This historic Chicago hospital was shuttered due to a series of premature deaths and reports of unnecessary suffering. Inside, the hallways, laboratories and examination rooms look incredibly untouched and more than a little creepy.
Read on to learn more about the site, and check out the eerie images photographer Ken Fager captured at this abandoned hospital.
The Edgewater Hospital was founded in 1929 by Dr. Maurice Mazel.
Flickr/Ken Fager
During Mazel’s time, the hospital saw the birth of Hillary Clinton and notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Flickr/Ken Fager
The Mazel family oversaw the hospital until the 1980s.
Flickr/Ken Fager
In 1989, the hospital was sold to businessman Peter Rogan. Rogan then sold the medical center real estate to the Edgewater Property Company, which he owned.
Flickr/Ken Fager
The crooked businessman forced the medical center to pay $79,500 per month in rent to his property company.
Flickr/Ken Fager
This money would go directly into his own pockets.
Flickr/Ken Fager
Under Rogan’s ownership, doctors and staff began receiving cash kickbacks for committing fraud against Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies.
Flickr/Ken Fager
Unbelievably, the hospital even had “recruiters” who would go out into the city and try to find patients.
Flickr/Ken Fager
These patients were often perfectly healthy. Others had drug addictions, were unable to speak English or had no insurance.
Flickr/Ken Fager
The recruiters would train the patients how to fake symptoms in order to mandate treatment.
Flickr/Ken Fager
The patients were paid in money, food and cigarettes for their cooperation.
Flickr/Ken Fager
Unnecessary heart surgery, performed for the sole purpose of billing the insurance companies, claimed the lives of multiple patients at this hospital.
Flickr/Ken Fager
The hospital was even billing the government for treatment on patients who had died years before.
Flickr/Ken Fager
Eventually, this blatant corruption led to multiple federal investigations and lawsuits.
Flickr/Ken Fager
The corrupt doctors were stripped of their medical licenses and many received jail sentences.
Flickr/Ken Fager
After its closure in 2002, the hospital settled into an eerie, post-apocalyptic silence.
Flickr/Ken Fager
These haunting images were taken nearly 15 years after its abandonment, and almost everything is untouched.
Flickr/Ken Fager
This place may have served some patients well, but so many were caught in a web of corruption and malpractice. In February of 2017, the city of Chicago approved the demolition of half of the Edgewater Medical Center. Demolition began in March.
Flickr/Ken Fager
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