Inside New York’s creepy abandoned leper colony known as Hell Gate where hundreds of disease victims – including Typhoid Mary – were locked up in quarantine for years
EERIE images show the abandoned ruins of an old leper colony on an island in New York.
The quarantine hospital on North Brother Island has been abandoned since the 1960s, and has long been a source of fascination for history buffs and people with a penchant for the creepy.
The quarantine hospital, which was active from 1885, was home to lepers and the infamous patient Typhoid Mary.
Mary was the first ever diagnosed asymptomatic carrier of a disease and infected scores of people throughout her life working as a cook.
Three people are confirmed to have died as a result of the disease she passed on to them.
But many more are thought to have been killed as she always moved on and often changed her name after starting another outbreak.
She was eventually forcibly quarantined on North Brother Island in 1915 and kept isolated until her death 23 years later.
A new tuberculosis wing was built in 1941, but became obsolete just two years later when a cure was discovered.
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After World War II, the grounds were used for housing for returned servicemen. Later, the island was reinvented as a heroin rehab centre.
At its peak, 40 buildings graced the island, including dormitories, a church, a lighthouse and a morgue.
But in 1963, the hospital was shuttered and the island abandoned by the city. It’s languished largely untouched since.
Today, North Brother can only be reached by boat, and only 26 buildings remain.
The half-collapsed structures are eerie, with tree branches growing through windows and rooms bare minus some rotting furniture.
Haunting images show what the creepy hospital looks like now, after many years of disrepair.
Rotting chairs can be seen lined up in a large hall and an empty rusting bedframe.
Isolated on an island and relatively free from vandals, the buildings have been left to decay naturally.
The facility therefore shows what the whole world might look like if humans were one day to disappear.
Pictures show nature beginning to reclaim the island as vines grow over and through some of the buildings that may have housed Typhoid Mary.
And books can be seen scattered across the floor mixed with rotting leaves in what may once have been the library.
The snaps were taken by American civil engineer and urban explorer Brendan Clinch, 31, from Long Beach, New York.
Clinch used a Canon 5D Mark II to capture the stunning yet creepy images.
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