mentioned to them that it was interesting to note how their dreams related to physical injuries. I told them that the house once belonged to a doctor, and the house served as a place where the injured would come for treatment. At times they would have to remain overnight. Once we finished visiting with our new friends, we left the second floor and met with Gary and Karin one more time in the parlor. They told us that they had purchased another historic home not too far from Hall Place. It has been labeled by the community as an old haunted house, and Chuck and I are already making plans to go back and investigate the Carrolls’ newly acquired property that they will convert into another bed-and-breakfast, which they hope to have finished by 2012. They have named the future bed-and-breakfast “1854 Bryan House.” They plan to have ghosthunter tours and overnight ghosthunts while the home is being renovated. Maybe we’ll find even more Glasgow ghosts.
CHAPTER 6
The Haunted Hospital
SCOTTSVILLE, ALLEN COUNTY
“HELLO.”
“May I please speak with Patti Starr?”
“You are speaking to Patti Starr.”
“I know you probably will not remember me, but my wife and I took your Bardstown Ghost Trek last year. After spending the evening with you and learning about ghosts and the many ways to communicate with them, I became hooked.”
This phone call was the start of a new friendship. While sitting at my computer, I was attempting to answer my e-mails when I got a phone call from a man who introduced himself as David Dinwiddie. He explained to me that he had leased an old, abandoned hospital in Scottsville, Kentucky. He and his son, Chris, were going to turn it into a haunted attraction for Halloween, but it seemed that the haunted part was becoming more real than fantasy. I was totally thrilled that I had influenced someone to start a new business and to think it was going to be opened in my favorite month of the year, October.
David had a few concerns he wanted to share with me. “Patti, when we first started to clean up the debris that had accumulated over the past several years, our volunteers noticed strange noises. They would stop their work and turn towards the sounds and listen. Then, if they heard it again, they would move towards the sound to see if someone had come into the building without permission. They told me that as they started to walk towards the sound, it would stop only to start back up again after they went back to work. Sometimes the sounds would be so loud and clear that the volunteers would become so upset they would pick up their tools and leave for the day.”
“What kind of noises did the workers hear?” I asked. David explained, “There were several different sounds reported over a four-week period. It started with the sound of babies crying. The volunteers would go over to where it sounded like a child was crying out in pain, but when they searched the area, there were no children in the hospital. They would even go outside and check the perimeter of the building to see if children were playing close by and found nothing to explain the sounds of children crying. When we started to research the building, we found where the different stations were located. It was very unnerving when we found out that the area where we heard the sounds of babies crying had been the nursery.”
“Your hospital sounds like a great place to investigate for ghosts,” I replied, and he continued, “That is exactly why I’m calling you. I would love for you to come to the hospital with your various equipment and instruments and do a ghost investigation.” I told David that I would be honored to do this, but I’d have to wait until after ScareFest, our horror and paranormal convention in Lexington, and that I would come after September. It seemed like a matter of a few days instead of months before it was time for Chuck and me to leave for Scottsville to investigate the haunted hospital. David was very kind in arranging for me to stay the night in a very haunted bed-and-breakfast about twenty miles outside of Scottsville in Glasgow, another haunted location in this book. We were driving deep into the beautiful Kentucky countryside, our first trip in that area. When I asked David about the location and history of Scottsville, he told me that it was near the border of Tennessee about sixty miles from Nashville. He bragged about the closeness and fellowship of his small town with pride. I remember the first time I saw David; he reminded me of a character from my childhood. Mr. Brown was a deacon at our Baptist church, and he played the part of Santa each Christmas. I’m not saying that David was as big as Santa, but he had this perfect, jolly round face that made me think of what the real Santa would have looked like.
When we entered the city of Scottsville, which is the county seat for Allen County, we passed a welcome sign with Scottsville’s motto, “The Friendly City.” Soon after that we found ourselves driving through the public square, admiring the concentration of delightful and colorful retail shops. The courthouse sits in the center of the turnpike leading from Louisville to Nashville. It was one of the most pristine small towns, reflecting a loving history, that I had ever visited.
I called David so we could meet before my seminar at the local library that David’s wife, Julie, had arranged for me. He gave us directions to check out the hospital grounds before the investigation that was scheduled for the evening. As we pulled into the driveway, I was rather surprised at the sight of the hospital. It looked more like a one-level office building, with tall weeds and lots of winding vines growing all around. It looked very small for a county hospital until we drove around back and could see that there were two stories to the building, as the basement was exposed at ground level and made another floor. The windows were broken out, and you could see the old, white, iron-framed beds that were forgotten in time and left behind. To the right of the drive, in the back of the hospital, was a strange metal structure. David walked over to this rusted-out structure and explained that it was a specially built incinerator that burned all the body parts from surgery and possibly the embryos from miscarriages. It did give me an eerie feeling just standing beside it. On the other side of the incinerator was a wooded area, and as we stood beside this devise, the wind picked up and blew cold through us. That didn’t help my feelings at all.
I asked David about the history of the hospital, and he told me that it was opened to the public in 1952. He said that during the hospital’s construction, there was only one fatality. One afternoon, a laborer was sent into the back part of the basement to work. As he reached down to move some wood panels, he was shocked to find a copperhead snake coiled to strike under the wood. He jumped back but it was too late—the copperhead bit the worker. He died shortly afterwards.
David also pointed out that because EMS was not allowed to pronounce anyone dead, all bodies had to be brought to the emergency room for a doctor to make that call. Because the hospital had two emergency rooms, one for spillover, they would put the bodies in emergency unit two until the funeral home employees could pick them up, since there was no official morgue in the hospital. If the bodies belonged to families in another county, the bodies would remain in this room until they were retrieved by family.
As the hospital aged and become more and more outdated, it merged with a new hospital in 1993, and in 1994 the Scottsville maternity and nursery wards were closed. Soon after that, nurses who worked in that area would comment on hearing the sounds of babies crying, although the nurses knew that there were no babies there. A man whose mother had been a nurse at the hospital told David that sometimes his mother would take him to work when she couldn’t get a sitter, and he would stay in one of the rooms where the nursery used to be. He would be awakened by the sound of a baby crying. He would leave the room to find his mom. When he would find her, she would explain that it was a common sound that everyone heard when they stayed in that room and that he should not be afraid. He would go back to the room and go back to sleep without being awakened again.
The
