Fear Files

Abandoned Hospital

his is my first of hopefully many submissions, if you have any questions please feel free to inquire. For legal purposes, I cannot disclose the exact location of my experiences as the penalties for trespassing in said location are quite severe. I have taken multiple people here and in my experience it is often scarier seeing red and blue police lights than it is to witness the paranormal. I have multiple photos of the location and will share some with anyone who is genuinely interested in the location and my experiences. As they are my personal work and livelihood (I sell my prints and artwork). I am not posting them with this because I don't need them ending up all over the internet. But as I said, if you are interested in anything written, ask me or email me at gorgeous.ghouls[a]gmail.com.

Over the course of my life I have acquired a wealth of information regarding the paranormal. Growing up in a 26 room 200+ year old Victorian home, my experience with the paranormal started at an early age and it has been an interest of mine since childhood. I am now an artist in multiple mediums and photography is a very large part of my life. Anyway, let me cut to the chase and get to the good stuff (if you're still reading this).

There are a series of abandoned mental health facilities near where I live upstate New York, I have snuck into, photographed and explored the majority of them with the exception of the more modern buildings that are sealed off with metal bars and chains. One building in particular still gives occasional nightmares to this day. The building is a three story is of brick construction that has fallen victim to time-lapse and mother nature. The floors are rotten, roofs partially collapsed, the building is more or less a death trap if you aren't careful, which brings me to the first of two stories I am sharing today.

My friend and I were headed up the road leading to the buildings one early evening in June of 2009 when we passed a group of college kids, a fairly common site considering there is a community college relatively close. We were a bit irritated by this and hoped there would be no one inside to disturb our photo shoot. We entered the building and all seemed quiet, so we began unpacking our equipment. After setting up our artificial lighting and snapping a few test photographs of our setting (It really is a beautiful building when you look at the colors of the flaking paint in high resolution photographs), we heard some muffled laughter and talking from somewhere else. We brushed it off as nothing and merely assumed that there were indeed some more college kids in the building who hopefully would not be disturbing us. A few minutes later we heard a loud crash followed by a girl screaming. I immediately assumed the worst and said "Oh F***, I think someone fell through the floor!" I have first aid training and have worked search and rescue before so after a quick assessment of the situation my friend and I set off into the building together. We kept waiting to hear the rest of the people and wondered why the hell no one was helping this girl who was crying out from somewhere within the building. The basement revealed nothing and the first floor was empty. We went throughout the second floor, occasionally shouting to the girl that we were going to help her and to stay calm. We kicked down a few old rotten wooden doors, pulled back old bed curtains, checked every nook and cranny and then came to a huge hole in the ceiling. We assumed it was the acoustics of the building that made the girl constantly seem like she was right around the corner from us and that the sound was traveling from the third floor down through the hole and echoing through the halls.

We got upstairs, and searched all the rooms until we came to one door that was closed. After trying to nudge it open, it appeared jammed and the girl sounded as if she was right behind it so remembering my training, I decided it was time to break the door down. I yelled through the door to the girl and told her to try her best to move away from the door if she was anywhere near it, because we were going to knock it down. Several kicks still would not open the door, so my friend and I decided to get a bit of a running start and ram it down together. The whole time my friend kept saying "This doesn't make sense" and I assumed he was as confused as I was about why the door just wouldn't break.

After getting our running start, I threw my weight into the door which to my surprise, broke out of the frame like a twig. Whatever instinct my friend had during these few short seconds, may very well have saved my life. As I hit the door, my friend yelled "WAIT!" and grabbed onto the collar of my shirt, just as he did this the door flew out several feet and fell, three stories, to the ground floor with a loud bang. I scrambled away from the ledge with my friend in a total state of shock. The only thing behind the door was the collapsed wing of the building. There was no girl, no more shouting, nothing besides the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I later learned that my friend was saying that it didn't make sense because he was thinking of the layout of the building and was certain that behind that door was exactly what existed - the collapsed part of the building. Had he not grabbed me I would have fallen, with the door, three stories to the pile of rubble from the collapsed floors beneath me. After listening and shouting a few more minutes, my friend and I left the building, quickly, having decided there were no people inside other than ourselves.

My second story involves the same building, I will make it as short as possible since by now you already have an idea of the building if you've read this far.

One afternoon around mid July, my friend and I were back in the building taking photos. It was daylight and considerably less frightening with so much sunlight coming through all of the broken windows. We were on the third floor when we head what sounded like someone slam a door or slam a desk onto the ground, followed by heavy footsteps and a considerable amount of noise. We immediately assumed it was the security guards trying to scare us out of hiding, so we snuck down to the second floor to try and figure out a way past them out of the building, which only has one entrance that is not blocked off. As we were about to turn a corner into a hallway, we heard footsteps coming from that direction so we turned into the nearest room and hid in a closet. The closet had only half of a broken door and about three feet of an angle you could not see just staring at the closet from the room. We pressed ourselves flat against the wall, and hid in the little angle hoping no one would stick their head in the closet and turn to see us. The footsteps grew closer and soon entered the room we were hiding in. They crossed the room, stopped, and soon we heard the metal bed frame creaking as if someone sat down on it. We stayed as still as possible for nearly thirty minutes when finally, we heard footsteps leave the room and head down the hallway and down the stairs. We quickly rushed to the room above the entrance to look out the window and see when the security guard left, but NO ONE ever left the building. We waited for two or three hours and as it started to get dark we decided to chance ourselves getting arrested and exit the building. We walked downstairs, took a quick look around and left the building the way we came in, once again completely confused and quite uneasy about the situation.