousands of patients, were the primary mode of treatment for those with mental illnesses for centuries. But by the 1960s, asylums all over the US were closing down in reaction to reports of abuse and neglect, as well as the passage of new healthcare laws that emphasized a community-based treatment approach.

As a result, many formerly packed mental hospitals have been left standing totally vacant. Over the course of six years, photographer Christopher Payne traveled to 70 of these abandoned mental hospitals all over the US, getting exclusive tours inside each. The resulting photos are chilling, yet beautiful in their own way.

"For this project, my goal was to reconstruct a typical state hospital in its heyday, when it functioned as a self-sufficient community," Payne told Business Insider. "It was impossible to find one hospital with everything intact, but by juxtaposing a photograph of a theater from one hospital, a morgue from another, a bowling alley from a third, and so on, an entire institution could be recreated."

Payne turned his photographic journey into a book titled "Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals." Below, see his eerie photos of abandoned mental hospitals all over the US.