the haunting

Sort of a prequel to last night's post. In writing about that I remembered that part of why I wanted to go outside in the first place was the building we were in. When I got there, we were in a tent, but in the middle of November they moved us into an abandoned mental hospital.

It was large, and made mainly of brick outside and cement inside. Lots of interior rooms with no windows, or windows that only looked out onto hallways, with green peeling paint and patches of green mould. Barred doors between sections. Marks on the walls.

It had occasional electricity and running water, so in that respect it was a step up. In just about every other way, it was a step so far down that it should've come with a warning sign and some red paint.

About a week after we moved in, one of the nurses told me he'd seen shadows moving on the walls, human-shaped shadows, when he was the only one in the room. I had a patient ask me if the medication she was on could make her hallucinate. She didn't want to say what she'd seen.


I think within a month of being in that place, half the staff and more than half the patients were convinced it was haunted. People were going around in pairs at night. Not that anyone ever said, 'Come with me, I'm afraid of ghosts,' because we were all soldiers except for some of the patients, and mostly doctors or nurses, and of course no one believed in ghosts. You could tell by the way all public ghost-related conversations ended with: 'But of course I don't believe in that nonsense.'

I was sleeping in a room with three other men. I woke up one night with one of them shaking me.

"There's something in the hall," he said.

"Person? Rat? Dog? Who's on watch?"

"Something," he said, with a significant look.

I really didn't believe in ghosts. I didn't especially not believe in them, but it did not occur to me that the place was actually haunted. Until I went out into the hall and saw a small white blur disappear around a corner.

I followed, and I kept getting glimpses of it, and it seemed to shine in a weird way. Pretty soon I was running, but it kept moving faster. Someone screamed up ahead.

It came from one of the patient rooms, where we had an injured mother and son staying, and her family with them, including her youngest daughter, who was about seven. The little girl was crying. It took some time, but eventually we got her story.

She'd been out for a walk, but she got scared in the dark. She heard footsteps behind her but couldn't see anyone. The footsteps started coming faster and faster, so she started to run, white (ghost-like...) dress flapping behind her. She was convinced a ghost was chasing her. I was convinced I was chasing a ghost.

That was the closest I came to seeing anything supernatural while I was there, but I was still relieved when we moved to a building with better plumbing and less history.