Status: Demolished/Public park

Overbrook (a.k.a. Essex Mountain Sanatorium, Essex county Hospital Center) was the first “hospital” type site I had ever visited. I was out on a road trip up to New England with 3 of my good friends, when we decided to make a pit stop and snoop around. Essex Mountain intrigued us more than other places we heard about since we saw pictures of the giant buildings which were on the grounds. Unfortunately the largest, most interesting of the buildings were knocked down some time in the early 90’s. What was left in August of 2000 when we were there was 2 hospital buildings, a couple of garages and some Public Works buildings with a machine shop.

We first inspected the Public Works buildings but didn’t find anything to spooky about them other than an entrance to one of the underground tunnels. It’s too bad we were only armed with the light on our camcorder or we wouldn’t have doubled back out of the tunnel like a bunch of sissies. It was dark as hell down there and it looked like it lead straight into the one hospital building which was further down the trail. We then walked up to that hospital building to be greeted by tons of really bad graffiti. There was also some wacky poetry about death on the wall which was a bit unnerving. We weren’t able to find the other end of the tunnel, but did manage to find old beds, chairs, and a room with patient records and medication schedules strewn about the floor. That was freaky. It actually clued us in to what went on in this place when it was functioning as a tuberculosis clinic and later as an insane asylum.

After we had our fill, we started walking back down the hill to our car only to be picked up by the fuzz! Actually it was just grounds security, but we still felt busted. They were nice enough to give us a ride back to our car, but it sucked because they crammed all 4 of us into the back seat! That was very uncomfortable.

In mid 2002, all the remaining buildings were demolished. The grounds are now the “Essex County Hilltop Reservation”. It is the latest addition to the Essex County Park System, and open to the public.

- History by 5witchbhakk, 2003