Supernatural Filming Location: Riverview Hospital

One of our favourite Supernatural filming locations is this stunning, abandoned mental health facility  in Coquitlam near Vancouver, Canada. Aside from giving a temporary home to our favourite tv show, Riverview has given shows like The X-Files, Smallville and Once Upon a Time some amazing surroundings. Originally we thought we’d visit it once to get some sceneframing photos, but ended up driving up there three times.

Riverview Hospital. Simply stunning.

The area is way bigger than we expected: it’s a beautiful, amazing hillside park with old trees, roads and paths, but the run-down hospital buildings with their endless dark, empty windows are something else. More than once we got spooked by a reflection or an old curtain stirring in the wind in a broken window. Maybe we’ve just watched too many horror movies (or too many episodes of Supernatural)!

Castiel stands on the steps leading to one of the main buildings.

We even tried to peek in some of the windows but the fear of someone looking back at you or grabbing your wrist was just a bit too much. Before we got to Vancouver, we contacted a few people to see if we could get a quick peek inside some of the buildings, but never got a reply. Apparently, it’s very difficult to get in – unless you’re a part of a filming crew or something similar, of course.

This building acted as a prison building on one of the Supernatural episodes.

We were also told there’s still some patients living in the area and that we should be respectful of that, but we never saw anyone and all the buildings on the lot just didn’t seem good for anyone to live in. In fact, we started to doubt if the lady who told us about the patients was even real…

So spooky. So exciting.

Visiting Riverview Hospital is fairly easy, especially if you can drive there. However, we’d recommend going during daylight and being extra respective towards the people working in the area and of course, the buildings themselves. Drive slowly, park carefully, don’t leave any trash behind and don’t try to enter any of the buildings! If you behave nicely, you’ll be fine.

Castiel and Dean in front of one of the Riverview buildings.

Here’s our video greeting from the spot and some photos of the buildings and a few of the sceneframes we took during those three visits.

• Riverview Hospital on Wikipedia
• Riverview Hospital on Google Maps: