KINGDOM HOSPITAL
Location: Kingdom Hospital is a vast medical research facility at 686 Kingdom Road in the small community of Fryeburg near Lewiston, Maine, twenty miles north of Portland on Interstate 302.
Description of Place: Six stories high, the fully-staffed and up-to-date facility was built to provide quality care by a dedicated, compassionate team of physicians, nurses and staff using the latest services and treatment technologies available. An exceptional and expansive hospital, it boasts over two hundred patient rooms, twelve operating rooms and extensive lab facilities. The physician to patient ratio is three to one with 250 medical residents on staff and 200 volunteers.
Ghostly Manifestations: Through the United States, deserted sanitariums and derelict tuberculosis hospitals dot the landscape. These forgotten locations are frequently visited by would-be ghost-hunters, addled drug-users, undesirables fleeing the law and even the odd vagrant or homeless person. They're dangerous places to visit both because of structural integrity and criminal activity lurking in the shadows, and a small handful of these former medical locations are reported as legitimately haunted. A few medical hospitals still active today actually already report ghostly activity. Spectral nurses, non-existent patients, cursed rooms where no patient ever survives... It was once estimated that because doctors and nurses deal with life and death on a regular basis that they are far more likely to see ghosts than anyone else in any other profession. Even compared with Vannacutt Sanitarium in California, Waverly Hills in Kentucky and the former Danvers Medical Hospital in Connecticut, Kingdom Hospital could be the most haunted medical facility in the United States.
The staff and employees, however, are not allowed to publicly talk about the ghosts, but psychic Sally Druse, an admitted hypochondriac, has dealt with the ghosts on many occasions and even been warned about her "unsanctioned" séances on the premises. She has claimed to be in contact with many of the ghosts at Kingdom Hospital which she describe to be existing in what she calls "Swedborgian Space," a separate plane of existence in which the spirit realm exists. Among the most innocent of the ghosts she has felt is young Mary, a tiny young girl of about eight years old who wanders the hospital trying to make herself known. Described as small, slight of frame with long brown hair, large innocent brown eyes and wearing dirty thin dress with a bell round her neck, Mary has been glimpsed several times wandering the halls, and those who do not see her have heard her bell ringing. According to tradition, Mary rings her bell whenever a patient is about to die.
The activity at Kingdom Hospital is few and far between, but activity does happen , mostly at night, and the staff and employees are discouraged from telling the tales for fear of stirring apprehension from the night shift and the patients. Nevertheless, stories do trickle out along the line of rumors and secret conversations. Nurses have noticed reflections of several children in otherwise empty rooms, the lights in the west wing always flicker, the elevators open with no one in them, the sounds of children have been heard in restricted areas and several nurses have had a sensation of being watched in the darkened basement.
"I have felt poor Mary on several separate occasions." Mrs. Druse admits profoundly. "She's such a lonely, sympathetic figure completely unaware that she is dead. She wanders through the halls of the hospital, listening in on conversations and riding the elevator up and down. Hardly anyone ever sees her, but she has most definitely been felt."
Staff have also heard voices from inside the elevator staff coming from unknown places in the hospital. The disembodied voices seem to come from somewhere within the hospital, but always just out of the visible spectrum. Described as distant and incoherent, the indeterminate voices seem to be saying something, but what is unknown. One of the doctors hearing the sounds poked his head up into the overhead hatch of the elevator trying to tell where they were coming from and discovered an antique doll far older than the age of the hospital.
"It was Mary's doll." Sally adds. "She had it when she died."
There is some indication that despite not knowing about the ghosts that the patients have become aware of them. A local artist recovering from a hit-and-run once woke and saw Mary telling him to go back to sleep, although he adds he also saw something else with her - an odd vague beast with a narrow head down on four legs. Later, in trying to identify what he saw, he found a picture of an anteater in a book and mentioned that the beast was similar to that.
"Mary calls him Antubis," Sally explains. "but I think she really means Anubis, who was the spirit of death in Ancient Egypt who escorted the spirits of the dead to the afterlife."
It is not known for certain if this being is malevolent or not, but he and Mary are not the only revenants in the hospital. The specter of a ghostly surgeon in old fashioned hospital garb splattered in blood has been glimpsed wandering the basement. None of the staff or nurses know who he is, but they agree he is a frightening ghost to encounter. One nurse who was coming up from the morgue was stopped by him standing threateningly and disturbingly at the top of the stairs and ran back for help, but when joined by another doctor and an orderly, there was no one to be found. His scant form has also been seem wandering through the shelves in the file room only to vanish at the end of the rows of shelves. This ghost is sometimes seen in the presence of another figure, a dark and dirty young man in unfamiliar attire from another age.
"I have seen both these figures," Sally confesses. "And I'm more afraid of the young man. The doctor is dangerous, but the young man is malevolent."
Although the hospital staff and employees try not to acknowledge the ghosts, many of them do have to admit that strange things do happen and that there might be something behind all the stories. There are several places in the vast confusing and eclectic layout of rooms that are sensitive, positive for the presence of a ghost. Medical gurneys are sometimes noticed rolling unattended, often just barely a foot or two. One elderly old lady thought she had seen the image of a headless ghost slamming and banging into walls and doorways while trying to fumble his way through the place. Not even dismayed by the frightening image, she just turned and commented on "a person much worse off than her desperately needing attention."
There is one doctor on staff, Dr H, who refuses to go on the record about the ghosts, who takes a few of the stories to heart. Mrs. Druse won't reveal his identity, but she goes on to admit that Dr. H participated with several patients and members of the staff to perform a séance on November 2, 2003 (All Souls Day) in order to try and convince Mary to lead as many of the spirits in the hospital to the afterlife. During the séance, Dr. H felt he had been present during the fire which had claimed a former mill on the location. Whether Mary actually passed over is anyone's guess, but Mrs. Druse believes the location is still haunted.
"I think the hospital might be kind of some sort of way station for ghosts on their way into the next level of existence." She says. "All hospitals may have ghosts, they're filled of suffering and emotion and those are two powerful ingredients in creating the foundations upon which ghosts exists on earth. At Kingdom Hospital, the spirits of those who have died seem to linger a bit longer on this planet, and try to contact the living in whatever way they can in the interim."
History: Construction of the hospital began in 1963 and it opened in October 1965. Founded in the late 19th Century, Kingdom Hospital was founded by two other prestigious hospitals in Maine that wanted to serve the growing New England population. An exceptional and expansive hospital, Kingdom Hospital is ranked among the best in the nation, competing with Nashville's Vanderbilt Hospital, New York Presbyterian Hospital and John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Identity of Ghosts: It is believed that the majority of the ghosts are remnants left over from the fire of the Gates Falls Mill, which once stood on the very same site along with the old Gottreich Hospital, an old frame structure which once stood on the same property. In fact, part of the old mill's foundation was incorporated into the hospital's foundation. The mill created military uniforms employing children's labor at a time when it was legal. Dr. Egas Gottreich was the brother of Hiram Gottreich who ran and owned the mill which burned down under suspicious circumstances in 1869, killing almost a hundred kids working there. Rumors are that after sifting through the wreckage, no bodies had been located leading some historians to believe that they had somehow gotten out, possibly through an underground tunnel, but no survivors were ever found. Among those missing was little Mary, the time girl, who inexplicably vanished that day before the fire, and whose ghost psychic Sally Druse has felt and who she believes is still trying to tell what happened. She has also identified the ghost of Dr. Gottreich, a sinister young man named Paul and a former patient named Frank Schweigen.
Source/Comments: Kingdom Hospital (2004) - Activity loosely based on Cipto Mangunksuno Hospital in Jakarta, India and on the Mini-Series