Small Town Hospital, Big Time Hauntings Part 1

So I work at a small-town hospital in northern New York state, and, for obvious reasons, I am omitting the name of the hospital and its exact location because it is not like those who run this hospital came to me and said 'Hey! We want our name all over the Internet and please mention we are haunted like crazy!'. But given the many stories I have heard and many experiences of mine I have to share, I felt it a shame to let it all go to waste.

This hospital was built in the late 1800s, however, I was not certain of exactly what this land had been previous to the construction of this hospital, and so I did some digging on the history of the area, and found that there had been many different things here in the past, including woods, farmland, and houses, depending on the date and time you are looking at. Many important battles of the French and Indian War, American Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and American Civil War were fought here, not to mention many early skirmishes between Native Americans and German, Dutch, and Scottish settlers. It also was located near a major trade route for early colonial Americans here and early settlements along this trade route, so, needless, to say, plenty of time had passed, centuries even, for an abundance of death and the creation of ghosts, spirits, and the general paranormal henceforth. Then in the late 1800s they built a hospital there, which, of course, denotes even more sickness and death in a concentrated area, not to mention they added a nursing home to it years later.

So, where to begin with the stories? It's no secret we have had a few dozen, and they just keep piling on, but I find to be the area of the most amount of interest among employees is the second floor. This floor is home to the Pediatrics unit, the Sleep Center, the Medical Records department, and a wide variety of other offices. It also formerly used to be home to a smaller Medical/Surgical unit, which has since forth been closed and converted into the present day offices and Medical Records department. Let us just say, there is quite a lot of activity here, and plenty of it has never been friendly.

When brought up, everybody states that they do not like the 2nd floor, even during the daytime, as they describe the feeling of something trying to usher them away, an unseen force that does not want them there. Even some nurses have described going up the stairwell to the door to the 2nd floor and just as they reach for the doorknob, the door opens on its own. Not to mention all the times people have been on the elevator, myself included, and described it stopping on the 2nd floor, the door opening, and nobody being there, when they did not push the 2nd floor button in the first place. This same phenomenon with the elevator occurs on the 1st floor rear door as well.

But this is the tip of the iceberg for the 2nd floor. As I work the night shift 11pm-7am, and there is no worse time to be on that floor than during 'the witching hour', as it were, and believe me, I have spent more than my fair share of time down there during the most paranormal periods. Nights where the moon is full are the worst as well, as activity seems to spike, as it does also when you are carrying around powered up electronic devices, such as cell phones.

The hallways themselves, while creepy enough at night due to all the shadows and dark rooms, but there is a ghost that runs on a continuous loop, starting down by the Sleep Lab. If you are in tune with such things as the other side, and head down by the sleep lab and start walking back toward the elevators, no matter what time of day, you can feel as though someone is following you, not in a menacing way, mind you, but if you keep walking down past the elevators, you can hear the elevator doors open and close on their own with nobody getting on or off, every time, every day. Now, funnily enough, though this ghost seems to bother no one, if you decide to go for the stairwell door as oppose to the elevators, it suddenly feels as if you are being ushered out the door, like something instantly decided to chase you, a foreboding feeling, really.

Now the Pediatrics unit has its fair share of noises and phantom specters. I have been down there numerous times, alone, and have heard various bumps and the sound of doors being closed when I know for a fact these doors were not open the last time I looked at them, so there was no way they could be closed when they weren't open to begin with. Noises of bumps and bangs tend to occur mostly at the back end of the unit at the very end of the building, like a polar effect. Two of the nurses went down there one time and reported both hearing what sounded distinctly like a bunch of kids laughing and playing, and it was so loud, it scared them clean off the floor, straight back to the stairwell. Another nurse reported seeing the silhouette of a little girl in the back playroom, who suddenly appeared and vanished, and until this day, she will not venture back to that room alone. To add to all this, I have stood in the hall, alone, and witnessed a white, amorphous shape move in one of those big round mirrors used to see a wide view of a hallway directly behind me.

At the opposite end of this floor is the Sleep Lab and the Medical Records department. Now, the Sleep Lab I have never ventured into at night, but Medical Records is crawling with spooks, and a few of my fellow employees who are psychically in tune have confirmed my suspicions, especially my wife, a learned psychic and healer. She always felt like something bad was in there, and like it would wait for her when she showed up at that little window in the door to the department. One other nurse, another psychic, she brought up there to show her just how haunted it was, and she refused to enter the room. I, on the other hand, having no fear, frequented the place nightly, on business of course, but paid some prices unfortunately.

I cannot think about how many times I had walked in there barely a few feet and the activity in the air was so intense it gave me an instant, splitting headache, which surprisingly passed after I left. According to my wife, there is a large number of spirits, possibly trapped in there, by a demon of all things, which is exactly the 'thing' that waited, watching the door. It was located all the way to the back of the department, by a cubicle, directly in line of sight from the door. As a matter of fact, you open the door and that is the first thing you see.

Now, as for seeing this demon, nobody has claimed such a thing yet, however I have heard a few things down there more than once. Several people, including myself, have attested to hearing whispering of two people, I think they are men, in the back corner near where this supposed demon resides, and whenever you get close, it disappears, like whoever is whispering realized you are listening. There are no people in the department at this hour, mind you, and my wife has even taken a dousing crystal down there before, which she says has confirmed the presence of a demon, which did not much like her dousing and actually urged her out of its area. I have actually had the voice of an old woman, distinctly say 'Hello?' right behind me, and when I spun around, nobody was there. And of all the times I have ventured down there in the dead of night, an odd number of lights have been turned on, and when I come back later, different lights are on? That being said, the same night I heard voices in the corner and an old woman behind me, I also walked to the door to leave, where the light switches are located, and no sooner do I flick the light switch, the light turned back on behind me, but the switch did not move. Creepy, right?

That about wraps up the 2nd floor, more to come on the haunted hospital in days to come...