Note — This series has been enhanced and republished HERE: http://www.searchformygrandparents.com.

Have you ever seen the Martin Scorcese film Shutter Island? In the movie, U.S. Marshals Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island in Boston Harbor. They are investigating the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando, who was incarcerated for drowning her three children. Needless to say, good things do not happen.

Or else maybe you’ve seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and had nightmares about Nurse Ratched.

Well….I can’t say what it’s like now, but the old and abandoned Rockland Psychiatric Hospital seems also be a pretty scary place.

Here’s a short description from The Abandoned Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, NY is Now the Stuff of Nightmares by Jinwoo Chong.

“The semi-abandoned Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, NY, formerly Rockland State Hospital, was one of the many asylums built during a particular time period in American history that sought, at least at first, to approach mental illness with spaciousness and tranquility. Opened in 1931, like most, it fell as treatment evolved from an agrarian philosophy to the use of more controversial methods. In addition, several unique cases of negligence and patient death marred its reputation.

At the start, it contained over 5,000 beds, and by 1959 was treating over 9,000 patients with around 2,000 on staff. Even with 2,000 staffers, however, the hospital languished throughout the two World Wars when doctors and nurses kept getting drafted to the army. Reports showed 300 patients assigned to one psychiatrist, at one point. Most patients alive today, many of whom comment with their own stories on blog posts and web tours of the abandoned hospital, reference some forms of treatment that would be considered abusive today.”

The article contains a lot of very creepy pictures. Like this:

Note: Many of the exterior scenes for the series Orange is the New Black were filmed here.

Yikes. So there was no fiery demise for my grandparents, but there was this.

And then what?

After we got the news of where they were in 1940, Bro Joe proceeded to contact the folks at Rockland to try and find out what happened next. At which point, as you might guess, we ran into the most dreaded of all creatures. Standing guard to resist the inquiries of grandchildren and genealogists. The source from which all of the paper springs.

Yes, the dreaded HIPAA.

For those not steeped in document regulation, I mean the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

Bro Joe had a series of contacts that ran something along these lines:

Bro Joe: We’d like to find out what happened to my grandparents.

Them: “Well, we can’t release any medical records because that would be a HIPAA violation.”

Bro Joe: “But these people would be dead and we are their grandchildren.”

Them: “But we can’t release any records without a death certificate.”

Bro Joe: “But isn’t it obvious they are dead? They’d be something like 120 years old by now.”

Them: “You still need a death certificate.”

I’m sure this was what was intended when HIPAA was put in place.

So….all well and good, except we had no idea where or when these people died, two pieces of information that are pretty critical in order to file a request for a death certificate in the state of New York. Otherwise the costs are prohibitive — and they still might not turn up anything.

Now what?

Other chapters in the series:

The Search for my Grandparents — Chapter 1 — The Starting Line

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 2 — Meet the Brady Bunch!

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 3 — Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Sarah McEvoy!

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 4 — Why Sarah “Had to Leave” Ireland

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 5 — Where We Reconnect with Frank and Elizabeth

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 6 — The Story of Ne’er-do-well Grandfather Number One

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 7 — The post where the 1940 Census is released and we unexpectedly run into Frank and Elizabeth again

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 8 — The post where we find out really creepy things about the Rockland Psychiatric Hospital and expect to meet Nurse Ratched

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 9 — Ancestry and our WTF Moment

The Search for My Grandparents — Chapter 10 — And the Death Certificates Arrive

And not technically in this series, but related — The Pushmi-Pullyu Impact of Technology Innovation on Information Preservation

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Chapter 8 — The post where we find out really creepy things about the Rockland Psychiatric Hospital and expect to meet Nurse Ratched