The World's Most Haunted Hospitals: True-Life Paranormal Encounters in Asylums, Hospitals, and Institutions
256
The World's Most Haunted Hospitals: True-Life Paranormal Encounters in Asylums, Hospitals, and Institutions
256Paperback(First Edition)
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Overview
If hospital walls could talk, what tales would they tell?
Hospitals are the nexus point between life and death, the place into which people enter this world, but also exit it. In The World's Most Haunted Hospitals, paramedic and paranormal investigator Richard Estep recounts some of the most fascinating--and often chilling--stories of hospital hauntings from across the globe, including:
Join Richard on this fascinating journey around the world, stopping off at a wide spectrum of haunted hospitals and asylums, old and new, and shiver at the personal encounters of doctors, nurses, patients, and others with the strange and inexplicable.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781632650269 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 01/25/2016 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 690,724 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Richard Estep has spent the past 20 years investigating claims of the paranormal on both sides of the Atlantic and spent time in some of the most haunted places in the world. Some of Richard's most fascinating cases were filmed for the TV show Paranormal Investigator in 2016, including that of Asylum 49. He is the author of The World's Most Haunted Hospitals and director of the Boulder County Paranormal Research Society.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Asylum 49 (Formerly the Tooele Hospital) Utah, USA
If a building could ever be described as being schizophrenic, then that building would be the old Tooele Hospital. Located in the city of Tooele, less than an hour's drive away from Salt Lake City, one half of the building is an abandoned medical care facility that has been turned into a fright-based haunted house attraction. The other half is a fully functional retirement home for senior citizens. The fact that these two wildly different worlds are able to co-exist in relative harmony is surprising, to say the least — the only thing that separates them is a single doorway between the new wing and the old one.
Originally built in 1873 by a man named Samuel Lee, the building was a family residence for 40 years before passing into the hands of the county in 1913, when it was pressed into service as a care home for senior citizens and those with special needs. Its nickname during that era speaks volumes, as locals referred to it as "the county poor house." Mr. Lee and his young son Thomas are said to be just two of the many ghosts who haunt the corridors and bedrooms of this historic old structure. At approximately seven years of age, Thomas is said to be a playful and mischievous (though harmless) young spirit who takes great delight in playing games with the flesh and blood staff and residents of the nursing facility, not to mention those who visit its haunted house alter ego in the hopes of getting a good scare.
After closing its doors as a hospital for the last time, the old building has had occasional brushes with fame by serving as a TV and movie set, including the acclaimed TV miniseries adaption of Stephen King's The Stand, where it stood in for the very real Boulder Community Hospital during filming.
Entrepreneurs Kimm and Cami Andersen created the medically themed Halloween-style haunted house known as Asylum 49 in 2006, complete with its own ambulances, which are sometimes crewed by demonic- looking paramedics and doctors. It also doesn't hurt in the least bit that the building sits directly adjacent to the local cemetery! Starting out with an extremely skeptical attitude, the Andersens quickly became convinced that their new investment was a haunted house in more than name only.
A number of psychic mediums have visited throughout the years, and have made some remarkable claims about the place. Perhaps the most intriguing one is that the old Tooele Hospital contains a portal to another dimension, over which a ghostly nurse named Maria is said to stand guard, warning away the spirits of newly deceased residents from taking the wrong path into the afterlife.
A far more disturbing aspect of the haunting is the reported presence of a frightening man in black. This shadow figure, said to be malicious, is seen wandering the hallways after dark and is a source of great trepidation for those who have encountered him. This shadow man is most commonly seen at three o'clock in the morning. Nurses have witnessed this apparition walk across the hallway and pass directly through a closed door, which turned out to be locked from the inside. Getting no answer from the patient inside the room, the frightened night duty nurse summoned a maintenance man to remove the door from its hinges. Both the nurse and the maintenance man were shocked to find that the occupant of the room, who had been visited by the black shadow figure, had died earlier that night.
The ghost of a young girl has also been seen. At first, she seemed localized to one specific conference room in the condemned hospital wing, but when the Asylum 49 haunted house opened its doors for business, customers often claimed that the scariest part of the attraction was the young girl who followed them around from room to room. Staff didn't always have the heart to tell them that there was no young girl working at Asylum 49. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the haunting of this former hospital is the belief commonly held by the nursing staff that the appearance of this ghostly young child presages the death within the building.
In 2011, Zak Bagans and his Ghost Adventures crew spent the night locked down in Asylum 49, where they experienced what appears to be some fascinating potentially paranormal activity.
When Bagans and his crew interviewed the current nursing home staff on camera, these trained medical professionals were not shy about recounting their own ghostly encounters within the building. For example, the sound of what the staff presumed to be an escaped patient was heard walking back and forth across the roof at 4:30 one morning — which was completely empty.
A team of local paranormal investigators named the Utah Ghost Organization, who were conducting an EVP session in the building, received a class A EVP (class A EVPs are the best and clearest possible type of electronic voice phenomenon, believed to be the voice of a deceased person), which clearly stated the name of an x-ray technician who used to work at the hospital. This finding was eerily mirrored by the Ghost Adventures crew during their own night at the Tooele hospital when they also received a class A EVP, which quite clearly said the name "Zak Bagans." The Ghost Adventures boys also captured what they believe to be a hostile, verbally abusive male voice growling at them in one of the Asylum 49 rooms, and then later speaking directly into Bagans's ear. Similarly crude EVPs were recorded on the team's digital voice recorders. A high-pitched female scream was also picked up by the Ghost Adventures team, in addition to a forlorn, almost child-like moan, which was captured on an old- style reel-to-reel analog tape recorder.
Using heat-sensitive thermal imaging cameras, Bagans and his team also captured an intriguing heat anomaly, which came into view and then disappeared almost instantaneously. Also recorded on camera was a ball that was being used as a control object, which subsequently rolled down the corridor toward their locked-off video camera. Bagans believed that this could have been a manifestation of the two child-like shadow figures that he had seen standing right next to him, playfully moving the ball around for fun.
During their lockdown, the Ghost Adventures crew also witnessed doors slamming inside empty rooms, footsteps were heard in deserted hallways, and investigator Aaron Goodwin claimed that he was grabbed on the hip by an unseen hand.
Bagans theorized that the old hospital is now basically a "ghost- manufacturing factory," especially considering the fact that elderly inhabitants are still passing away there on a regular basis.
Whether you buy into Zak Bagans's theories or not, there is no doubt that something strange and mysterious is afoot inside Asylum 49, and I was sufficiently intrigued to find out for myself. Kimm and Cami Andersen were more than willing to let me and a couple of fellow investigators from my team, the Boulder County Paranormal Research Society, spend a night there and take a look at the place firsthand. On a bright and sunny Saturday morning in May, we loaded up our trucks and took Interstate-25 north out of Colorado. Our little two-vehicle convoy headed west through Wyoming and into Utah, putting more than 500 miles of empty prairie behind us in the rear- view mirror. When we hit Salt Lake City, ominous grey thunderclouds were hanging low in the sky. No sooner had I thought that it might rain, than the heavens opened and fat drops of rain started to spatter across my windshield as I drove the final leg of the journey into Tooele.
So many scary movies and stories begin with "it was a dark and stormy night," but it's rarely true of my real-life paranormal investigations. Tooele was very much the exception. Pulling into the parking lot at Asylum 49, it felt like the perfect night for something paranormal to manifest itself.
Because the daylight was starting to melt away into the gloom of twilight, we wasted no time pulling out our cameras and circling the entire building, snapping photographs of the exterior. Working our way to the rear of the structure, we came upon some abandoned medical office buildings and then a very neatly kept cemetery, the same one that I had seen Zak Bagans interview Kimm Andersen in during the Ghost Adventures TV episode. A disembodied hand clawing its way up out of the ground gave me the shock of my life, until I realized that it was nothing more than a latex prop, the sort that can be bought at a Halloween store. We left it for the next unwary traveler to enjoy!
Kimm, Cami, and their staff were warm, friendly, and very welcoming. Kimm was hard at work on construction of the building — Asylum 49 is a constant work-in-progress, as the Andersens strive to make it better and better with every passing season — but took a break to fill us in on some of the background to the case. Cami escorted us on a tour throughout the building, pointing out the areas of interest and the specific haunted hot spots.
Starting with the north wing, we turned a corner that led into the maternity area, only to come face-to-face with a life-sized "Human Centipede" — three dummies positioned nose-to-tail in the most disturbing way (I'm not going to lie; I jumped halfway out of my skin when I saw it). "We go where other haunted houses don't dare," Cami laughed. She wasn't kidding. During the course of our tour, we encountered a crashed UFO complete with a snarling alien crew and eggs that oozed slime; a disturbing array of surgical oddities, such as dismembered bodies sewn together in a sinister tableaux that looked as though they had been pieced together by a deranged anatomist; and evil experiments conducted by a surgical team from Hell upon an unwilling, bedbound victim. All of this was barely scratching the surface. I don't want to give away all of Asylum 49's spooky secrets, but suffice it to say that it isn't a place for the faint of heart!
We heard about the impressions given by a number of mediums and people claiming psychic abilities who have visited Asylum 49. The resident spirits, they said, included at least one doctor and nurse, a pair of little girls named Tabitha and Sarah, and one adult spirit who is both deaf and unable to speak. Cami has personally seen the apparitions of Tabitha, the doctor, and the nurse.
I should mention that during this interview with Kimm and Cami we were standing in the same location that doubled as the baby ward of Boulder Community Hospital in the TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand, something that my inner geek found to be extremely cool.
"This hospital was sort of known as the hospital of death," Cami said bluntly. "Nobody would come here if they could help it, for a combination of reasons. This is a small town, and the hospital was built mainly because there are a lot of military bases around here."
The Andersens have been running a haunted house in the city of Tooele for a decade now. "All the spirits here know what we do," explained Cami as she led us deeper into the building. "They like to peek in and sometimes be a part of the show. Sarah especially likes to scare the customers. I see her every year. She looks like the girl from the movie The Grudge, very pale with dark brown hair."
Kimm broke in to describe some of the evidence that he and Cami have gathered during their time running Asylum 49. He believes that the reason for them being able to gather such a wealth of fascinating results is that the Andersens have built and nurtured a relationship with the paranormal residents of the building, particularly because they both spend so many of their waking hours inside there doing renovation work.
While conducting his own amateur ghost hunt with some friends and family, a Serbian friend of Kimm's captured an extraordinary photograph in the main hallway late one night, containing what appeared to be the form of a man at the end of the empty corridor. "I can see you!" the ghost hunter exclaimed. "What is your name?"
The voice box that he was carrying immediately piped up with, "My name is Robert."
Robert happened to be the name of a shadow figure that was well known by the Asylum 49 staff to haunt that very same hallway. But Robert isn't alone, and the figure captured by the Serbian's digital camera isn't him. When zooming in to blow up the facial features, they appear to be somewhat ... unnatural in appearance, as though the man is wearing a mask of some kind. In fact, the features look decidedly clown-like, an opinion that Kimm went on to voice several times after the picture was taken.
Accompanying a medium through the building one day, Kimm was not thrilled to hear that there was a spirit lurking in the hallway that was less than happy with her. "The spirit says that you make fun of him," the medium continued. "He says that you call him a ... a clown, or something?"
"The clown guy!" Kimm suddenly realized.
"His face looks like that because of how he died," explained the medium. "He died in a fire."
Shadow forms and figures are nothing new at Asylum 49. They crop up regularly on both the in-house security video system and on the cameras brought by visitors. One particularly chilling piece of video footage was taken in an area of the building that has been informally dubbed the "scary hallway" by Asylum 49 staff. A shadowy figure can clearly be seen lurking at the back of a guided tour group as it makes its way along the corridor, a ghostly hanger-on captured for posterity by a video camera.
Passing through what had once been the patient rooms, I made the observation that the beds looked old enough to have been the original hospital beds, which Cami confirmed. The Andersens both feel that because there are still residents at the hospital (the spirits who have remained there) they would like to retain as many of the fixtures and fittings as possible. For instance one of the rooms is haunted by the ghost of an older lady who likes to stimulate EMF meter readings when a deck of cards is brought out.
In the central hallway from which many of the rooms branch off, paranormal investigators have captured video footage of a shadowy figure walking into one of the rooms. We stopped at the door to the room, which is said to be haunted by a patient named Wes, who suffered from the cruel and debilitating conditions known as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia. A visiting medium stated that this particular ghost was still earthbound due to the fact that he died in a state of confusion. Although, if true, that would beg the question of why the millions of people who die in a state of confusion do not remain behind as ghosts.
I told Cami that my fellow paranormal investigators and I do not believe in provocation as a means of stimulating an interaction with ghosts due to its disrespectful nature, however, we do favor encouragement — inviting them to touch us somewhere, for example. She cautioned us that Wes and some of the other residents of Asylum 49 have been known to respond by scratching and pinching overly provocative investigators. I pondered this warning thoughtfully as I stood outside Wes's room, looking at the pencil sketch of him drawn by one of the visiting psychics: a placid-looking older man with a bald head and a level gaze stared back at me from the drawing that was placed outside his door.
The former doctors' lounge was known for having an inhospitable atmosphere, reinforced by the fact that on one occasion when Cami was vacuuming, a voice had barked at her to "get out!" Moving into the x-ray room, we heard of the resident spirit there, a former technician who had worked at the hospital during its heyday and despite not having died on the premises, seemed to have returned to the place he loved working at after his death. The tech had given his full name to investigators in the form of an EVP, which I heard for myself and found to be extremely compelling. A check of records corroborated this man's name. This is an intelligent facet of the haunt that loves to interact with living visitors of Asylum 49, and it is far from the only one.
"This is the Guardian's area," Cami said, referring to the part of the hospital that was close to the entrance doors. We pushed our way through what seemed like hundreds of trash bags suspended from the ceiling, making a dark and claustrophobic maze. This room had been the MRI chamber when the hospital was still open. "He's big. He's grumpy. And he will mess with you a lot, especially your equipment. For example, when Jay from Ghost Mine was here, his K-2 meter was in the red all the time. There are no electrical sources back here to explain it. We believe that the Guardian could be behind the physical attacks on investigators that have taken place in this area."
Entering the mirror maze, we were surrounded by reflections of reflections of reflections of ourselves on every surface, and warned about the resident male ghost that liked to grab female visitors on inappropriate parts of their body. Cami showed us a photo taken by a female visitor to the maze, which — though nothing unusual had been seen at the time — showed what looked like faces and figures staring back from the depths of one of the mirrors. It would be easy to dismiss them as pareidolia (the brain's tendency to see human faces and forms in natural patterns of light as they play across surfaces), but the level of detail was a little too sharp for my liking.
Unsurprisingly, although paranormal activity takes place at Asylum 49 all year round, it is at its very height during late October, when the commercial haunted house is in full swing. Hordes of visitors, eager to experience the thrills and chills cooked up by the Andersens and their dedicated staff, bring along with them a tsunami of emotional energy, something upon which the spirits seem able to draw. In the 2014 Halloween season, more than 38,000 visitors came through the doors of Asylum 49 — and that is a lot of energy.
Kimm had rolled a number of hospital beds out into the hallway shortly before opening the doors to the public, placed mannequins on each one, and covered the fake bodies up with white sheets. This created a rather creepy hallway of cadavers. Satisfied with his work, Kimm was just about to head over to the main entrance to get the evening rolling when he stopped suddenly. There, standing in the doorway of patient room #2, was the apparition of a little girl. He could see her as plain as day. The girl was completely solid, wearing a full-length lace dress. Long brown hair fell down over her shoulders. The girl had both hands over her eyes, and she was crying. Kimm could not only see her, he could hear her sobbing.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The World's Most Haunted Hospitals"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Richard Estep.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword 11
Introduction 15
1 Asylum 49 23
2 RAF Hospital Nocton Hall 37
3 The Clark Air Base Hospital 45
4 The Spencer State Hospital 63
5 The Aradale Mental Hospital 71
6 The Linda Vista Community Hospital 95
7 St. Thomas's Hospital 109
8 Poveglia Island 121
9 The Rolling Hills Asylum 135
10 University College Hospital 143
11 The Yorktown Memorial Hospital 151
12 The Danvers State Insane Asylum 175
13 Grace Hospital 191
14 Metropolitan State Hospital 199
15 The Old Changi Hospital 211
16 The Old Yoakum Memorial Hospital 227
17 St. Albans Sanatorium 237
Notes 243
Index 247
About the Author 255