Hidden In The Basement of Danvers State Hospital

What happens when a wall hides more than it should? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore two unsettling, very real stories where history was quietly sealed away—literally and figuratively. First, we descend into the forgotten basement of Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, where renovation crews in the 1990s uncovered a bricked-over corridor that didn’t exist on any blueprints. Inside were intact treatment rooms, restraint fixtures, and medical equipment from an era psychiatric institutions would rather forget. No records. No documentation. And once discovered, the space was quietly sealed again. Then we shift to a powerful and often overlooked chapter in American medical history: Freedom House Ambulance Service in Pittsburgh. In the 1960s, a group of Black paramedics—trained at an unprecedented level—quietly invented modern emergency medical care. They saved hundreds of lives, revolutionized on-scene treatment, and laid the foundation for today’s EMS systems… before being erased from history when the city took over the program. Along the way, we talk about institutional amnesia, medical ethics, abandoned practices, historical erasure, and why the scariest stories are often the ones that actually happened. Because sometimes the question isn’t what’s haunting a place—It’s what was deliberately forgotten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices