The Christian Church Hospital 1921
It was a dark and stormy night.
Alright. It was dark.
The humidity was at 45% with a dew point of 56.8 F; barometric pressure at 30.9 and falling with variable wind speeds gusting up to 20 mph., and a 70% chance of precipitation.
But it was dark.
The late-October night air had that crisp edge of descending frost that thrilled us with the promise of winter. This was one of the reasons we moved from Arizona to Kansas City: The change of seasons. And here it was; the shift from balmy summer to brisk fall replete with brittle, orange and yellow leaves whirling in an invisible night wind.
It was perfect.
But we were bored. My two daughters and I had taken this particular Saturday in independent bites. I spent my day reorganizing my bedroom closet and each of the girls had meandered through theirs in the aimless but profligate way only teenagers can do: They spent it shopping.
Halloween was closing in which meant that the city paper was rife with stories of local, haunted hot spots, from the old Union Hill Cemetery where filmy spirits in Civil War regalia are routinely encountered by both skeptics and non, to the third floor of a nearby mansion formerly used as a nursery for orphaned infants in the mid 1800's, whose walls still echo the small cries of inconsolable foundlings; victims of an age when for women, childbirth and death were often synonymous.
So when my eldest daughter began reading for us the story of a local building under reconstruction that was beset with unusual calamities of inexplicable origin, my younger daughter and I embraced the details in the spirit of the season and inclined our ears in ghoulish delight.
The project in question was not far from us in midtown and involved the renovation of a the Christian Church Hospital. Built originally as charity hospital, the facility also served the wounded veterans returning from WWI. It opened its doors on October 31st, 1916. Halloween Day. Gulp.
From its inception the hospital adapted to the needs of the community through the years. In 1919 it was well regarded for its exceptional care in treating victims of the great flu pandemic of that year. Unfortunately, because of the limited medical knowledge at the time, more people were lost than were able to be saved.
In 1927 the facility was sold to Dr. G. Wilse Robinson, a well-respected neurologist whose accepted cures for mental and emotional disorders included the use of wet sheets, beatings, cages, chains and the cutting edge procedure: the ice-pick lobotomy. His predecessor, Dr. Patterson, kept these methods in use for the next 30 years until succumbing to insanity himself in 1957, at which time his staff applied to him the same 'cures' resulting in his death.
The newspaper article went on to relate accounts of the accidents and incidents the construction crew had encountered with alarming regularity throughout the six months since reconstruction began, which included the opening and closing of doors, tools being both hidden from and occasionally thrown at the workers and disembodied voices threatening harm. Apparently, several of the workers had walked off the job in midday vowing never to return.
It was stated in the article that photographs taken on site revealed hundreds of light orbs circling the grounds and in some instances, photographs at night revealed dark and demonic figures standing at the windows, including the ghost of Dr. Patterson himself.
It took no more than a collusive glance between my daughters and myself and we were headed to the car, camera in hand, to make the short drive to the site.
Now, I take these things seriously having spent the entirety of my life immersed by lineage in the culture of the unseen and fully respect both planes of existence. My head is thoroughly vested in reality, but my soul recognizes the overriding truth that we operate from a very limited perspective and that there are elements between sentiency and the cosmos that we can neither readily see nor fully understand. But that does not mean they do not exist.
As practical as I am, the first thing I did after moving into the ninety-year old home we now occupy was to bless each room with a prayer and holy water and seal the property by prayerfully burying blessed stones at the four corners. (Trust me. It was necessary and there is a whole other story precipitating that move, which I will save for another spooky day.)
We located the facility easily enough (aided by the extrasensory divination of Google Maps); its massive stone facade done in the Classic Revival style common at the turn of the century and standing in perfect accord with the dense and dark sheath of sky that loomed above it. In various stages of deconstruction the entire building was cordoned off by a chain link fence posted at ten-foot intervals with warning signs about the consequences of trespassing; and although several of the windows were illumined by the bare bulbed, workmen's lights; clearly they were lit solely for security measures and not as an invitation to peruse the interior.
The most we could do was to stand at the fence and snap a few photographs and given the late hour, the buildings location in a questionable part of town, as well as the fact that the previously tame October winds had suddenly turned colder and much more insistent, we did not linger long.
We had read that "As soon as anyone walks towards the site where the hospital once stood, they feel an overwhelming sense of death." and standing in the chilled night air scanning the massive facade with the shadows cast as they were by flickering street lamps, it was not hard to feel or to imagine the lingering presence of it's grizzly history.
Pressed by these ominous musings and our unanimous trepidation about the glacial reception by scene and senses, we climbed back into the car and headed home.
We had driven about three hundred yards when there came a certain and distinct knocking on the back, passenger-side door. All breathing ceased as we regarded one another with wide, startled eyes. Seeing the terror in my daughter's faces, I calmly told them, "I probably picked up a small tree branch that kicked up from the undercarriage of the car."
My explanation satisfied them until the knocking came again seconds later; this time slightly louder, longer and had migrated to the car roof! Clearly, this was no tree branch!
At this point my younger daughter, seated alone in the backseat, began to cry. As unnerved as I was, I did my best to appear as though this intrusion were no more of a problem than replacing a light bulb and gently instructed the girls to begin to pray the Rosary.
This was not an entirely foreign request. When they were small and we'd take prolonged family trips somewhere in the car, I would sometimes initiate recital of at least a decade of the Rosary; perhaps, in part, out of guilt over my own conflicted beliefs; but also to help them become comfortable considering recourse to prayer in troubled times. I knew my daughters would take this suggestion in stride without being further alarmed.
The drive home took an interminable ten or twelve minutes with the knocking occurring in intervals of sixty seconds or so and migrating from door to roof to hood to a different door for the entire ride; but I knew that if I could just remain focused and return home, to our property, whatever spectral jokester was harassing us would be forced to leave.
Fortunately, this was the case. Once I crossed the sidewalk separating our driveway from the street, the knocking abruptly ceased and has never returned.
The next morning I downloaded the couple of photographs I had taken of the construction site the night before, and this is what I saw:
You make the call.
Residences At West Paseo 2010
By the way, the residential facility was completed in 2007 and is now serving the community.
Oh, and I hear they have some vacancies.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go. I hear a knocking at the front door......
Happy Halloween.........
