The "Room of Forgotten Souls" contained about 3,600 neglected urns that held the cremated remains of former patients. Publicity about that and other conditions at the Oregon State Hospital provoked outrage in the Oregon Legislature and coverage in The Oregonian, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its series of editorials on the subject in 2006. Staff photographer Rob Finch's photos became emblematic of the hospital's eerie facilities, which also were used to film the 1975 movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The urns

Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, was among the first who saw what became known as the "Room of Forgotten Souls" in 2004, which then contained about 3,600 neglected urns.

The sight prompted him to seek funding for a new state hospital, which eventually was built.

Also, a decade since thousands of copper urns were discovered in the Oregon State Hospital's basement, officials unveiled a new memorial designed to honor the patients and confront the facility's dark history of mistreating the mentally ill.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The eerie exterior of the J Building at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, where one wing was abandoned and held the urns.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

For years, Oregon officials assumed that some of the thousands of unclaimed urns at the Oregon State Hospital belonged to patients who were buried in a hospital cemetery, exhumed in 1913 and 1914, then cremated.

But researchers came to believe none of the urns were linked to the old Asylum Cemetery -- and that the fate of the cemetery bodies, about 1,500 in all, is a mystery.

The urns were stacked like paint cans for decades in the hospital's "Cremains Room."

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

A peekhole between wards in the "J" building at the Oregon State Hospital. In 2004, Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, was so disturbed by the hospital's poor conditions and forgotten urns that he launched an effort in the Legislature to approve money to tend the urns and build new facilities, which are now open. Parts of the old hospital are now a museum.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Back in 2005

In 2005, the attic of the "J" building at the Oregon State Hospital was falling apart, even though the parts of the building were still inhabited. A system of sheets and hoses was intended to keep water from seeping down.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

"Cuckoo's Nest"

Restraining straps dangle from a gurney stored in an unused bathroom in the "J" building at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. The hospital was used to film scenes for the film based on Ken Kesey's book "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," starring Jack Nicholson. The film won five Oscars, including the 1975 Academy Award for Best Picture.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The piano room at the old Oregon State Hospital.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Children's ward

The front entrance to Ward 40 -- the Oregon State Hospital's treatment unit for mentally ill children that opened in the 1970s. Officials announced in 2005 that the adolescent ward would be closed. The Oregonian had editorialized:

The grim, sprawling hospital is no place for juveniles, yet Oregon houses about a dozen frightened, troubled kids there. Some of the girls, often prior victims of sexual abuse, pull their mattresses out into hallways to sleep in safe view of staff. During the day, adolescents pass time outdoors in plain view, through concertina and barbed wire, of maximum-security adult patients.

These kids are left there, however, because Oregon has no proper facility for them. There's really nowhere else they can go.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Mystery remains

The Oregon State Hospital had many eerie features and oddities, not the least of which was this eyeball sticker in the "Cremains building." Researchers in 2011 were looking at records to try to match urns with families: None matched Asylum Cemetery burial records.

The cemetery operated from 1883 until 1913, when the Legislature ordered it emptied to free the land for other uses. A notice in a Salem newspaper gave relatives a couple of months to claim the bodies before they were cremated.

In 1959, workers at a nearby farm found headstones from the cemetery dumped there.

After that, the trail goes cold. The state still doesn't know what happened to the remains.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The remains of a bird in the "J" building at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem in 2005.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Home to hundreds

The entrance to Ward 47B in the "J" Building at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem in 2005. Ward 47B was an area which patients use, but don't live in. About 750 patients were living in the state hospital in that era.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

A unused ward entrance in the "J" building at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem in 2005.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Haunting pictures of the Oregon State Hospital, along with The Oregonian's coverage and editorials, helped draw attention to the need for new facilities, since built.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Security cameras kept watch at the old Oregon State Hospital.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Historic significance

The design of the Oregon State Hospital was based on the Kirkbride model, which followed a style with wings that maximized windows for natural light. The setting and architectural style of the hospital made the site eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Part of the old hospital is now a museum.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Patients were allowed out to the yard to exercise.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Editorial crusade

Here is how The Oregonian's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial started, from 2005:

Eva York died in a bathtub in 1896 at the Oregon Asylum for the Insane. After an inquest, which absolved the hospital staff of any blame, no one claimed her corpse, so she was buried in the asylum cemetery and forgotten.

Eighteen years later Eva's remains were exhumed, cremated, placed in a copper urn and forgotten all over again. Today the corroding canister containing her ashes sits on a plain pine shelf in what's called the "Cremains Room" at the 122-year-old Salem institution, now known as the Oregon State Hospital.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The Oregonian's editorial went on:

Out of sight, out of mind. It's an age-old story of neglect for Oregon's most unfortunate. In fact, it was Eva York's story more than a century ago.

Today we know far more about Eva than any of her forgotten companions in the Cremains Room. That's because her death led to a story in Salem's Daily Capital Journal on Nov. 25, 1896.

Eva was a 36-year-old Marion County woman who probably wasn't even mentally ill. According to the old newspaper clipping, she was an epileptic, confined to the hospital's asylum-era epileptic ward five years before her death. In those days her malady, like depression and alcoholism, was viewed as akin to insanity.

Eva died between 2 and 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, "bath day" in the epileptic ward. While left unattended in a tub, she had a seizure and died from it, a coroner ruled. He found no evidence of drowning. An inquest jury declared the hospital to be "in no way responsible."

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The news account went on to say the hospital telegraphed word of Eva's death to "a brother residing near Hubbard." Her remains, however, were never claimed.

The entire asylum cemetery was exhumed in 1913-14 when the state decided it needed the land. Many of the headstones were unceremoniously dumped on a nearby hilltop. All unclaimed remains, including Eva's, were cremated and stored in a basement.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

An abandoned ward in 2005, in the J Building. The editorials referenced the abandoned wing:

By 1976 that bleak collection of urns exceeded 5,000. That year, in a long overdue act of respect, they were placed underground in a modest memorial on the hospital grounds. But water seeped into the vaults, damaging the copper containers and destroying most of their paper labels. A few years ago, the cash-strapped institution unearthed the urns and stashed them in the Cremains Room, next to the incinerator where all the patients had been cremated.

If Eva York is a symbol of Oregon neglect, the hospital itself its physical hulk is a full-blown metaphor. The tub that she died in is still there, gathering mold and rat droppings in an abandoned wing that's creepier than any haunted house one might imagine.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Occupied spaces of the hospital are cheerier only by comparison. They comprise a foreboding, ramshackle collection of additions to the original 1883 structure along with several decrepit satellite buildings, the newest of which is more than a half-century old, the editorial writers Rick Attig and Doug Bates wrote.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

Changes did come to the Oregon State Hospital.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The editorial series won a Pulitzer Prize for The Oregonian.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

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The 'Cremains Room'

The editorials pulled no punches. From 2005:

Until then, it's to Oregon's shame that these patients remain warehoused in a decrepit institution. They are today's version of the forgotten patients whose canisters of unclaimed ashes are still stacked on shelves with no proper memorial in the hospital's grim "Cremains Room," where the standing photo for this series was taken.

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Rob Finch/The Oregonian

The cremains at the Oregon State Hospital in 2005.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

New beginnings

Portions of the old building were demolished and rebuilt starting in September 2008, as well as new facilities constructed at the site.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

The museum

Housed in the former entrance to the old Oregon State Hospital, the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health consists of a handful of small rooms and displays a fraction of the more than 4,000 artifacts contained in its archive.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

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Cremains once stored in copper canisters now rest inside this wall outside the former crematorium. Cremains that have been collected by family members subsequent to the wall's installation are replaced with copper tubing.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

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A historic image from the museum collection.

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An image from the early days of the institution.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

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An old organ now in the museum.

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Parts of the old hospital remain even after reconstruction.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

On display is an old can of Parnate, a form of anti-depressant.

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Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive