Despite decades visiting other asylums, Crispin has never found another cache of suitcases. “Willard was unique: because of its remote location, multiple generations of the same families worked there. The connection between patients and staff was exceptionally strong. When the patients died, they couldn’t bear to throw these things away.” For Crispin the most chilling aspect of Willard isn’t its eerie abandoned corridors; it’s the arbitrary nature of the system. “I never got over the idea that there were people here without their consent, largely because they were having problems that today we would be able to treat — grief, obsessiveness, Asperger’s,” he says. “I’m not a ghost hunter, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of people in that space. Each case was a life lived.”