GOOD SHEPARD ORPHANAGE
Location: Good Shepard Orphanage is located at the end of Partarriu Road, a forested lane east of Llanes, a seaport community sixty miles (100km) of Oviedo, the capital of Astrurias province on the north shore of Spain.
Description of Place: Good Shepard Orphanage is a two-story church-like edifice on a small property near the shore surrounded by a trees and an old barn. The grounds include gardens, coy ponds and exterior walkways. The area is posted with signs; no trespassing is allowed.
Ghostly Manifestations: For many, the images of ghostly children is the most scary images in the paranormal. What is it about the ghosts of little girls dancing up hallways and phantom little boys peering through stairway railings that makes them so much more scary than their adult counterparts? Perhaps its the fact that we never expect children to die so early or perhaps it the innocence trapped in time that we find so alarming. Whatever the reason, it's one of the facts that makes Good Shepard Orphanage such an intimidating locale to encounter.
Since the late Seventies, Good Shepard Orphanage has been one of the most frightening haunted locales in Spain. Sitting empty and along, visitors have reported hearing and seeing children's voices here, the sounds of phantom footsteps scurry up the stairways and vanish up stairs. Apparitions appear and vanish. Mischievous giggling can be heard inside as well as outside. Laura Riviera, who once lived at the orphanage as a child, once had plans to reopen the old edifice, but her plans fell by the wayside after the death of her own adopted son, Simon, who was HIV positive.
"I never believed in ghosts before..." Dr. Carlos Riviera's memories are translated here from his native Spanish. "But things happened as soon as we started settling in. The first week, we'd hear casual creaking noises from the second floor, and then they'd get louder and then they'd be joined by banging noises as if someone were hitting the walls and floors. I just naturally thought someone was up there and I'd rush up there. Once I was up there, I'd get this feeling that I was being watched, but I'd never see anything and whatever was making noise would have stopped. When I'd go back downstairs again, Laura would ask me who was up there, adding that she had heard other footsteps behind mine as I was walking around, but I'd never see a single thing."
Less than a week after that, Laura had another experience as she was preparing for bed one night. She had just retired and as she was waiting for him to join her in bed, she felt her husband get in bed with her. Without looking up, she began talking to him and did so for about eight to ten minutes when she heard a noise from the bathroom. When she looked up, the door parted and her husband emerged after having completed his shower. Upon seeing him, Laura jumped out out of bed and pulled all the covers off the bed, but nothing was in bed with her.
It was week before Laura got over that, but soon her adopted son Simon was out of the hospital after treatments for his condition and joining her at the isolated orphanage out on the sea side. Even with her son around, Laura could not shake the feeling that something else was with her in the old structure. Simon soon started describing an invisible friend in the house named Tomas. This new novelty brought a sense of security and propriety to Laura's mental stability as she worked to get the location ready for more children, but soon, she started noticing things that did not make sense. "Tomas" was soon informing Simon of things about the orphanage's history that he couldn't have known. Laura's possessions would turn up in strange locations only Simon knew about. Other invisible friends started appearing. When Simon sketched their faces in crayon, Tomas was depicted as wearing a sack over his head with another face drawn upon it.
When Laura was a girl at the orphanage, she recalled one of the other children living with her also wore a sack over his head. At the time, she did not recollect the boys name except for the fact he lived apart from her and the other orphans.
Laura soon realized that she was being haunted by one of her childhood friends from her youth. She had no info that any of them were deceased and Simon often claimed that they knew he had a short time to live and that they wanted him to run away with him. To try and control what was happening, Laura told Simon to stop talking about Tomas, but the boy refused.
"It seemed the harder Laura tried to stop things from happening, the worst things became." Dr. Riviera adds. "Simon was seeing Tomas more and more, and the pounding noises were happening almost every night. Eventually, Laura remembered that she and the other kids would pound on the walls to play pili-pili, the Spanish version of hide and seek."
"Laura had an emotional break-down when Simon vanished. She was convinced the ghosts had did something to Simon and searched the house, the grounds and the beach, but we never found anything. A police psychologist brought in a psychic named Aurora and a crew of paranormal researchers to try and contact the orphan's ghosts to placate Laura's feelings they had done something to Simon. She was able to describe the orphanage exactly as it once looked in Laura's time, but when she asked about Simon, all the cameras went off in sequence and as she came out of her trance, they all came back on one at a time in reverse sequence. Afterward, she described hearing the sounds of children crying, but she could not tell where it was coming from in the house."
Despite a year of following leads, the local police failed to locate Simon. Laura was having a breakdown and refused to leave the orphanage. When she finally decided to leave, Carlos would return to find her lying dead upstairs in the children's bedroom. She had taken her own life.
Since then, a number of paranormal researchers have visited the orphanage trying to document the ghosts with the permission and guidance of the local provincial government. One team from Madrid came to search the grounds but were unable to get permission to enter the orphanage. A photo of their visit reportedly shows Tomas looking out from an upstairs window, but it's also likely it's just pattern recognition from the shapes of the tree casting shadows on the glass. A German team from Heidelberg fared just a bit better, getting full access to the interior and the basement of the residence. With microphones on each floor and each of their eight members equipped with a camera, they videotaped shadows which passed along walls, knocking noises in consecutive patterns and ambient noises that happened in empty rooms. During the processing of their evidence, they discovered the voices of children talking to each other, but only from the recorder they had set up in the basement.
In 2008, there were rumors that the American TV Series, "Ghost Hunters International," was heading for Spain for an overnight examination of Good Shepard Orphanage, but this was in error. Their destination was for another location in Madrid.
History: Good Shepard Orphanage is believed to have been either an orphanage or a private residence since the early Eighteenth Century until it closed in 1979. In 2009, there were plans to reopen it as a school for special children requiring special needs, but nothing resulted from that attempt.
Identity of Ghosts: During the Sixties and Seventies, the orphanage was run by social worker Benigna Escobeda. One of her young charges was her own son, Tomas. Tomas had been born disfigured and hid his abnormality with a mask out of a burlap bag. According to rumor, the other children teased and mocked him badly and deserted him near a cave at the beach to drown under the rising surf. When his mother learned what had happened, she poisoned the eight children and concealed their bodies in the bags of flour in the old barn on the property. It's believed the ghosts of the children, usually named Marilyn, Rita, Guillermo, Alicia and Victor along with Tomas, now haunt the premises.
As later forensic evidence was to discover, Simon was discovered trapped rather than abducted in Tomas' basement bedroom where unable to get out, he passed away without any food, water or his medication. A few visitors believe Simon and Laura have been reunited after death in the old place.
Source/Comments: El Orfanato/The Orphanage ( 2007) - Activity and phenomenon based on Taunton State Hospital in Taunton, Massachusetts, Swingle Hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee, the Old Donelson Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee and Hawkinsville State Hospital in Hawkinsville, Georgia.