My family has lived around this place for centuries, even before the village was established. We are talking, all the way back. When this place was a cluster of small islands with only 5 families living around. When the land became visible, and people could travel on foot between the small islands, they began to build small homes for the fishing people from the village. But with the growing population, the sickness also grew. They found a place just outside the village, where you could get to from both sea and land. Making it the perfect place to contain people with sicknesses that they wouldn’t want in their village.
My great-grandpa, Mr.G, was in charge of this hospital, since he lived right in between of the village and the hospital, which meant that he could get from his house to the hospital and to the doctor easily and quickly.
One night a Dutch ship came, with a flag raised that signaled that they had a sick crew member on board. A little boat was send from the ship, to the hospital. Three men carried another man. They signaled that this man between them was very sick, dying. They brought him to the hospital, leaving him there and then went off to the ship.
The sick man was so distraught about being abandoned, and only calmed down, when the doctor had tended to him. When Mr.G went to look if he was alright later that night, he was gone. Disappeared. They looked everywhere. But couldn’t find any trace of him. The next day, they send for help. Realizing that the ship was gone too… One of his brothers found the crew member laying head down in the sand with hands outstretched towards the sea. He must’ve tried to get to the ship, only to realize that they were leaving without him and then died of exhaustion from the sickness and the track down the beach…
This was the only time that the hospital had a patient. And for years it just stood there, abandoned.
Then, years later, someone brought it, wanting to use it as a summer camp. He rebuild some of it, but chose to use the unused coffins as beds for the kids who attended the camp. To safe money or for some morbid reason, I couldn’t really say. Either way it was creepy!
One day some of the kids were hiking up the beach, when Mr.G, my grandpa and I (I was around 4 y/o at the time) heard the kids talking about the strange beds and the sound of a man crying and coughing in the night… My great grandfather asked the kids, if they knew about the crew member who died of cholera in one of those “beds”? He then then proceeded to to tell the story that you’ve just read, leaving the kids so scared of the hospital turned summer camp, that they ended up leaving the next day to live at the nearby bed and breakfast for the rest of the of the summer…
And still, to this day… I hear kids talk about the strange crying and coughing, when they walk along the beach or stop to say hello to my dogs, when they pass by my vacation home… and even though it has been renovated once again and the beds have been exchanged for real beds, it still sends chill down my spine to walk across the beach or near the old hospital, knowing that the Dutch crew member might still be looking for his ship… some of the villagers even decided to put up a stone, where the sick crew member was found, to hopefully help him find peace. But as far as I know, he is still searching, still present, still coughing and crying and making everyone feel a little more homesick than usual…