While I have never been
a ghost hunter and usually do not entertain the idea of such elusive
beings as ghosts whisking through the air, there are times, such as
this, that almost tempt me to do so. In a strange and
completely real turn of events, a hundred-year-old building came to
life in more ways than one.
Some old buildings
are drenched in mystery, regardless of their intended purpose or how
many times they have been remodeled. I have often considered that the
grand, century-old, empty building down the street was no exception,
and furthermore, I stick to the opinion that I have been proven
right.
Originally a hospital
begun by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy in 1919, the structure
was a huge, four-story, brick building that took up nearly half a
block with many dozens of windows running in rows down each of the
long sides. This once-auspicious building was the original Mercy
Medical Center. My dad worked at the new Mercy Medical Center for
many years as a hematologist, and since I had always found the human
body and the medical field fascinating, Dad would sometimes let me
tag along to work. On these exciting days my mom would wake me before
the sun was up, and I would spring out of bed, dressing quickly and
shoving some hurried breakfast in my mouth so I could go to the
hospital with Dad. All morning I would watch him sort the tubes of
blood, take samples from patients, and observe tiny findings beneath
the fascinating, multi-layered microscope. Of course, by noon my eyes
were drooping so he would take me home again at lunch. But always I
loved to go, and it was these trips to the new Mercy Hospital that
sparked interest in the old building, complete with all its dusty
history and abandoned ghosts.
The new hospital was
built in 1967 and the old building left to other purposes, the last
of which was a retirement center called Valley Plaza. By the time
Valley Plaza closed in 2004, I had been driving past it for fifteen
years. As it sat empty for the next ten years it became increasingly
dilapidated – the grounds overgrown, the bright sign faded by
wind and weather, and the once-busy windows stale and vacant. That
place, I thought, was still filled with mystery and history.
Familiarity with a
certain ancient building, such as the old Mercy Hospital, can breed a
strange and gleeful sense of haunting, like the delightful chill that
comes from telling ghost stories around a campfire with a group of
friends. My imagination flourished while I was growing up because in
addition to learning about blood and medicine from my father, I also
learned to love literature. Every New Year’s Eve my dad would
recite from memory the mystical short story “The Water Ghost of
Harrowby Hall” to my siblings and me. Our family was always in
the middle of some classic book; in the late evenings, after dinner,
all four of us kids would trundle to the living room where Dad would
read to us from the pages of Tolkien or Lang or Lewis or Alcott. It
was considered education, but we also really did enjoy it. There was
no shortage of imagination around our house, so when the sudden
opportunity arose for us kids to enter the darkened, dusty fortress
of the original hospital, of course we had to do it.
We slipped in through
a basement window and instantly found ourselves in the dark
antechamber behind the long, heavily-shelved kitchen. There was a
small room directly to our right, segregated from all the others,
which appeared to be the boiler room, but curiously, it also looked
like a crude, hastily-set-up bedchamber, soundproof and lit by a
single swinging light bulb. When shut, the room was sealed from the
rest of the building with a massive steel sliding door. The small
room contained only an old, assembled metal bed frame, a chamberpot,
and the tall boiler that must have heated the water for the building.
With a chill I thought that surely this room was not meant to house
people. I shivered as I recalled that this large residence had been
both a hospital and a home for the elderly, either of which could
have housed a patient who may have been subjected to seclusion.
The floor below our
feet was covered with the chalky dust of aging plaster so that we
could see our footprints. “Take nothing but pictures, leave
nothing but footprints,” we reminded ourselves as we walked
slowly through the long kitchen and up the narrow stairs into the
winding hallways, shining the dim beams of our flashlights down the
rows of dark doors lining both sides of the hall. I had to concede
that it did look creepy.
Peering cautiously
into the rooms I was amazed to find piles, more like mounds, of
personal belongings, property of the residents of Valley Plaza
Retirement–books, photographs, furniture, stuffed animals,
folded blankets, a Christmas tree still entirely decorated, boxes and
garbage bags full of personal items… Everything had been left
when Valley Plaza had shut down, thrown in unsorted heaps and closed
up in this forgotten building. I bent down and picked up a soiled
picture from the floor. It showed an elderly woman and several
teenagers, probably grandchildren. These were people’s lives, I
thought, brushing some of the dust from the faces on the photo.
Clearly the picture had been cherished by this lady, probably put
proudly on display for friends and visitors to see, and now it lay
buried in a grave of memories. The forgotten days of yesteryear.
Dim sunlight did its
best to seep feebly in through the lone, dirty window at the far end
of the second story hall out of which I could see our car parked
along the curb. The inside pane of glass was broken. It was a sad
place, but also dark and secluded and one hundred years old, and I
could not help but glance over my shoulder every now and then to make
sure that nothing but darkness was following. The building itself
seemed to watch us with silent, knowing eyes that had seen many lives
born and many lives die.
Outside the building
as we later piled into the car to leave, I paused, glanced back up at
the broken window above, and snapped a photo of it. To be honest, the
only reason I stopped or took the picture was that I felt the
slightest subtle suspicion that I was being watched, which of course
was completely irrational. Still, it was curious that there seemed to
be stories about that old place, descriptions of happenings and
goings on – simple stuff, but intriguing and somehow
perceivable. When I developed the photos I had taken of the
building’s exterior, I was sure I could see, in the distant
second story window, the figures of a bearded man in a suit, a woman
in a white dress with what appeared to be a white nurse’s cap
on her head, and a child, all leaning forward as if over a bed. I was
shocked that the figures seemed consistent with photographs from the
1930s or ‘40s. Even my usually skeptical father conceded that
it did look very much like characters from the past were going about
their business behind the grimy panes. What was more, the neighbor
woman had hurried across the street as we stood outside after our
expedition, and asked us if we had been in the building. She quickly
went on to say that she herself had once explored the old dusty
corridors, wandering up and down only to suddenly notice the small,
bare footprints of a child shadowing her own through the dark
hallways.
Stories have always
been part of my life. History, poetry, medicine, myth… It
seems fitting that the original Mercy Hospital should have met its
end in the same manner as the grand, ancient halls of Charlotte’s
Bronte’s Jane Eyre or Daphne DeMurier’s Rebecca–by
fire. Just as the fictional houses of Thornfield and Manderley
succumb to flame and murder and memory, so Old Mercy also buried
itself in its own ruins, taking with it its secrets, joys, memories,
and ghosts. No one ever knew who had started the fire.
Sarah Howard holds
degrees in Musical Theater Performance and English. When she’s
not singing or performing on the stage, she enjoys spending time with
her family and cats, and reading good literature with a hot cup of
coffee.
