I lived in Manteno for years without knowing this place existed.

Separated from the rest of town, the former grounds of the Manteno State Mental Hospital feel almost like another place entirely. Once I learned what had been here, I had to see it for myself.

There is an uneasy feeling that comes with driving these roads.

Many of the buildings still stand. Some are sealed. Some are slowly decaying. Others have been repurposed and returned to useful life. But everywhere there are small reminders of what this place once was—a faded bomb shelter sign, an old clock protected by a metal cage, institutional buildings that have somehow survived long after the institution itself disappeared.

And beneath it all, supposedly, are the tunnels.

I've heard stories of a vast network connecting the buildings and of local kids exploring them years after the hospital closed. Whether every story is true almost doesn't matter. Places like this collect stories.

What is undeniable is that thousands of people once lived and worked here.

Doctors and nurses came to work. Patients arrived for treatment. Families came to visit. People recovered and went home. Others spent years of their lives here. Some never left.

When I walk these grounds with a camera, I'm not really photographing an abandoned hospital. I'm photographing the traces of a life that has disappeared.

A doorway. A window. An empty road. A building slowly being reclaimed by time.

Ghosts, in a sense—not necessarily the supernatural kind, but the evidence that people were here.

I started photographing this place much later than I wish I had. Every year, another building changes, disappears, deteriorates, or finds a new purpose. The hospital is slowly being erased from the landscape even as pieces of it remain hidden in plain sight.

So I keep coming back.

Sometimes I drive through. Sometimes I get out and walk.

And every time I do, I find myself wondering about the people who once walked these same grounds—and how much of their story is still here, waiting to be noticed.