Submission Oct 2009, Version 1.0

The Old Haunted Hospital

By Peter Drake


 

Hospitals are never nice places. Sick people are sent there; these people often suffer from extreme pain or humiliation as their bodies buckle and break down, before they yield to death. Hospitals are inextricably linked with the passing of life. A desolate hospital, long since closed for use and sheared of all furnishings or equipment or staff, would provide haunting-substance enough for any paranormal investigator.

WOLF (‘World Oneric Life Force’) Paranormal Research was invited in September 2009 to an unnamed hospital that had shut its doors many years ago. It had an impressive history of supernatural activity of which WOLF was keenly aware. It was clarified that any investigation was to be conducted in the strictest confidence, with the location remaining unidentified.

The WOLF team members who attended the investigation were: Simone Taylor, co-founder of WOLF and clairsentient/developing trance medium; Dave Ball, co-founder of WOLF and clairvoyant/angel cards psychic profiler; Vanessa, paranormal investigator and historical researcher; Rachel, paranormal investigator and research assistant; Paul, paranormal investigator and data analyst; and Liz, spiritual consultant, claircogient and paranormal investigator. Associate members who attended the investigation were Kevin, Julie, and Dawn. I joined the early tour of the hospital as an observer and in the role of WOLFs news editor, before leaving prior to the vigils held later that night.

 

“I had this feeling that something wasn’t right”

The hospital’s weird ambience and empty corridors could not fail to remind me of horror film clichés, specifically ‘Halloween II’ where nurses are stalked and murdered by a juggernaut maniac. Dave also referred to scenes from ‘The Frighteners,’ where a murderous ghost hunts down his prey in a derelict hospital. The location was richly evocative of all these scenes of horror. 

What struck me was the sheer labyrinthine character of the hospital. The place was so large and dark, with the only lighting coming from external streetlights. Long murky corridors seemed to spout rooms or twist into new passageways. It was abandoned, like the Mary Celeste, with no one manning the ship. There was little or no décor, only crumbling plasterwork and debris; this was disorientating, as it could be difficult to recognise where we were. It made it so easy to become lost.

Kevin felt positive at the start of the night’s investigation and echoed my own feelings. “On initially walking into the hospital I felt fine,” he said, “no worries at all and no foreboding of the night ahead.”

During this preliminary search, several investigators were disturbed by weird sounds in the corridors. There were reports of vague footsteps or thuds.  Not far from the conference room – where a vigil was held later – the entire group halted at a large open area where several corridors crossed. Simone was the first to halt, as she thought she saw a shadow flit across the wall. I could see weird shadows on the same spot, almost like people rushing past, but I concluded that they were cast by lights outside, obscured by trees swaying in the wind.

Even so, I could swear that I heard a gentle throbbing noise filling the air. It was low, not loud at all and seemed far away; and everyone strained to listen to it. Perhaps it was background noise, or mere silence amplified into something meaningful by our concentrated attempts to listen to it.

“We continued down corridor after corridor,” said Kevin, “many of which were fine but some really put me on edge. What it was I don’t know, I just seemed to have this feeling that something wasn’t right, and I went goose-pimperly from head to toe.”

The tour took us to a swimming pool area. The pool was obviously empty of water, and the room was bare. There was no real energy here, though Vanessa and I heard bangs; I thought I heard a pipe moving or being tapped in the distance.

For a short time we split into two smaller groups. One WOLF team close to the hospital wards reported that they had heard footsteps where there were no other people. They had been in a corridor, listening to the clear noise of sets of footsteps moving across rooms above them and then walking down stairs loudly, advancing down the corridor towards them before slowly disappearing. They had seen nothing to explain the footsteps, and the other team were apparently not in this area that that time. However, I personally consider that it could have been people in other parts of the hospital, which has many winding passageways and concealed stairways. It is sometimes difficult to know at what exact point in the building you are standing or in which direction to find other people.

 

“I could feel the table vibrating underneath my hands”

The first big vigil of the night was held in a meeting room. I was sceptical of this room’s history of paranormal activity: in previous years before the hospital’s closure, my job had me attending meetings in this same room and I was often here by myself. I cannot remember ever feeling anything unusual. The hospital was not stripped and empty in those bright daylight hours, so perhaps I am being harsh with this bias.

The nine investigators engaged in table-tipping on the room’s dominating boardroom table. They were positioned in an energy-raising circle. Communication with spirits took place, typically with the formula of one knock for yes, two for no. There was nothing dramatic at first. Simone took temperature readings in the room at intervals, and they never changed from 18°c despite several people reporting coldness across their hands. Rachel was startled by the sensation of something grabbing her leg.

The heavy-oak table seemed to be faintly vibrating. The investigators could feel this with their fingertips lightly touching it. There was a delicate tremor go through the table, followed by a number of sudden loud bangs near where Paul was standing. They seemed to occur in answer to questions. “We were all quite amazed at the volume and distinctness of these knocks,” Paul said later, “so we all deliberately stepped as far back from the table as we could while maintaining our fingertips on the edge. I then mentioned to the group that I was feeling a chest pain.”

Paul was not the only one, as Vanessa also experienced sharp pains in her chest at this point. Paul sensed this was in the region around his heart, unaware that a person was supposed to have died of a heart-related problem in the same room. Vanessa’s chest was tight and it felt like she could not breathe; psychically she felt that someone had suffered a heart attack in the room, and the name ‘Michael’ came to her. In later communication with spirits, Liz was told that a male energy tied to the location had died of a stroke in the room.

There did not seem to be any unusual temperatures or EMF (electro-magnetic field) readings around Paul, Rachel and Vanessa. People swapped places around the table and everyone placed their hands flat on the table to reduce the possibility of unknowingly distributing their weight and thereby creating noises. Yet the bangs continued. Some people felt them coming from directly beneath their hands, which was very unnerving. “I could feel the table vibrating underneath my hands when the taps came,” Rachel said. “We had this happen for a good hour in this room.”

Simone reported that the table appeared to be vibrating continually, and remarked on the eerie atmosphere. “Throughout the entire vigil in this area, all investigators commented on the regular bangs, sounds of footsteps and feelings of something going on in the corridor area,” she said. Vanessa and Rachel experienced shuffling, rustles and footsteps near the meeting room on a number of occasions, which sounded almost like people walking past.

An unhinged, heavy door that was near to the meeting room was repeatedly found shut by Rachel and Kevin prior to the séance, despite being left open by them on the occasions they passed through it. This was true after the séance in the meeting room, when it was found to be open even though they had seen that it was shut, observing no one go going past during the interval. Considering it was off its hinge at the top and the frame was almost out of the wall, the door would have probably been very noisy to open. According to Kevin, it could not have shut by itself, as it would have had to be physically moved and caused loud scraping across the floor.

 

“Dave started to freak out about the black dog”

The WOLF team decided to move and try something new in the hospital’s notorious wards. One ward in particular seemed more repellent than the others did to me, as during the tour I smelt something disgusting in the area. I suppose it could have been a very rotten patch of damp. I saw that a few investigators had goose pimples in this ward, where as they did not before. This area was to be the focus of their vigil.

They experimented with using Dave as a trigger object: he dressed in a patient’s gown found earlier that night and sat on the floor while the rest of the team sat against the opposite wall. “For the comical value alone we knew this would be a memorable vigil,” said Simone, “and we were conscious that laughter is allegedly a good source for increasing energy levels, so it was not necessarily a misplaced factor.”

Dave began calling out for a nurse or for matron to help him, pretending that he had fallen out of bed and ringing a bell brought along as an additional trigger object. Other investigators also called out. This seemed to be successful at stimulating paranormal activity – the team heard a succession of taps and bangs, and Dave excitedly sat up when he saw a figure that appeared as a light anomaly go right past him towards the adjacent operating theatre. No one else saw this, and few seemed to feel anything potent in the atmosphere. Simone was surprised at her temperature readings, which showed a higher reading to the right of Dave – this was 21°c, rather than the 18°c found elsewhere, and the higher temperature spread to around 4ft beyond him.

There was a sudden change of tempo, as the supernatural energies seemed to quicken. Dave called out for a spirit to interact and show itself. The group was aware of what sounded like a female voice whispering to them from somewhere close by. The words were not clear. The WOLF investigators decided to form a circle around Dave by linking hands. They performed a séance.

Simone was clear on the reasons for this. “The theory is that if the spirit was thinking she had a patient to deal with in the hospital, the energy from the circle may enable her to manifest herself,” she explained. “I asked the group to link hands and feel the protecting energy flow through everyone and specifically from left to right, the direction being significant as it is like opening a bottle of pop, allowing access from the spirit world.”

There were unexpected results. Dave felt a surge of overwhelming fear and stood bolt upright in panic - in the words of Rachel he “freaked out” – as he saw a large black dog enter the room. He watched it walk around the corner into the ward to look straight at the group, before turning back and leaving the same way.

This was allegedly a ‘phantom’ black dog, the tradition of which dates back to before the Middle Ages. They are sometimes considered to be protective creatures, or more usually to be an omen of death and misfortune, and potentially demonic in origin.

 

“I was cold to the bone, I couldn’t stop shaking”

When asked, Dave could not be sure if it was a domestic animal or something more sinister; but he was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable and worried that they had conjured up something dangerous. He said that black dogs are often ‘gatekeepers’ for other things. They had to be careful.

The group were divided. Liz quickly advised that they needed to leave the area immediately for their own protection, but concurred with Dave that breaking the circle would remove their psychic defence from whatever spirits were in the room. Others felt that it was pointless to run from the very thing they were trying to contact.

Simone looked across to where Dave had seen the black dog and was shocked to see something like a pair of yellow eyes staring back at her. She told the others, who suggested that yellow eyes were better than red, as black dogs with red eyes are considered to be demonic. Kevin now started to shake uncontrollably and began to have breathing difficulties. Alarm at the black dog was creating hysteria.

Kevin stood in the circle as belongings were picked up, the circle manoeuvring so that it was never broken or its protection disrupted. The decision was made to end the vigil before anything worse happened.

The WOLF investigators were worse for wear upon returning to base. Liz told the group that they had been under psychic attack in that ward, and she was indeed feeling very poorly herself after exiting the vigil.

“That was the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had,” said Kevin, who seemed shook up by his experience. “I don’t what happened to me. I went really cold, as if I was standing in cold water; it was cold right to the bone. I couldn’t stop shaking, my head was spinning. I didn’t feel good. It took me a little while to get over my experience.”

 

“I was caught with my pants down”

The rest of the night’s investigation never hit the same heights. The WOLF investigators braved the hospital ward again in hope of gathering further evidence; but its super-charged atmosphere had dissipated - it was lighter and not so heavy with dread. A séance produced no further activity, though Paul and Dawn both commented on the sensation of sharp stabbing pains in the necks and backs. After the group moved their vigil into the adjoining operating theatre, investigators could hear small indistinct thuds and bangs from the ward, for which they had no proper explanation. By 5am the investigation had reached its natural end.

“I think the bit that got me the most was seeing that black dog,” Dave said, “I don’t ever want to see that again, I truly felt I was caught with my pants down on that one.”

“It was a great night with everything we heard,” said Julie, “from the muffled voices, doors banging, knocks on tables, tapping and doors opening and closing by themselves – not to mention the evil black dog! I think it’s definitely worth another visit if we get the chance. Maybe Dave can get himself a doctor’s outfit next time and dress up for us again.”

I personally think that putting Dave in a nurse’s outfit will elicit far more results from any supernatural inhabitants.

I am unsure in my judgement of the paranormal activity reported during the night’s investigation. The hospital certainly has a gloomy character during the hours of darkness, and the morass of empty corridors can be unsettling. Nevertheless, I have heard nurses talk about their experiences on night shifts, the eeriness of hospitals with the near-total absence of people, in contrast to the bustling daytime hours. The phenomenon experienced by WOLF might be attributed to many things: to echoes of investigators’ own footfall; disorientation and sensory deprivation; inadvertent hand movements during table tipping; or hysteria during the black dog incident.

I was not there to witness the thuds on the meeting room table nor the black dog stalking the WOLF team, so I cannot give the incidents a proper appraisal. I can only admit that the old haunted hospital is an especially strange and unique place. I did not find it relaxing or comfortable. It did not make me feel welcome.