In case you didn’t know, I’m in love with vintage stuff. My entire house is decorated with furniture from the 50s and 60s, and there are very few days that I don’t wear a vintage dress out and about. For me, vintage items bring sort of a happy nostalgia of times when design in both decor and fashion was just a bit more appealing. But sometimes vintage items aren’t always feel-good: in fact, sometimes they make you seriously think. And that’s the case with these intriguing suitcases that once belonged to mental patients in an asylum.
Each of these suitcases hold an individual story, but they all carry a common thread: their owners brought them into the asylum, but they never made it out. They serve as haunting pieces of mental health history and provide insight to the lives of those who passed away behind locked doors. Head on over to the source to read even more about these fascinating pieces of history. [via Collectors Weekly]
Which of these is most interesting to you?
guest
Honestly, I can’t read a lot of the writing so none of them seem eerie to me. Like the one with all the journals in them… all I can see is that they had journals. Whoa, what a crazy. Some captions explaining what the items are would be nice.
guest
I am not seeing eery at all. I see the items that a person that most likely had nothing wrong with them who was sent away to be forgotten about. I see photographs of the people they loved, journals, and special items that were probably well loved.
guest
I didn’t find any of these suitcases (or the contents) eerie, except for the thoughts I conjured up thinking about what might have happened to the people once the asylum doors were closed.
guest
Wow, so interesting.
guest
any one who feels the need to carry around a pamphlet called “A Primer on Race” has got to be two Hitlers short of blitzkrieg!
guest
I found them more fascinating or sad than eerie, but captions would have been helpful because some of these things I can’t see/read.
guest
Adding the words “Insane Asylum” to something doesn’t make it Eerie. It’s just a bunch of old shit, in an old suitcase.
Show me a suitecase full of human heads or little fucked up voodoo dolls, and then we can talk.
guest
Does make me feel kinda sad looking at the ones with writings and pictures.
Is that an actual gun in the last thumbnail?
But yeah, the main picture looks pretty questionable to me. “A Primer on Race”…I wonder what that is all about. :O
guest
You really find these “eerie?” You must truly be a silly girl.
guest
I’ve read a good bit on these suitcases in the past and it was questioned why the patients weren’t allowed to have pictures of their family or their Bibles. Some of that I could see as hazardous, ceramics are breakable, hair curlers you could burn yourself, etc. But they have been linked to some of the worst psychiatric wards (staff wise) in history. They think stuff was purposely held from patients in an effort of abusive tendencies.
And then that does make it eerie, because you question what did happen to those people, because back in those days patients would be pushed down steps by staff and they would tell the family they died in their sleep and nobody would pursue it anymore. The family member with the mental illness was often a nuisance and while they weren’t happy per se, they weren’t sticking up for her/him either.