My mother grew up in an infamous mental institution in Massachusetts, now closed, and I won't name the facility for privacy's sake. She was placed in state custody in 1948, at six years old, because my grandmother, a Portuguese gypsy immigrant (and closet psychotic), claimed she was mentally disturbed. In actuality, my grandmother was not capable of raising her so she successfully pawned her off on the state. My mother was not only a beautiful and innocent child, she was totally mentally capable and 100% sane.

In those days there was no system in place for accurately assessing a child's mental condition. They simply took the parents' word for it. After living at various orphanages and state facilities, she ended up at this institution just outside of Boston. The place was notorious for paranormal activity, even on the outer grounds where some of the buildings once stood. My mother was about twelve when she got there. She said there were many mentally and physically incapacitated young people there and the stories she has told us about "the school" (or "the institution") were both heartbreaking and terrifying. There were mental abuses, deprivations, beatings, medical experiments on patients, and cruel punishments galore. So called "professional care" was barbaric and even the terminology was outdated. My mother's own records, which I've seen myself, showed her mental assessment as "moron", even though she said she was never really tested by any mental health professional.

When she was around thirteen, she began helping the other patients whenever she could. She would bandage their injuries, break up fights, and speak to the matrons on behalf of those who could not speak. This created enemies among the staff who knew she was not handicapped and who felt she was a threat to their employment. Therefore, whenever they could, they punished her severely. One such punishment led to a horrifying encounter with the supernatural.

One dark, stormy afternoon, Mom had had words with a matron, trying to tell her that certain handicapped children were frightened of the thunder and that they should not be forced to go outside to exercise that afternoon. The matron appeared to give in, then asked my mother to please go down into the cellar of the building to get the rain gear for those who wanted to go outside. Mom was terrified of that cellar, and the matron knew it. There was a long, steep, narrow, rickety stairway ending at a long, dark hallway with no windows and just a tiny yellowish light bulb in the ceiling. At the end of the hallway there was a cabinet that contained raincoats, boots, etc.

When my mother hesitantly stepped onto the stairway, the matron slammed the door, bolted it shut behind her, and shut off the light. My mother screamed and pounded on the door for an hour, only to be laughed at by matrons who had been instructed to let her spend the night down there. The stairs being steep and dangerous, she decided that she would rather creep to the bottom and at least huddle on the damp floor. As she descended, she noticed a dim light coming from the long hallway beneath her. She came to the bottom of the stairs and looked ahead. She said she saw a man in a dark jumpsuit about twenty feet from her, leaning against the wall and just smiling at her. She thought he must have been a custodian, so she walked towards him, asking him to please let her out. But, as she approached him, he kept getting further away. She realized he was not a solid being and that the dim light seemed to be coming from his outline. The light began to fade and she found herself screaming again, only in the total dark of the dingy basement. She was disoriented and stumbled forward until she bumped into the cabinet which held the rain gear. As she squinted in the dark, she began to make out shapes forming on either side of the cabinet. What appeared to be a pair of detached hands forming a clawed shape were coming from around opposite sides of the cabinet and heading for her.

She turned and ran, faint with terror, until she tripped on the bottom step. Frozen with fear, she could only sit on the bottom step and cover her face with her hands. After a minute or so, she peeked through her fingers down the hallway. The strange dim light was back. She chanced to look down and what she saw filled her with horror. One of the smoky floating hands was reaching for her skirt hem as if to pull at it. She, again, screamed and ran back up the stairs, tripping and falling several times in the dark, convinced she was being chased. The air was cold and she heard a strange rustling sound behind her as she frantically climbed. When she reached the top of the stairs, she pounded furiously on the door and found that it had been unlocked. She never found out who unlocked it, but she didn't care either. She ran all the way to her room and hid on her bed. She never told the school staff what had happened, fearing reprisals, and she never stepped foot in that cellar again despite the punishment of defiance.

She's fine today, despite her horrific youth. There were many other strange happenings there during her stay, but I am considering a book about them and I want her to reap the benefits of its sales if it happens. I'll save the creepier stuff for that.