Haunted Hospitals
A popular setting for horror movies and video games, hospitals, with their connotations of suffering and death, are prone to tales of their haunting.
It seems relatively logical to assume that where there is a good deal of death, and where the building has been standing for decades, even centuries, there would be suspicion of a ghostly presence. Some hospitals are ancient, some having been established by monks as alms houses in medieval times, for example, or work houses.
All Saints Hospital in Chatham was one such building. I had two of my children there as at the time it served as the local maternity hospital. It had originally been the Medway Union Workhouse built in 1849 to replace the Chatham Workhouse which was based at Union Street, near The Brook at the base of Chatham Hill. A little way up Magpie Hall Road, All Saints Hospital also served as a psychiatric unit, and a geriatric unit. An interesting combination of birth, death and insanity.
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| Image courtesy of Kent Online |
It was, as many old hospitals are, a creepy building. Large, rambling, with long corridors, high ceilings and dark corners and courtyards, when I knew it the building was old and tired, unkempt in places. Most of my visits involved the maternity wards and it was while in labour with my daughter, that I experienced the more shadowy side of the building.
I had already heard some of the local stories about the various 'ghosts' and as a down-to-earth agnostic in these matters, I tended to disregard these as the imaginative ramblings of the local community: white ladies throwing themselves out of upper floor windows, the wailing of tortured souls unable to leave the wards where they had died, the cackling of long-dead lunatics echoing down the empty corridors to terrify medics and porters alike.
Hospitals in those days were not as secure as they are now. We could wonder about unhindered and there were no security guards, with only, perhaps, the ward sister challenging you if you popped your head in a ward outside of visiting hours. I was admitted around midnight, in labour but, with the baby in the wrong position, I was told it would take a good while to get to the last stages. I was pretty frightened about the thought of a forceps delivery - far more worried about that, in fact, than about ghosts.
"Have a walk about," said my midwife, rather more cheerily than I expected anyone to be at that hour, "sometimes babies work their way into the right position." I have no idea whether there was any medical evidence for this, but one glance at the forceps and walk I did.
"Have a walk about," said my midwife, rather more cheerily than I expected anyone to be at that hour, "sometimes babies work their way into the right position." I have no idea whether there was any medical evidence for this, but one glance at the forceps and walk I did.
Not that I would encourage anyone of a nervous disposition to wander around an old Victorian hospital in the darkest hours of night. It was cold, and all I had on was a nightie and a cardigan and I was in labour - five minutes between contractions. There was only dim lighting around the hospital, and the corridors echoed with the footsteps of the staff that were moving around caring for the patients and, of course, there were hushed voices and the occasional moan, groan and calling out of a patient. All pretty normal for hospital life. But I have to admit to finding some of the more distant recesses of the hospital unnerving.
I wandered only around the maternity unit at first, returning to the labour ward now and again for a quick check on progress. The staff were busy and I was able to control the pain, so I strolled further afield. Notoriously poor at retaining a sense of direction, I was soon lost. I recall finding myself at the entrance of Brooke and Shelley wards, where seriously mentally ill patients were cared for, and feeling downright scared at the screams coming from behind the forbidding doors. I backed away and followed what I thought was the path back. Clearly I was wrong, because I soon ended up walking along an especially dark corridor lined by old, broken beds, trolleys and wheelchairs.
At the end of the corridor was a window, one of those huge, paneled windows you find in old brick buildings. The shadows at the end of the corridor hid what else might be there, but I could see the gleam of streetlights through the glass. I figured if I looked out of the window, I might get some sense of what part of the hospital I was in and from there work my way back. I shuffled towards the window in my slippers, pausing twice to allow contractions to work through, feeling the baby shifting vigorously inside me. At the window, I looked down at part of the courtyard. It was silent, still, abandoned down there. Two cars were parked in one corner and I could see over the hospital boundary wall and across the stretch of streets that led down towards the centre of town and the river beyond.
Instantly re-orientated, I turned to make my way back to the maternity section of the hospital. It was in that moment, in mid-turn, that I caught sight of two figures, gliding silently through the shadowed corridor from one opening to my right, and into a door way opposite. It was just a glimpse, the figures were in shadows, but what startled me was that they were in long robes - unlike modern nurses in their crisp dresses (in those days they still wore dresses, stout leather shoes and rarely did you find a male nurse, who would have been the only person other than an orderly or a male doctor, wearing trousers). The figures disappeared in just a few seconds and I was left wondering whether I had really seen them or not.
Gripped by another contraction, I lost no time in heading back to the maternity unit, quickly found the better lit end of the hospital and followed the signs to the labour room where I told my midwife where I'd been and what I thought I'd seen.
"Oh yes," she chirped, still smiling and bustling despite it being around three or so in the morning, "we've heard about those two. Ghosts from the time of the workhouse apparently. They were so dedicated to their work, they couldn't stay away."
She rummaged about my swollen tummy, pressed her ear to the pinard horn and announced the baby had shunted into place beautifully. My daughter was born as easily as any baby is born a couple of hours later, by which time I had forgotten those two shadowy figures. Perhaps they were just in my imagination, perhaps not, but All Saints Hospital at night was as creepy as everyone said. The building was closed in 1999 and eventually demolished to create space for the building of a housing estate. I wonder if ghosts move on when a building is demolished, or if they still hang around in the spaces left?
That was the thought in my mind when I took a stroll in Gibraltar's Upper Town a couple of weeks ago and found myself walking past what is now a new school, but what had been St Bernard's Hospital, the old hospital, where I had been born. A hospital whose history goes back to the sixteenth century, that place was so creepy I had known burly security guards who patrolled the shell of the building while it was awaiting redevelopment to leave their posts in fear at what they said they could hear and what they purported to have seen. But that story is for another time...
I wandered only around the maternity unit at first, returning to the labour ward now and again for a quick check on progress. The staff were busy and I was able to control the pain, so I strolled further afield. Notoriously poor at retaining a sense of direction, I was soon lost. I recall finding myself at the entrance of Brooke and Shelley wards, where seriously mentally ill patients were cared for, and feeling downright scared at the screams coming from behind the forbidding doors. I backed away and followed what I thought was the path back. Clearly I was wrong, because I soon ended up walking along an especially dark corridor lined by old, broken beds, trolleys and wheelchairs.
At the end of the corridor was a window, one of those huge, paneled windows you find in old brick buildings. The shadows at the end of the corridor hid what else might be there, but I could see the gleam of streetlights through the glass. I figured if I looked out of the window, I might get some sense of what part of the hospital I was in and from there work my way back. I shuffled towards the window in my slippers, pausing twice to allow contractions to work through, feeling the baby shifting vigorously inside me. At the window, I looked down at part of the courtyard. It was silent, still, abandoned down there. Two cars were parked in one corner and I could see over the hospital boundary wall and across the stretch of streets that led down towards the centre of town and the river beyond.
Instantly re-orientated, I turned to make my way back to the maternity section of the hospital. It was in that moment, in mid-turn, that I caught sight of two figures, gliding silently through the shadowed corridor from one opening to my right, and into a door way opposite. It was just a glimpse, the figures were in shadows, but what startled me was that they were in long robes - unlike modern nurses in their crisp dresses (in those days they still wore dresses, stout leather shoes and rarely did you find a male nurse, who would have been the only person other than an orderly or a male doctor, wearing trousers). The figures disappeared in just a few seconds and I was left wondering whether I had really seen them or not.
Gripped by another contraction, I lost no time in heading back to the maternity unit, quickly found the better lit end of the hospital and followed the signs to the labour room where I told my midwife where I'd been and what I thought I'd seen.
"Oh yes," she chirped, still smiling and bustling despite it being around three or so in the morning, "we've heard about those two. Ghosts from the time of the workhouse apparently. They were so dedicated to their work, they couldn't stay away."
She rummaged about my swollen tummy, pressed her ear to the pinard horn and announced the baby had shunted into place beautifully. My daughter was born as easily as any baby is born a couple of hours later, by which time I had forgotten those two shadowy figures. Perhaps they were just in my imagination, perhaps not, but All Saints Hospital at night was as creepy as everyone said. The building was closed in 1999 and eventually demolished to create space for the building of a housing estate. I wonder if ghosts move on when a building is demolished, or if they still hang around in the spaces left?
That was the thought in my mind when I took a stroll in Gibraltar's Upper Town a couple of weeks ago and found myself walking past what is now a new school, but what had been St Bernard's Hospital, the old hospital, where I had been born. A hospital whose history goes back to the sixteenth century, that place was so creepy I had known burly security guards who patrolled the shell of the building while it was awaiting redevelopment to leave their posts in fear at what they said they could hear and what they purported to have seen. But that story is for another time...
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| Old Saint Bernard's Hospital photo courtesy of Gibraltar Heritage Trust |
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