Encounters with the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, January 2015
Investigating a Haunted Hospital
by: Brent Raynes
Referring to my daughter Chandra, Mark Kelso, a local respiratory therapist and the gentleman who arranged for our getting to investigate the hospital, noted: “She saw a little girl in the pediatric unit, I think when we first walked into the building and she commented about seeing a little girl standing in the doorway and she described the girl to me and the girl matched the description of the first patient I ever took care of in that hospital. I had thought that that was very ironic because I had wondered if we would pick up anything from her and she got in that particular unit and the room that Chandra saw her is the room that she died in.”
During our second investigation we had broken up into two separate groups. “My group was sitting on the desk of one of the nursing units doing some EVP work,” paranormal investigator Bret Oldham recalled. “Several of us saw a ball-base sized, very bright orb like light in front of the hall doors east of us. It happened several times. During all of this I was sitting right by the elevator doors. I did see a whitish misty looking form pass by me and appear to go right into the closed elevator doors. I said something to everyone in the group at the time. It wasn’t a full body apparition but it was something. I jumped up and felt the air around there and it did feel colder for a bit.”
Mark Kelso stated, “I actually had a nurse at the hospital that had been house supervisor tell me about experiences of nurses – I had not told her about what [Bret] had seen – about what they called a lady in white coming down the hallway and [who] would come to their nurses station and then make a left hand turn and go through elevator doors. Bret said that he didn’t see that much of a body but that that was the same path that these nurses had reported, and these were numerous nurses who reported seeing that.”
“We got several full sentences,” Bret noted, referring to EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) receptions, “some friendly and some who absolutely didn’t want us there.” For example, in one instance a female sounding voice was recorded that said “Go away,” while in Room 310 a male sounding voice was recorded saying, “Get out of here,” and in surgery on the second floor a female voice saying “Get out” was also recorded. At times, the spirits seemed to display a bit of humor as one time when Bret asked if anyone was there and the recorder picked up a faint “no.” In another instance, Bret was talking about having just observed a shadowy figure and the recorder picked up a faint whisper saying “no one here.” Then again, there were instances that took a serious tone, as one time when my daughter recording on the third floor picked up a whispering voice that said “help me,” a few minutes before Bret’s K2 meter inexplicably detected a magnetic field. In one instance, an unexplained knocking sound was heard on a nearby wall. A few people reported the sensation of being touched.
“I am drug free and drama free!” noted an OR nurse who had joined us on our second hospital investigation. Though she had only worked in the hospital a short time before its closing, she said that she “always felt spirits there.” She described having had a number of personal brushes with the paranormal, but one in particular gave me the chills. “I have a mannequin in my dining room with party attire on, and she has a party horn in her right hand. A couple of months ago, around 11 p.m., the house was silent. Six times I walked into my bedroom and the horn blew. Finally I burned some white sage, walked back into my bedroom. It happened again. I took the horn out of her hand and hid it behind a bunch of baskets, behind a door in an antique ice box. I walked back into my bedroom. It blew again, but the sound was very muffled, low pitched! Never told anyone. This was on Thursday. The following Saturday I was sitting at the dining room table, looked over and the horn was back in her hand.”
