The Ghosts That Will Not Leave

 

Hospital. The mere sound of the word can send shivers running up and down the spine. From our first mewling whimpers to our last breath, a visit or stay in a hospital can represent the most traumatic experiences of our lives. From the greatest of joys to the darkest of despairs, every hospital has seen it all repeated innumerable times.

Small wonder then that unquiet spirits make themselves manifest within their walls. It seems every hospital has its stories of unexplained sightings, sounds, feelings, and atmospheres. This is one such story. So, sit back, put another log on the fire, and get ready for a series of unexplained events in a hospital located in Britain's capital city:

In Woolwich, in the southeast of London, stood the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital (QEMH) Before its closure in 1996 – when it was rebuilt as the Queen Elizabeth Hospital – it housed a plethora of ghosts in a number of departments. Interestingly, when they built the new hospital, they retained some of the original features. In my latest novel – In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – the Royal and Waverly Hospital is also built using material from the old structure. This opens up a whole can of dark and sinister worms, allowing evil forces from the past to infect those in the present day.

Back to the old QEMH. In the Oncology Unit – Ward 10 – the ward keys had a habit of going missing but only on the night shift, even though the nurses in charge would be certain beyond any doubt that the keys had been in their pockets. A systematic search would be made, taking care not to wake the seriously ill patients. Time and again, those keys would stay missing until mysteriously reappearing right at the moment a patient needed urgent medication in the middle of the night. The keys would turn up in plain sight – on the office desk which had been painstakingly searched earlier – on two separate occasions. One Nursing Officer became so infuriated that she demanded the ghost return the keys immediately. It did. And this demand worked every time thereafter.

Another instance of haunting on Ward 10 concerns two cancer patients – both serving soldiers. One was a male senior non-commissioned officer and the other a female of junior rank. The two were expected to make a full recovery and used to meet for a chat. They would joke that – as they were in adjacent rooms at the bottom of the ward, near to the main corridor - if one were to die, the other would come and ask if they were ready to join them in heaven.

Unexpectedly, the male officer died in the early hours while the other patients were all sleeping. As the nurses were preparing his body for transportation down to the morgue, they heard a scream from the next room. The female soldier was cowering by her bed, terrified. She said. “Tell him I’m not ready. I don’t want to go.” Her friend had done as he said he would – and come for her.

Following the rebuild and opening of the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), parts of the old hospital building were still being utilized. Wards 3 and 4 housed elderly care, Wards 1 and 2 ( formerly a closed ward and rehabilitation ward respectively) were minor injury and orthopedic clinics. Ward 10 remained as the oncology unit. No other wards were in use and were chained up for security purposes. Physiotherapy, nuclear medicine, microbiology and phlebotomy remained, along with a newly refitted canteen. All other treatment was carried out at nearby Greenwich District Hospital.

By now Ward 10 was only half in use. The rest of that ward lay in darkness. It was in this darkness that something was busy, making banging noises. The occurrences were so frequent (and unexplained), that staff had grown accustomed to them. They gave the perpetrator a name, “Jimmy” and wisely let him get on with it.

Around six months after the changes had been made, an auxiliary nurse from Ward 4 went out of the ward and down to a small office area to have a smoke at around 1a.m.. but instead of a few precious moments to relax, she had the fright of her life. A huge, smoky black shape drifted through the wall to her left, floated in front of her and disappeared through the opposite wall. She raced back to the ward, frightened half out of her wits.

Some time later, a patient of Ward 4 was looking out of her window into the garden and saw what she was certain was a nun, dishing out soup. Needless to say, there were no nuns on the premises – and no soup kitchen either! As for what may have happened in the past…

Ward 4 seems to have been a veritable hive of activity – and from a variety of causes. One elderly lady reported that she had heard and seen little children running around the corridor and her room. Thinking maybe she was having a mental episode, the nursing staff ignored her comments. But soon after, another patient reported exactly the same occurrence. She told the staff that children had been in her room at 5a.m. The two patients were not in the same room and had not met up, yet both reported the same events – in two different locations.

In the ten years that followed, the hospital was extensively remodelled. New buildings were added. Old ones demolished or repurposed. Some, like half the corridor leading to wards 1,2,3, and 4, were retained. Where the old building has been kept, it has been given a facelift. But the original bricks and mortar remain. Is this the reason that ghostly activity is still being experienced there?

Two occupational therapists both witnessed a clock fly off the wall in the new therapy services assessment unit on the ground floor. It didn’t simply fall straight to the ground – it landed n the middle of the room as if it had been thrown. In the old QEMH, in a similar location, army ward stewardesses had reported the same incident years earlier. In the same room, a stool wobbled, fell over and slid across the floor. When one of the occupational therapists doubled over in pain and fell to the floor, she said it was as if someone had punched her hard in the stomach.

It was then they decided to bring in a professional to psychically ‘cleanse’ the room. Since then, all has been peaceful. 

But, for how long?

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.
Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

Simon and Schuster

Images:

Pixabay

Flame Tree Press

The Floating Sister and Other Apparitions...

 

My latest novel – In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – is largely set in a fairly modern hospital, but one which has been built using material from – and erected on the foundations of – a much earlier structure. It had been a workhouse, hospital and asylum and one in which patients were treated most cruelly.

Of course, two hundred years ago, even methods employed with the best of intentions, designed to cure people of a range of ills would nowadays cause us to shriek and flee in terror. Any doctor employing such (to us) barbaric methods would be permanently struck off, his/her license to practice medicine permanently removed.

Even with our modern science, hospitals can be traumatic places witnessing every human activity from birth through to death and everything in between - surgeries, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, pain, suffering and, finally, the slipping away of life itself. Add to this, the sheer design of the buildings themselves – especially the older ones – and you have the perfect breeding ground for spirits of all kinds, from ghosts of small babies, through to spectres of people who have met violent, sudden or traumatic deaths.

Then there is another category altogether. That which you could only find in a hospital – the caring ghost who nurtured while alive and now cannot stop simply because they have passed over. Glasgow Royal Infirmary – originally built in 1794 – has all the ingredients for a supernatural hotbed. It doesn’t disappoint.

There are many stories. Some of the most commonly cited are:

The Floating Sister

Should you encounter this lady, you will probably initially think she is just a member of staff on her way from one ward to another. Look down and you will see that there is nothing below the level of her knees. She appears to be floating along the corridor. A nurse working at the Infirmary in the late 20th century, greeted her as she walked past, before seeing the strange lack of lower limbs. Through the years, the hospital has undergone many renovations and it is quite possible that at some stage the floor levels were changed. This ghost is walking on an older floor.

Archie The Whisperer

This ghost manifests in Ward 27 and patients in their last days have reported seeing the same person, who whispered to them. They have said his name is Archie and his aim appears to be to ease their passing.

 He has also manifested on occasions and has been reported as being elderly and wearing a hair bun.

The Grey Lady

There had to be one, didn’t there? This lady has been chased by staff as she walked down corridors, apparently oblivious to their presence. She has then vanished through walls.

Dead Man Walking

One of the more recent additions to the infirmary's catalogue, this one was first reported early this century. On the way to treat a patient who had suffered a heart attack, a doctor was approached by a patient who asked him for directions out of the hospital. The doctor obliged and hurried to help the person he had been summoned to care for. Sadly, he arrived too late. The heart attack victim has already died.

But the doctor got the shock of his life when he looked down at the deceased patient's face and recognized him. It was the same man who had asked him for directions.

At least Glasgow Royal Infirmary's ghosts are benign. The same cannot be said for those who haunt the Royal and Waverly Hospital...

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

 Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

Simon and Schuster

Images:

Shutterstock

Pixabay

The Grey Lady and the White Hart

Fer Gregory/Shutterstock.com

Scotland is justifiably famous for its castles and countryside. It is also fabulously haunted with a wealth of apparitions – both friends and decidedly unfriendly.

Situated off the coast, in the Western Isles of Scotland lies the Isle of Arran where Brodick Castle has stood since Viking times. The present structure is newer, dating from the fourteenth century. Oliver Cromwell garrisoned his New Model Army here in 1648 during the Civil War. He killed the first Duke and the second Duke died in battle three years later.

The castle takes its name from the village of Brodick nearby and from Brodick Bay, (situated below Goat Fell) on which the castle sits. The castle was a former residence of the Dukes of Hamilton. They earned the title Duke of Arran when it was bestowed in them by James IV of Scotland who also gave them the castle in 1503. It probably did not hurt that the then Duke of Hamilton was James IV’s cousin.

In 1844, the castle was doubled in size by major alterations ordered by the 10^th Duke and his wife, Princess Marie of Baden. Finally, in 1957 its then owner, Mary Duchess of Montrose bequeathed it to the National Trust for Scotland following her death.

As for the ghosts - they are varied, but a Grey Lady, said to date from Cromwellian times, wanders the corridors. She is believed to have been a servant who fell in love with the captain of the Guard and became pregnant. As a result she was instantly dismissed from service. She turned to her family for help, but found no solace there. They disowned her. Abandoned by her lover, shunned by her family, penniless, homeless and alone, she drowned herself in the Wine Port Quay, by the entrance to the castle.

Now she walks the servants’ areas – kitchen, lower corridor and also the turnpike stairs which lead to the East Tower and the battlements, no doubt still hoping to reconcile with her faithless lover. Visitors have reported seeing her apparently shadowing staff working at the castle. She seems to be trying to talk to them but the staff affected are completely unaware of her presence.

There is another version of the Grey Lady story that states she was locked in the dungeons with two other women and left to die of starvation because all three were plague victims.

A male ghost of unknown identity appears to haunt the library. He wears a green jacket and sits quietly reading. Another man is sometimes seen in the long corridor. He is evidently shy as he disappears as soon as he is spotted.

There are conflicting legends surrounding the White Hart. One states that it only appears in the grounds of the castle when the Clan Chef of the Hamiltons is about to die. In total contrast, there is another tradition that states great good fortune will come to those who see it. Whichever is correct (and let's hope it is the latter), you can see a beautiful sculpture commemorating the mythical creature as this has been added to the extensive gardens. Created by artist Sally Matthews, it is lifesize and crafted out of local whitebeam and bracken.

Today, the castle has been extensively restored and you can visit it. Click here for details. With so many ghosts in residence, it looks like you are never really alone at Brodick Castle.

The Strange and Sinister Tale of Major Weir

It is a strange story indeed. An upright, seemingly godfearing Presbyterian – a pillar of Edinburgh society – suddenly confessed to being a witch. Not only that, he implicated his own sister, Grizel, and she confirmed it!

No-one could fathom out where the confession had come from. Major Weir of all people - a black-hearted witch, guilty of the most heinous crimes and satanic rituals. And he confessed to his crimes during a church service in 1670. The congregation could not and would not believe his confession and doctors were summoned. Sure enough they concluded that Weir was mentally unstable but not insane. Nevertheless, the Major was having no one of it. He was a witch, so was his sister and they must both pay the penalty which, in those days meant death.

Apparently these two, while living in a smart house in West Bow, had regularly met with a ‘dark stranger’ who escorted them to meetings in Dalkeith in a fiery coach drawn by six horses. Weir and his sister had indulged in an incestuous relationship, they said. Their confessions became wilder and wilder. They had inherited their practice of the dark arts from their mother and Weir claimed to derive supernatural powers from a black staff he used which had been given to him, so he said, by the devil himself.

Weir admitted to bestiality and all manner of sexual acts with servant girls as well as devil worship. As if that were not enough, the Major claimed to have only listed some of his crimes – the others being too awful to recite.

Grizel said that a horseshoe-shaped mark on her forehead had been put there by the devil and he had given her the power to spin yarn at an astonishing rate but this yarn would break if anyone else tried to use it.

The Major and his sister claimed to be able to commune with the dead. Still no one would believe them but they insisted that every claim they made was true. They demanded to be tried and punished.

  

Eventually they got their wish and both were found guilty as a result of their own confessions. Grizel was hanged (after first slapping the executioner) and the Major was initially strangled and then burned. Witnesses reported that their executions took far longer than usual. Evidently the devil didn’t want them to die.

Their home in West Bow became the stuff of legend. Children were warned not to go near it and it lay empty for many years. The fiery coach was reportedly seen stopping there, strange shapes could be seen at the windows and their victims were said to haunt the building where the Weirs had tortured them. Candles would flicker even though there was no one there to light them, and the sound of music emanated from the closed and increasingly derelict house.

The house seems to have dropped out of sight for many years and was presumed demolished in 1878, along with a lot of property in the vicinity. Now, however, it seems at least some of it may have survived. In 2014, historian Dr Jan Bondeson concluded that it had been incorporated into the current Quaker Meeting House in Upper Bow. Ironically, the manager of the Meeting House told the Edinburgh Evening News that one of his staff, some years previously, had witnessed Weir’s ghost pass straight through a wall. In the toilet.