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Apparently all of the stories' parts were removed in 2019 by the r/nosleep moderators as part of a movie contract (the original author deleted the account used to post it and switched to a new one, and they probably requested the mods to remove them instead), but so far no one has managed to archive it somewhere else. You can only view it using Removeddit.
I write this because as of now, I am not sure if I am privy to a terrible secret, or if I myself am insane. Being a practicing psychiatrist, that would obviously be bad for me both ethically and from a business standpoint. However, since I cannot believe I am crazy, I’m sending this story to you because you’re probably the only people who would even consider it possible. For me, this is a matter of responsibility to humanity.
Let me say before I start that I wish I could be more specific about the names and places I’ve mentioned here. But I do need to hold down a job, and can’t afford to be blacklisted in the hospital system as someone who goes around spilling the secrets of patients, no matter how special the case. So while the events I describe in this account are true, the names and places have had to be disguised, in order that I can keep my career safe while also trying to keep my readers safe.
What few specifics I can give are this: My story took place in the early 2000’s at a mental hospital in the United States. I was, at the time, going through my residency, and was assigned to assist the actual presiding physicians with their various duties, including therapy, prescriptions, etc. Normally, a resident doesn’t do any actual medical work on their own. You’re just supposed to watch and learn, for the most part. However, at this hospital, the staff was stretched so thin that I actually ended up less an assistant to the presiding physicians and more an unofficial equal of theirs, since I got little to no assistance with the patients I was assigned to treat.
This might’ve upset some residents, but I actually found it very refreshing. I’d graduated from one of the top medical schools in the country, and had taken this position primarily because I’d wanted to stay close to my then-fiancee, who was just finishing up her senior year at college, and this was the only hospital near her school. My professors tried to talk me out of it, saying such an appointment was beneath me, and that I could have better prospects, but my heart won out over my wallet. Besides, I told myself, it’d just be a job I’d take for a year, until my fiance had completed her studies and would be free to move on with me. About this much, at least, I turned out to be right.
Even so, if I’d known what that year would hold, I’d have reconsidered.
It probably won’t surprise you that working in a mental hospital, especially an understaffed one, is both fascinating and dreary. On the one hand, you get to encounter people with views of the world that would be darkly comical if they weren’t causing so much suffering. One of my patients, for instance, tried desperately to tell me that an undergraduate club at a certain elite university was keeping some sort of giant, man-eating monster with an unpronounceable name in the basement of a local restaurant, and that this same club had fed his lover to it. Actually, the man had seemingly had a psychotic break and killed his lover himself, but it wasn’t any good telling him that. Another, meanwhile, was sure that a children’s cartoon character had fallen in love with him, and had murdered some random internet artist for depicting her in a manner he found demeaning.
Then there were the three or so elderly black gentlemen, every one of whom thought they were Jesus, which made them all yell at each other anytime they were in the same room. The funniest part was that one of them even had some sort of background in theology and kept shouting random quotes from St. Thomas Aquinas at the others, as if this somehow made his claim to the title of Savior more authentic. Again, it would’ve been funny, if their situation hadn’t been so depressingly hopeless to watch.
But even among company like this, every hospital has at least one patient who’s weird even for the mental ward. I’m talking about the kind of person who even the doctors have given up on, and who everyone gives a wide berth, no matter how experienced they are. This type of patient is obviously insane, but nobody knows how they got that way. What they do know, however, is that it’ll drive you insane trying to figure it out.
Ours was particularly bizarre. To begin with, he’d been brought into the hospital as a small child and had somehow managed to stay committed in the hospital for over twenty years, despite the fact that no one had ever succeeded in diagnosing him. He had a name, but I was told that no one in the hospital remembered it, because his case was considered so intractable that no one bothered to read his file anymore. When people had to talk about him, they called him “Joe.” ,
But no one talked to him, because he never came out of his cell, and pretty much everyone was encouraged just to stay away from him, period. Apparently any kind of human contact, even with trained professionals, made his condition worse. The only people who saw him regularly were the people who had to change his sheets, or who had to make sure he took his medication. These visits were invariably eerily silent, and always ended with the staff involved looking like they’d drink a liquor store given the chance once they’d finished.
Being a young, ambitious doctor with a lot in the way of grades and little in the way of modesty, I was fascinated by this mystery patient, and as soon as I heard about him, made up my mind that I would be the one to cure him. At first I only mentioned this as a sort of passing, half-hearted joke, and those who heard me duly laughed it off as cute, youthful enthusiasm.
However, there was one nurse who I confided my wish to seriously. Out of respect for her and for her family, I’ll just call her Nessie, and it’s with her that this story really begins.
I should say a few things about Nessie, and why I told her in particular about this. Nessie had been at the hospital since she’d first emigrated from Ireland as a newly minted nurse in the 70’s. Technically, she was a night nurse, but judging from the hours she worked, you’d think she lived at the place, and seemed to always be on hand.
She also was an immense source of comfort to me and the other residents, who weren’t used to working on a mental ward at all, let alone one that was so understaffed. But Nessie seemed to know how to solve practically any problem that might arise. If a raging patient needed calming down, Nessie would be there, her fading black hair done up in a no-nonsense bun and her sharp green eyes flashing from her pinched face. If a patient was reluctant to take his medicine, Nessie would be right there to coax him into it. If a member of staff was absent for an unexplained reason, Nessie seemed to always be there to cover for him. If the entire place had burned down, I’m pretty sure Nessie would’ve been the one to tell the architect how to put it back just the way it had been.
In other words, if you wanted to know how things worked, or wanted advice of any kind, you talked to Nessie. This alone would’ve been reason enough to make me approach her with my rather naive ambition, but there was one other reason on top of all that I have said, which is that Nessie was the nurse on the night shift who’d been given the task of administering medication to “Joe” himself, and was thus one of the few people who spoke to him on any sort of regular basis.
I remember the conversation distinctly. Nessie was sitting in the beaten up hospital cafeteria, a worn styrofoam cup full of coffee held in her surprisingly firm hands. I could tell she was in a good mood because her hair was down, and Nessie seemed to adhere to the rule that the more tightly wound she was, the more tightly her hair should be done up. For her to leave it undone meant that she was probably as relaxed as I’d ever see her in months.
I filled a cup of coffee for myself, then sat down opposite her. Noticing me, her face opened into a rare unguarded smile, and she inclined her head in greeting.
“Hullo Parker. And how’s the resident child prodigy?” she asked, her voice still carrying a slight Irish lilt that somehow made it that much more comforting. I smiled back.
“Apparently, suicidal.”
“Oh dear,” she said with mock concern. “Should I get you a spot of the antidepressants, then?”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” I laughed. “No, when I say suicidal, I mean I’m thinking of doing something that everyone else will probably think is very foolish.”
“And since it’s foolish, you come and speak to the oldest fool on the ward. I see how it is.”
“I didn’t mean that!” I protested.
“Obviously, lad. Don’t shite your britches,” she said with a calming gesture. “So what is this daredevil stunt you’re thinkin’ of?”
I leaned in conspiratorially, allowing myself a dramatic pause before answering her. “I want to try therapy with Joe.”
Nessie, who had also been leaning in to hear what I was saying, sat back so suddenly and frantically you’d think she’d been stung. There was a splash as her coffee cup went flying to the floor. She crossed herself, as if by reflex.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she breathed, her full Irish accent flaring up. “Don’t go makin’ jokes about tha’, ye bloody eedjit. Didn’t yer mum ever tell ye not teh frighten poor old ladies?”
“I’m not joking, Nessie,” I said. “I really--”
But she cut me off. “Yes, you bloody well are joking, and that’s all you should ever be. Because otherwise oi’ll ‘ave to box yer ears, and there’ll be a loin o’ the rest of the ‘ospital staff behind me waiting their turn.”
Her green eyes were livid with anger now, but I could sense looking at her that it wasn’t at me. She looked like a bear who’d just pulled her cub out of danger. Gently, I put a hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry, Nessie. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The look of fury in her eyes softened, but it didn’t make her expression any better. Now she only looked haggard. She placed her hand on mine.
“It’s not your fault, lad,” she said, her accent fading as the fright faded from her features. “But you don’t have any bloody idea what you’re talking about, and it’s best you never find out.”
“Why?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong with him?”
Then, knowing she might not answer, I added, “Nessie, you know I’m too smart for my own good. I don’t like puzzles I can’t solve.”
“That’s not my fault,” she said coldly, her eyes hardening again. “But fine, if it’ll stop you. I’ll tell you why. Because every time I have to bring medicine into...his room, I start to wonder if it wouldn’t be worth locking meself up in this ‘ospital just to avoid ever ‘aving to do it again. I barely sleep from the nightmares I get sometimes. So take my word for it, Parker, that if ye’re as smart a lad as ye think ye are, ye’ll stay away from him. Otherwise, ye might end up in here with him. And none of us wants to see tha’.”
I wish I could say her words weren’t in vain. But in reality, they only made my curiosity burn hotter, though suffice to say, this was the last time I openly discussed my ambition to cure the mystery patient with a member of staff. In fact, now I had an even better reason: if I could cure him, Nessie and everyone else who had to deal with him would lose what sounded like the main source of misery in their lives. I had to find the records on him and see if I could come up with a diagnosis.
But no sooner had I resolved to follow this plan than I encountered one big problem: since no one had bothered to remember his name, requesting his file would’ve been tricky under the best of circumstances. Worse still, it would’ve only been on paper, because the hospital was ludicrously behind on digitizing its old records, which meant I’d have to find some way to convince the records office to let me see it. I once tried to request it, saying there couldn’t be more than one file that matched whatever it was he had, but as soon as the records clerk on duty realized who I was asking about, she told me to get out of her office in terms so colorful that I’m sure you can’t print them.
Eventually, I hit on a solution, though. The records clerk who’d screamed obscenities at me generally only worked from Monday to Friday, and was replaced by someone else on the weekends. I still had no idea what to look for, but decided to act on a hunch that the name “Joe” must’ve come from somewhere. Of course, I couldn’t go in and ask to see every patient whose name could’ve been shortened to “Joe” without arousing suspicion, but I knew that records clerks would probably expect residents to ask stupid questions. I put in a request to take the following Saturday off, which was swiftly approved, and waited with high anticipation.
When the day finally rolled around, I rushed to the hospital records room. There, I asked the very apathetic old man now sitting in the records office if he’d let me have a look at the “J” section, because I thought one of the old guys who thought he was Jesus might have seized on that name due to its being somehow close to his own real name. It was a ridiculous theory, even for a first year psych major, but the records guy was obviously too interested in getting back to whatever he had stashed under the desk to care. He let me in, gave me directions to where to go, and slurred at me that I’d better “put the f--king files back” when I was done before slouching back in his chair.
I didn’t need telling twice. I almost ran to the section he’d indicated and quickly started sorting through the massive number of files with either “Joseph,” “Jonah,” or even “Joe” as their listed names. I immediately ignored anything that had been entered after 1990,, since I knew the patient we had was supposed to be older than that, but this still left me with hundreds of files. However, most of these were easily dismissed as well, since most of them bore documentation showing that the patients involved had either died or had been discharged.
Only a handful of files remained once I had finished my search. Two referenced paranoid schyzophrenics who I recognized as two of the “Jesus” trio (my initial dumb excuse, ironically, had been correct). One showed a photo of a bald-headed man who I recognized as the cartoon lover. And then, there was the last one. I won’t write the patient’s full name, but his first name was indeed “Joe,” he’d been first admitted in 1982 at the age of 6, and he was marked as still in hospital custody. The file was so covered in dust that I doubted anyone had opened it in a decade, and so thick that it looked like it might burst.
But the clinical notes were still there, and in surprisingly good condition, along with a crude black and white photo of a fair haired boy giving the camera a wide-eyed stare. It made me feel like I was staring down a predator. Averting my eyes, I turned to the notes and started scanning them.
Reading these, I saw that the many doctors who’d told me that there was no diagnosis for what Joe suffered from had been actually misstating the truth. It wasn’t that there was no diagnosis. It was that there had been a couple, but that Joe’s symptoms seemed to unpredictably mutate. Most surprising of all, however, was that Joe had actually been discharged at one point very early on in his chronic brush with the mental health system, after only staying 24 hours in the hospital. Here are the full contents of the physician’s notes at the time:
June 5, 1982 Joseph (last name omitted) is a six-year-old boy suffering from acute night terrors, including vivid hallucinations of some sort of creature that lives in the walls of his room, and which emerges at night to frighten him. Joseph’s parents brought him in after one particularly violent episode, in which Joseph’s arms sustained significant bruising. He claims it was from the creature’s claws, but the more obvious solution would be to assume the wounds were self-inflicted. A full course of sedatives, along with some basic therapy, was prescribed.
June 6, 1982 In his therapy sessions, Joseph was quite cooperative, though it took some time to get him to be receptive to the attending physician’s explanation that the monster he thought he saw was really only his imagination. Even if the therapy didn’t take, though, the sedatives seemed to work, so we’ll be releasing him after monitoring him for an additional 24 hours.
I almost laughed. It seemed ridiculous that such a brief set of entries would become the prelude to decades of horror. Nevertheless, I pressed on. The notes indicated that Joe was apparently discharged after the additional 24 hours as promised. There was also a reference to an audiotape of Joe’s one therapy session, the number of which I was careful to write down in the notebook I’d brought with me.
However, the optimism of the doctors during Joe’s first visit had obviously been misplaced, because the next day, Joe was back again, this time with a much more serious set of disorders. And this time, he was never discharged. The notes from his second admittance follow:
June 7, 1982 Joe (last name omitted) is a six-year-old boy previously admitted for night terrors. A course of sedatives and some rudimentary coping techniques were prescribed. Unfortunately, instead of working, these measures seem to have worsened Joe’s psychosis, which has also changed markedly since his first admittance. Rather than fearing a monster that lives in his walls, Joe appears to have regressed to a pre-verbal state, while becoming unpredictable and violent.
In his first few hours of being admitted, Joe has already assaulted numerous members of staff, and has had to be restrained. It is notable that despite his being too young to know what he is doing, all his attacks have been on parts of his targets’ anatomy that are typically fairly vulnerable and/or sensitive to pain. The one exception was an elderly nurse who he kicked in the shin, but even this fairly routine bit of violence had an unintended consequence, as that particular nurse had just had extensive surgery done on her shin, and had to be sent home in a wheelchair as a result.
We have attempted therapy, but after one session, Joe made no progress. Instead, he only made bizarre clicking and scratching noises, and seemed incapable of bipedal movement throughout the entire session. Eventually, he became violent again, and had to be restrained. Furthermore, his condition degenerated when he was moved back to his room, as one orderly, Ashley M----- broke hospital protocol and told him angrily that he was a bad little boy for kicking and punching so much. This seemed to make Joe able to speak again, but far from leading to more lucidity, he instead began screaming abuse at Ms. M-----, mocking and belittling her with a variety of insults, almost all of which showed a level of psychological insight far beyond that of a six-year-old boy. They were so nasty that Ms. M----- herself requested leave and subsequently entered therapy herself, claiming that the words Joe had used had triggered traumatic memories for her.
Joe’s violence, combined with this variety of psychologically targeted abuse, suggest either some variety of child abuse, or else that he is a sociopath with paranoid delusions. Further study is needed.
Now fascinated, I flipped to the entry from the next day.
June 8, 1982 Joe continues to make no progress. However, we now believe we are dealing with at least some variety of sociopath, and a very precocious one at that. Today, when brought in for therapy, Joe began verbally assailing his therapist, Dr. A------ much the same way he had attacked Ms. M-----. However, the content of his insults were completely different and, once more, targeted with a high degree of precision at Dr. A------’s personal issues. Fortunately, Dr. A------ was able to disengage from the attacks and try to use them as a means of inquiring about the state of Joe’s mind. He was able to learn nothing from this, and eventually released Joe from therapy in disgust. Dr. A------ later stated that the whole episode made him more tempted to break his 20-year AA pledge than any patient had in 20 years.
No entries on Joe’s therapy followed this one. Apparently one session had been enough to make the writer and attending physician give up in disgust. I shook my head. Even an understaffed hospital should put in more effort than this. Indeed, the only item from even the same year was a curt note from the Chief of Medicine to keep Joe isolated from the rest of the population. For four years after that, there was nothing.
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