The Sanctuary
The Sanctuary History
In 1913, humanitarian Charles Labrie began building The Sanctuary. This was to be one of many institutions for the socially discarded and alienated mentally ill. Born in Paris, France on Oct. 14, 1873 and part of a direct descendent of the Bonaparte dynasty, Charles was exposed to the greatest minds Europe had to offer. He excelled in all facets of scholastics, music and athletics.
Upon finding an old Thirteenth Century Bible which belonged to his mother, he seemed to have an obsession with the Old Testament and developed a special affinity for theology throughout the years. By his 30th birthday he had visited over 20 countries including Israel, Africa and the United States being exposed to many different religions and cultures while accompanied by his childhood mentor and caretaker.
Since his youth, Charles had been plagued with the guilt and burden of his younger sister's affliction. She was born with severe schizophrenia. Although misdiagnosed as "childhood madness" and then throughout her adolescent years the diagnosis progressed into other terms such as "lunacy", "insanity", "dementia" and "derangement". As the maddening worsened he would observe more and more violent behavior as well as her erratic hallucinations.
Charles watched as his sister spiraled into a darkness which he could not comprehend. She was constantly probed and prodded while being shackled and restrained. In his early 20's she was taken away and institutionalized. During his travels he observed many asylums for the insane and visited thousands suffering from the same disease and vowed that he would make it his life's mission to help anyone who had been afflicted with mental illness.
His plans were to build the best institution in the world. He travelled once again to the United States as the US was growing rapidly and had reached a population of 100 million. Charles visited the first US institution established in Williamsburg, Virginia and made notes of how he could improve treatment and move toward a more humane and moral therapy. He purchased a 4-acre plot of land and broke ground in 1913 and began building.
The soil was extremely odd for Oklahoma earth. Surprisingly, there was an overabundance of extremely foreign roots and stone which were not indigenous to the region and had to be excavated and removed in order to lay the foundation. After 4 years and the threat of a World War In 1917, The Sanctuary had finally opened its doors and began filling with hundreds of afflicted. Word spread fast throughout the country that Charles Labrie, noble and affluent humanitarian had opened the most advanced institution in the country.
He employed the most critically acclaimed doctors in the field and funded the entire operation of his own accord. The Sanctuary was considered to be on the cutting edge of neurological treatment. Many surgeons and students of neurology flocked to visit The Sanctuary traveling as far as eastern Asia. For 25 years the institution was praised and heralded as the premiere facility for humane and progressive treatment. During the early 1940's The Sanctuary began to experience a bizarre physical transformation as the earth beneath its foundation began to loosen and creep into the building.
The sights and sounds of stone on stone erupting through the floors and ceilings were astonishing. Roots and vines began to penetrate the concrete floor. This unexplained phenomena was quite perplexing to Charles, but also very intriguing. The infiltration of "The Ruins" as he deemed the onslaught of the ancient grounds filling his halls was most apparent in the Southwest wing of The Sanctuary. There were fantastic and extraordinary shaped stones that erupted through the floor and walls as if the room was encountering a great metamorphosis. Through the stone began to seep a greenish liquid which eventually became a self contained waterfall which eventually created its own basin.
Charles was so bewildered and impressed with this occurrence that he assembled a small team of orderlies to begin excavating the room further. After weeks of careful scraping and burrowing, the team uncovered many archaic anomalies as well as an ancient temple complete with an alter. During the excavation two orderlies were in direct contact with the green fluid which had been discharging into the small lagoon. The exposure over time lead to extreme disfigurement, but also a strange and powerful intolerance to pain. It was as if their brains were somehow disconnected from their own pain receptors.
Charles began to think that this incredible discovery could quite possibly be a new form of anesthetic. Further testing revealed the green elixir possessed incredible properties in which the medical staff had never experienced. If an ounce or more was administered at one time it would ultimately cause fatality with one or many vital organs failing, but in smaller doses the substance provided strength and vigor, healing attributes, mental clarity and an improbable short-term resistance to pain . This strange prehistoric discovery fed into his sense of adventure and it was embraced rather than feared.
This unknown ancient entity that was dormant for quite possibly centuries or even millenniums had been slowly penetrating The Sanctuary grounds and Charles could not have been more elated. He ultimately became obsessed with it as he pondered and speculated the reason for which this presence was making itself known now. It was a fearless reception regardless of how dangerous or evil this newly unearthed presence could be.
A few years later and as experimental surgeries and medicine continued to progress throughout the world Charles had discovered a surgeon from Germany named Dr. Ryan Hammond who had been making incredible strides with electrical brain stimulation and performing highly unorthodox, but successful neurological surgeries. Somehow he had found a method of melding technology and flesh with astonishing results. Patients who were mute could now speak, the violent now passive, idiocy turned intelligence and the comatose to energetic. He had also developed his own neurological implants and tools. Eventually he had been banned throughout Europe for his forward and innovative practices as many of his patients were considered abominations.
Charles sought out Dr. Hammond and invited him to The Sanctuary to practice his advanced techniques in the hopes of further curing his now overpopulated and understaffed facility. They were now in the midst of a second world war in which doctors and surgeons were a valuable commodity and forced to leave the facility. The diseases and disorders were continuing to advance and Charles needed a solution and Dr. Ryan Hammond seemed to be the answer. It was not until 1946 that the good German doctor finally set foot on US soil and entered into The Sanctuary to join humanitarian and theologian Charles Labrie.
Hammond was frail, ultra wrinkled and walked with a slight limp. About that time Labrie had the excavated temple in the Southwest wing completed and opened it up for doctors, orderlies and even patients that were well enough to visit. Occasionally Charles would stand behind the stone alter and read from his childhood 13th Century Bible. He felt that it gave the attendees a peace and calm that the daily routines of The Sanctuary could not always achieve.
Charles built a custom laboratory separate from the institution for his chief surgeon. As Dr. Hammond settled in and became acclimated to The Sanctuary his treatments and surgeries had become well received with incredible progress by dozens of patients. Charles couldn't be happier! After a couple of years Charles had become very fond of his head nurse and they were eventually married. That same year she became pregnant with Charles' baby. During her pregnancy she contracted a horrible disease known as consumption which was reclassified years later as Tuberculosis.
Charles dedicated all of his resources to her treatment and built an entire ward devoted to the care of patients suffering from tuberculosis. The outbreak was vast, but after the ward was built it was contained for the most part. Charles enlisted the help from his chief surgeon, Dr. Hammond to be the sole caretaker of his wife and mother to be. During this time Dr. Hammond took a very special interest in Mrs. Labrie's pregnancy all the while knowing that her condition was fatal.
Throughout her prenatal treatment and concealed from Charles, who could not visit his frail and pregnant wife let alone afford to expose himself to the disease, Dr. Hammond would regularly inject the unborn through the amniotic sac with the green elixir, now deemed "Quantum", which had still been in the trial stages and not approved for use on patients. It seemed to ease her pain, but above all since he had been injecting himself on a daily regimen of Quantum as a treatment to his own disease, he began to think that the newborn could be his salvation.
He surmised the possibility of transferring his own essence into another human and the plausibility of a new life and a new start inside a healthy body gave him new hope. When it came time for Mrs. Labrie to finally deliver, Dr. Hammond and Charles was there to observe the birth. Mr. Labrie had employed a special midwife to handle the delivery. It was an excruciating labor with a duration of more than 30 hours. When the newborn finally made its appearance the midwife screamed in horror as the mutation grunted and gurgled. Mr. and Mrs. Labrie had only caught a glimpse of the creature before it was toted away to the nursery.
Shortly after, Dr. Hammond retreated back to his laboratory distraught and angry. He became very isolated and locked himself in his lab. A few days after this, he began requesting more obscure and unconventional equipment and substances to be delivered to his laboratory. In the beginning of the doctor's tenure he made amazing progress with many patients, but now his progress began to stagnate and Dr. Hammond became more and more reclusive. Charles could see his health deteriorating right before his eyes. Weeks later Mrs. Labrie, still bedridden after the torturous birth and suffering a great deal mentally and physically from her tuberculosis, extracted herself from the TB ward and used her key to secretly visit her newborn inside the nursery.
She was horrified by the sight of the infant monster. The new mother was heartbroken, distressed and the overwhelming sense of despair began to grab hold and fester rapidly inside her. Without a single word, Mrs. Labrie walked trancelike into the TB birthing room, found a rope and ended her life. Before she had made the final fall that took her life she had written "Quantum" on the floor as a message to her husband. Charles was alerted immediately upon her discovery and traveled directly to Dr. Hammond's laboratory to confront him. After gaining access to the lab, he stood in horror as he observed what could only be described as human hybrid experiments on display as if they were the trophies of a professional athlete.
It was a deranged "assembly room" and there were dozens of customized surgical tools and machines unrecognizable to Labrie strewn about the lab. Unbeknownst to him the doctor had been secretly experimenting on patients during routine therapy sessions as well as many normally scheduled surgeries since the beginning. He had also formed a camaraderie with several orderlies and nurses on staff. Dr. Hammond had been experimenting not only on patients and orderlies, but on himself since his arrival with the hopes of finding a cure for his own ailment. He suffered from an extremely rare form of tissue degeneration. His body was literally devouring itself bit by bit, cell by cell. However his mind was intact regardless of how deranged his thinking was. The disease seemed to not affect his cognition. Several orderlies were present during Charles' visit and they proceeded to restrain him. He was placed into a solitary padded cell in The Sanctuary and was treated as any other patient. For years Dr. Hammond performed extraordinary experiments on patients, orderlies and himself all with the hopes of finding a cure to his fatal illness. He began transplanting mechanical armatures onto patients, implanting large battery pack powered devices into their brains and began a complete hostile takeover of The Sanctuary. His crusade included mind control, brainwashing, lobotomies, electroshock, brain transplantation and biomechanical experimentation all in the hopes for a cure.
As days became weeks and months became years Charles Labrie was held in solitary confinement and given enough sustenance to barely stay alive, but the incessant droning of Dr. Hammond's "education" being fed through the facilities loudspeakers day in and day out was too much for anyone's psyche. With only his 13th Century Bible to keep him company he sat in his cell and continued to recite passages. It has been over 100 years since the inception of The Sanctuary which has been abandoned for decades. Purchased in May of 2010 by museum curator Arthur Burnes, The Sanctuary is now open to the public for tours. The presence of "The Ruins" is still quite alive and apparent throughout The Sanctuary. Some say you can still hear the echos of Dr. Hammond's monotonous droning, the agonizing screams of the unfortunate victims of experimentation and the preaching of Charles Labrie. Nobody knows what transpired once the brutal seizure of The Sanctuary took place. There have been many accounts of family members releasing all rights to their ailing loved ones to The Sanctuary never to be seen or heard from again. Your tour awaits at The Sanctuary.
