The Haunted Hospital

The old hospital on the hill had been a strange curiosity since we had moved to New Plymouth, just a year before. Built in the 1860's, to house and treat patients with typhus fever, and again when Spanish flu came to New Zealand in the early 1900's. The old nurses home had been built first. This glorious building lay forlorn and derelict, apparently due to not being earthquake proof, and being built with possible asbestos. It is still a protected building.

I had heard many stories about the old place from people who had grown up in the area. When it was abandoned, it became a playground for vagrants, squatters and drug addicts. A former work colleague had once told me there were immense long tunnels underneath the hospital, and as a teenager him and his mates would go exploring. He said it was common knowledge that the tunnels were haunted, and he had his own horrifying experience of being followed by something sinister, and running down the dark slimy corridors to escape, only to turn around and see absolutely nothing.

These stories and others like them, gave me a chill. Yet they made me even more eager to explore the place.

Being a nurse myself, and a lover of old buildings, this place needed to be seen. My one daughter had a new camera, and had been a bit depressed lately, so I decided upon a challenge for her, and got everyone involved.

Making it a type of a competition to see who could take the most artistic photograph of the derelict place, and make it into something beautiful. Myself, my 3 daughters, and their friend, along with our cellphones, and cameras, traipsed up the hill, along the crack-tarred, weed and agapantha lined, winding narrow road. The trees and shrubs were overgrown, and creepers covered old signs and broken walls.

The nurses home stood imposingly upon us, majestic even. With her broken, corrugated iron covered windows, and faded peeling paint. The large front door, securely bolted, had a graffiti scrawl warning us to "KEEP OUT !"

We couldn't enter the old place, but we could certainly photograph the outside, and so we did, from every angle. Admiring this regal looking beauty who had seen better days. The building certainly had stories to tell, but we could only imagine what they were. They were still there in her walls, but we couldn't see them. If only walls could talk, I had thought, as I gazed longingly at the old facade.

It was a hot day, and after about two hours we decided to head home, have a look at our photos, and the winner of the 'Most artistic photo" would win a slab of chocolate. I uploaded them onto the computer, with a lead to view them on the TV screen, and after boiling the kettle for some tea and cake, we all sat down to see who would be our winner. We had taken quite a number of photos between us, and I was going though each one commenting on how well it was taken, when suddenly my daughters girlfriend shouted out to just hold on, and that she thought she had seen something odd in one that she had taken, possibly a ghost? I had a look, but this girl was always quite dramatic, so took it with a pinch of salt. "It could be", I said, but wasn't convinced. She was getting quite excited about ghosts, but I was looking for an artistic photo for the winner of the prize. I had a look at my daughters photos, and found a creative angle, and she won her prize. We kept browsing through the photos, and realised, unmistakebly, that we had photographed a few unexpected guests.

This one photograph above, is one I had taken. I believe it is of a nurse, with her nurses veil/cape, from the early 1900's.

There is no doubt this is a ghost. We could not find any other explanation.

Perhaps she, and others had chosen us to take their photo's on this particularly random little expedition.