Wilson Hall was first opened in 1964. In 1971, residents of room 428 told RA's that a jar of Noxzema flew from a bookshelf and shattered against the opposite wall with no explanation. The tale of Wilson Hall took a stranger twist in the fall of 1975. Susan Herrington and Sue Goestschius were living in the then all-female freshman resident hall. The two girls reported hearing water fountains clicking, bathroom doors opening and slamming without any windows being in the area...One room was the worst by far. A student moved into to her dorm room and within weeks she was seen less and less. After several days of not being seen, or attending classes, the RA was keyed into the room were they found that she had killed herself. Before she died she smeared symblos on the walls in her own blood. After cleaning up the room, and several students moving in and out of the same room due to "strange happenings" the school tried cleaning up the room again. This time blood kept seeping through the paint. coat after coat of paint could not stop the bleeding...finally, they removed the wall and turned it into a boiler room. Strange para-normal activity still occures even now. Most of the activity is doors slamming shut VERY hard...without explanation.
Name: n/a
Location: Canada
Status: abandoned
First we'll start with the WARNING: It is VERY unhealthy to enter this building. There are many unstable sections of the building as well as the threat of asbestos which is all around the hospital. There are numerous other health risks in the complex so we do not recomend you enter it. This place was built in 1851. It became the main hospital for St. John's. In 1940 a nurses residence was added. Part of the hospital was used for the Canadain Navy for serveral years. We've heard that part of the hospital was used during the world wars to treat shell-shocked soldiers. The hospital had a peak of 600 beds until 1967 when the Health Science center opened. Several wards were destroyed in 1997 and the powerplant and some other sections were torn down 2000. A chainlink fence was put up around the building in the fall of 1999. The fence is easy to get over, there's a section at the back of the building which has been cut. Aside from the fence the place is not being taken care of. Lots of broken windows and some of the windows that were boarded up have had the boards removed. I don't think there is anyone watching over the building besides the people in the Miller Center next door. Before the fence was put up last fall there was a watch dog inside the building to keep people out. Parts of this building were being used up until a few years ago and it appears that there's still lots of stuff left in the building. Probably the best time to enter the building would be early in the evening due to the lack of activity at the Miller Center next door. The easiest building to enter is the nursing home building. The main doors have been totally removed so you can just walk right it. There are various medical supplies like IV bags and blood extraction kits all throughout the hall. This building has only been abandoned for 4 years but it's been vandalized quite a bit. This building is not quite as exciting because most of the floors are similar, except the basement which still has some hospital beds and other equipment. The hall leading to the beds had plastic covering the doors to all the rooms and closets. The plastic had been removed by someone before us. It looked almost like some type of quarantine or something. There is a lower basement section to this building which leads to a boiler room. The nursing residence at the rear is a little more interesting. The basement has some strange rooms in it and lots to see. There are utility tunnels under this building that we have not explored yet. The upper floors are well lit and filled with pigeons and pigeon shit. We think the third (top) floor was used for the nurses residence because of the small dorm-like rooms. The most interesting building is the oldest building. It's the one with the 2 towers in the front. There is one room on the main floor which is filled with old equipment like heart monitors and primiative answering machines. Each floor has different things to offer. If you enter through the basement door on the front there's a load of steam pipes and gauges and a few different empty rooms. To the right there is a steel grate in the floor and looks like it used to lead to a tunnel but it's now filled with water. Near the back of the basement there is a huge crawl space under the rest of the building. The main floor has many rooms, janitor work rooms, and a kitchen. The second floor has a large ward which we've named the "Satan Room" because of the satanic graphiti. There are lots of tables and chairs in this room and in each tower there is a washroom. On the other side of the floor there are several rooms that used to be operating rooms. These rooms are quite clean accept for some graphiti. On the third floor there is four room that look like storage rooms. Down the hall, one room looked like a operation prep room, so we assume that the rooms next to it used to be operating rooms or part of the morgue, that we heard was on the top floor. Like the other buildings this floor is also full of pigeons and their shit. The floors are also very water-logged and seem to be unstable. The buildings were last used in 1997 and were closed because the contaminated water due to the old pipes. We've heard from servral sources that these buildings are owned by local polititian Danny Williams. Apparently there are plans to turn on of the buildings into a luxury hotel. The hospital is one of the oldest standing buildings in St. John's so hopefully they can be saved from the wrecking ball.
For decades, they have lain in unmarked graves -- as forgotten in death as they had been in life. A man (anonymous) wept and prayed at the cemetery on the grounds of Danvers State Hospital. As a patient, he often visited the unmarked graves of former patients because ''I felt I knew them personally.'' Now, fellow survivors of the state mental hospital where some 300 patients were buried in anonymous graves are leading an effort to restore and preserve their burial sites.Yesterday, the group led a tour of two overgrown cemeteries at Danvers State Hospital, where thousands of mentally ill people were kept between 1878 and 1991, and where hundreds died. Where numbered markers once designated grave sites, today the cemeteries are open fields. The patients buried there remain unknown, because no records were made of their burials. Another man, whose great uncle is among those buried there, was one of several people to drop a single carnation on a stone wall leading to one cemetery. ''I would like to find his grave,'' she said, ''to give him the proper burial he deserves.'' A woman, who suffers from bouts of depression, was herself a patient for just more than two months in the sprawling, Gothic building that looked out over Route 1 for 114 years and now stands abandoned. She learned of her great uncle's confinement only when a doctor committed her to the hospital involuntarily several years ago, and her mother came seeking her release. ''She told me he was taken out in the winter and forced to strip, and was hosed down with cold water,'' she recalled her mother saying. ''The patients were forced to make their own coffins, and were beaten. . . . She didn't want the same thing to happen to me.'' She said she spent each night during her stay at the hospital curled up to protect herself against rape. Several former patients had emotional reactions to returning to the hospital where many spent years of their lives. Walking down a hill to the first cemetery, a man, a Danvers patient 22 times, walked off into the tall weeds, sank to his knees and sobbed. He said he had ''many, many memories, of goodness and badness'' from his time in the hospital. As a patient, he liked to visit the graves of the dead because ''there was so much peace . . . I felt I knew them personally.'' A man, hospitalized at Danvers from 1959 to 1966, said he was raped six times during his stay. ''How many of these patients died with violence?'' he asked of the people buried on the hospital grounds. He said he had seen beatings first-hand, and was also beaten himself while a patient. They and other former patients are among the more than 60 members of the Danvers State Memorial Committee, which sponsored yesterday's event. Local legislators and state Department of Mental Health Commissioner Marylou Sudders went along on the tour. A bill authorizing the state to sell the 500-acre Danvers property passed the Legislature last year, and the committee wants to ensure the cemeteries are restored before the property is sold. J.R. a woman, who briefly worked as a nurse at the hospital and later became a patient, described the difficult conditions she endured, but noted that, when the hospital opened, ''the intentions were the greatest.'' A woman, who was mistakenly diagnosed as schizophrenic as a teen-ager and spent 11 years in Danvers, said she would not be alive today if it were not for the care she received from hospital staff. Ms. Balter, who later went to work at the hospital, was portrayed by Marlo Thomas in the movie ''Nobody's Child.'' She and former mental patient P.D. a woman, have tried to research records for clues to who may be buried on the property. P.D., now director of training for the National Empowerment Center in Lawrence, addressed the crowd before one cemetery was blessed. For former patients, she said, ''it is very important in our heart of hearts that this cemetery be blessed as it is. Then we can bless it again when it is all cleaned up. ''Remember, it is not patients buried here,'' she added, ''it's people buried here -- people just like you and me, who suffered and joyed.''- P.D.
Photo permission granted by jeff@gaithergraphix.com
permission granted by Kriss Stephens@yahoo.com Photos and story Kriss Stephens For more photos and information check out www.ghoststudies.com
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