Sanatorio Carlos Duran at Code|Beta

This past Sunday we took a road trip to the Irazu Volcano and in the way back we visited the abandoned hospital named after the Dr. Carlos Duran where people diagnosed with turberculosis would be taken to be treated.

A view of the hospital before arriving

The back of the hospital

This hospital was built around 1915 and because of it being very far away from the main populated cities it made it an excelent location for those that had tuberculosis. People would leave Cartago in the morning and would arrive late in the evening to the hospital where they would spend at least a year to be considered cured.

Years later the epidemic ceased and the cases that still existed around 1963 could be treated in local hospitals this hospital was closed down.

It’s mentioned in the history books that the hospital became a jail in later years but had to be closed in 1973 because the structure suffered severe damages, since it’s around 11 miles from the volcano, after the Irazu Volcano became active and had erupted. The building suffered damages on the roofs which made it unhabitable.

Nowadays the building is in decay and in a severe abandoned state but still can be visited and it’s open to the public. There are also clear signs of vandalism inside and outside of the building as the public is allowed to camp in the premises and it’s often said by those that have spend the night there that ghosts haunt the area. Entrance to the area costs 500 colones, which is a little less than a dollar at the time of this writing, and a little more if you want to spend the night there.

The main gate of the premises

While we were paying at the entrance I got out of the car to take some photos of the gate and the person at the gate said that he would need to charge more because of the camera I was using and that it was due to the fact that some people have done projects about the building and it’s history but I assured him that it wasn’t for anything like that. It appears that because I had my Nikon D60 he thought it was for some school or professional project and that if I had a simple point and shoot there wouldn’t be a need to charge more and this is a common misconception that the person with the bigger camera is a pro…which is not always the case as I could very well take great photos with a point and shoot and I still consider the extra charge to be upsurd but we left it at this not being a project of some sort. So my recommendation would be to take photos of the gate on your way out so that you don’t run into this problem.

The next question that arrises is where does all the money that they make from the visitors go? The building is in clear signs of decay and carelessness not to mention the fact that they don’t seem to be doing anything to actually safeguard whatever it’s left of the hospital since there are tons of graffitti everywhere you look and also bottles of alcohol laying around in a lot of places. All the glass from the windows is gone though some remain. They don’t even seem to be cutting the grass in the area. There are areas that are closed to the public without any reason.

The windows of the main building

Where they keep a lot of the pieces of wood, including doors and head boards from the beds

The basement of one of the surrounding houses

According to Byron there are relatively new buildings that were built and are not from the time that the hospital operated so it can only be assumed that it was from the time where the area served as a jail but I have no way to confirm at this time.

What appears to have been a laboratory and it’s the only room that has the center island

What appears to be a washroom is right next to what appears to have been a laboratory

There are a lot of bathrooms in this hospital and most appear to have been for rooms where a single person would stay because of their size. The bigger rooms didn’t have a bathroom local to them so people would have to share a collective bathroom and showers.

This was a pitch black bathroom and I used the flash and long exposure to light it up

This is one of the shots that I was hoping to get but wasn’t really planned when captured so the original had some camera shake in it but a couple of retouches ended on this which looks really good and creepy:

And for those who are wondering that is not a real ghost since it was my dad that was walking down the hall to exit the basement of the building…so far I didn’t see any ghosts so the haunted premises is still a theory told by those who have spent the night there.

Other of my favorite photos from the shoot: