Styled spooky couple’s shoot- Northern State Hospita l Haunted dairy farm

This shoot was SUCH a blast. Meeting up with two Seattle Actors to just PLAY, to tell a story, and just explore, a dream for me. I could seriously do that every day of my god damn life. FOR REAL.

I shot this before I offered Moody Couple’s Sessions on my website and in my business. I wanted to practice a lot before I offered it, and I just LOVE what we made on this day. Thank you TABITHA AND NICK!

Tabitha and Nick and I met up at the Northern State Hospital’s dairy farm in Sedro Wooley, Washington. Open to the public, this spot offers lots of textures and colors, a few creepy feelings, some walkers and trouble makers, and an occasional frustrating graffiti explosion. I love it here, and the history is facinating.

“Love is a serious mental illness” Plato

Once the largest facility for mentally ill people in Washington State, Northern State Mental Hospital was a town unto itself. The hospital was established in 1909 after the over-crowded conditions at Western State Hospital came under public criticism. Northern State’s grand opening happened in 1912.

In the early 1900s, Washington’s two insane asylums were becoming over crowded. In response, that state had the Northern State Mental Hospital built to ease the strain on the system. It quickly became the most crowded hospital in Washington state, with over 2000 patients by the 1950s.
At one time in the 1950s about 2,700 patients lived at Northern State. This was the full capacity of the hospital according to the superintendent at the time, but he was still being pressured to take on more patients. The public perception of mental hospitals began to change in the 1970s, and Northern State Mental Hospital closed its doors in 1976 after the State Legislature cut off funding. Some of the buildings, including the farm’s housing ward, have since been torn down.

You can also visit the old cemetery, which is the resting place of at least 1,500 people under UNMARKED graves.

“Like many mental asylums in the 1900s, grisly experiments were performed on the patients, some of which may have been part of a top-secret program called MK Ultra. Patients were subject to “treatments” like electroshock therapy, insulin shock therapy, and lobotomies, all of which are incredibly controversial and considered inhumane. Heavy sedation with powerful drugs was also a common form of treatment.

Electroshock therapy is still practiced today, though the electric shocks are much weaker than they were decades ago. Now called electroconvulsive therapy, ECT is performed by applying short electrical jolts to the brain, which induce small seizures. The procedure has been used as an attempt to cure depression, autism, delirium, catatonia, and several other disorders, with mixed results. Side effects include heart arrhythmias, changes in brain structure, and cognitive impairment.”

In its day, the Northern State Hospital was comprised of four wards connected by a series of underground tunnels. Screams reverberated from the wards housing the most violent.

Just reading about these old mental institutions makes me glad that I am alive in this time period. Reasons for admission into the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia from 1864 to 1889 included laziness, egotism, disappointed love, female disease, mental excitement, cold, snuff, greediness, imaginary female trouble, "gathering in the head," exposure and quackery, jealousy, religion, asthma, masturbation, and bad habits. Spouses used lunacy laws to rid themselves of their partners and in abducting their children.

UNBELIEVABLE! And the GHOSTS!

You can find Tabitha’s website HERE and follow her on Instagram HERE

And you can find Nicholas HERE ON INSTAGRAM