Sanitarium Hill

Yesterday Jezebel posted a thread about real-life ghost stories, and it got me thinking about the only "ghostly" experience I've ever had. I don't believe in specters that walk about of their own volition, carrying the memories and experiences they had in life, but I do believe that certain places can have a "bad vibe" that lingers in the air, especially if particularly upsetting things have happened there. Now, this might be explained by the theory of confirmation bias. Humans are hard-wired to seek patterns and to categorize our perceptions, which is a useful skill but also one that tends to cause problems for us as we fall back on stereotypes, etc.

Back when I worked for this auditing company just out of college, we had to visit the Dept of Human Services building for a few days to look over the case files of several foster kids to determine whether the state could ask for federal funding to help cover expenses for their care. The building sits on Sanitarium Hill, a name that I did not learn about until after my experience there. It's found on Northport Drive, which is near Warner Park. The hill is a popular sledding area, and also a prime location for spectators of the Rhythm and Booms 4th of July fireworks display.

For most of our work we merely sat in a conference room near the entrance of the building. It wasn't until we had to venture up through the other floors to obtain the files that I started feeling a little odd. I felt like the air had suddenly gotten heavier. At first I chalked it up to the claustrophobic and rickety old elevator. But as we walked through the narrow hallways I started feeling sick to my stomach, and seriously had the urge to run the hell out of there. I didn't see anything or hear anything odd, I just felt bad. For the remainder of the time that we worked there, I made my co-workers go up to get the files that we were reviewing and refused to go back up into the main building again. They thought I was nuts of course.

Turns out that this current state building used to be a sanitarium where tuberculosis patients lived out the ends of their lives quarantined away from the rest of the city's population. For thirty years people with a then incurable disease sat there until they died. We never ventured back into the woods behind the building, but when I researched the place after my experience there I found out that they supposedly burned the bodies of the dead out back, and there is a cemetery out there as well.

It's probably silly to think that a building holds the memories of what happened there years before, but I'd never heard anything about the history of this place until after I went there. My mom works for the state and she knew about it, so there is a chance she may have mentioned something to me when I was a kid and I just don't remember it. But it is a creepy, creepy place. And I would never be able to work there full-time.

More photos

Edit: Found some interior photos from the 30's.