The tripod locked into place with a click. A scrape of my boot cleared away crawlers on the forest floor exposing large block pavers of a long forgotten footpath. The perfect landing spot.
It ought to have been easier to find. It took an hour of traversing uphill and scrambling over fallen tree trunks and having my bare legs shredded by stray branches before it emerged from the trees. Crumbling and decrepit and yet grand and serene. The abandoned Sacred Heart Hospital.
There are legends about Sacred Heart. Incoherent wails puncture the still and silent nights. More than one have laid claim to witnessing the spectre responsible. All tell similar stories – a man with straggly shoulder length hair and a blood soaked white overcoat. No locals come up here anymore and even animals shun the area.
I am not a ghost hunter and such stories, whilst providing interesting captions, are not the reason I have come. I have two passions: photography and abandoned places - and I combine the two into a semi successful blog. Sacred Heart was the next project.
I brushed my palms clean and set the camera on top. Monochrome first. There’s something about a black and white image, a timeless quality somehow lost with the addition of colour.
My timing was perfect. The morning light filtered through the trees and played off the stone facade stained brown by years of rain and dirt. Moss grew thick on the roof and burrowed in the gaps between the tiles. The click of the shutter echoed off the trees.
A circular window high above the front door caught my eye and I zoomed in. The glass there was clean and intact and I framed the shot with the rotted timber edging to the roof. After the first camera click a pigeon came to rest right on the ridge. I zoomed back out and clicked. I checked the screen. The pigeon, dark grey against a light grey sky, didn’t seem at all out of place. It might have been a fixture designed with care and intent by the architect.
My fingers twisted the camera and swept it left to the Adele Barr wing. It was a later addition built to honour the daughter of the Barr family, the hospital’s largest benefactors. It is an obvious addition and doesn’t quite fit, the brick façade not melding with the huge quarry stones of the original section. The trees have encroached the wing, gnarled branches reaching out like fingers wrapping themselves over the metal roof.
I packed up the tripod and skirted around the side of the original building. Research online suggested the best way in was a sliding window at shin-height towards the rear. It led to a half basement cut into the rising ground at the back of the hospital. I found the window half-open, left that way by the last person to exit - either too careless to close it or too much in a hurry to give it any thought.
Inside the floor was caked with mud and covered with twigs and leaves carried in through the open window. The dark room had a doorway stripped of its door and I stepped through into a long corridor. Flakes of paint littered the floor and left pock marks on the walls from where they had fallen. Panels of plasterboard lay bent and cracked below the buckled ceiling grid above. Light spilled in through the large windows in the rooms running either side of the corridor. I hung my camera around my neck and clicked as I walked.
The double height reception area stood empty, stripped of all furniture. Through the windows the forest grew untamed. Trees crowded the view and obscured the town below and left only a hint of the river. All the rooms on the western side had a view of the river. They say water views aid the recovery of patients.
Most of the rooms were empty. At the back corner a small room with a tiny window had a single steel framed bed, rusted and without a mattress. The springs coiled up and ended in menacingly sharp tips. An old newspaper lay beside the bed crumpled and yellow with age. Empty beer bottles littered the floor and someone had tagged the wall with spray paint. I knelt and snapped a photo.
It was then I heard a dull and distant thud from below. It could have almost been footsteps. I called out to see if anyone was there. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d stumbled across vagrants, it can be an occupational hazard. But no one answered. Must be the encroaching trees tapping against the walls I guessed.
I wanted to find the window at the top, the circular one I had seen from outside. I could put the picture looking out beside the one looking in. Plus there was sure to be a decent view from up there.
The stairs were in good shape even accounting for the spalled concrete and exposed rebar. I visited an old mall a couple of years ago and climbed a steel stair only to have it pull away from the floor above and come crashing to the ground. Fortunately I had been near enough the bottom that no real harm was done.
The second floor layout was much like the ground, corridors with rooms on either side. At the end of the corridor was a closed door. The handle gave and the door opened to brilliant light. Some sort of common room perhaps. The circular window was on the far wall under the sloping ceiling above.
Through the window the forest parted for the green banks and blue water of the river. I took the camera from my shoulder and placed my backpack behind me and retreated a couple of steps. I looked down at my camera and then back up at the window and paused. The light had changed. It had gone from bright white light to a duller yellow-orange. The light of a sunset.
What was the time? I checked my watch and it was after five. How did that happen? I had left on foot in the morning and it had taken a while to find it but not all day. Had I checked my watch when I arrived. I couldn’t remember. I didn’t want to be alone out here after dark and nor did I fancy navigating the walk back to town by starlight alone. One last click and I packed my camera away and zipped up my backpack.
Another dull thud and on its heels a wail – not quite a scream but still something urgent, like a cry for help. My hands trembled as I flicked the backpack over my shoulder. I flew through the corridor and down the stairs, the shaft now much darker than before.
On the ground floor the thud came louder and faster. And the cry.
“Aaaahmm.”
It was the voice of a man but I could not discern any words. I paused in the corridor.
“Aaaahmm.”
Curiosity took me one step towards the sound before I retreated once more. This was either some homeless guy having fun with me or a real life ghost and I didn’t want to mess with either.
I skipped to the window I entered from and threw my backpack out and pulled myself up and out. From the forest came a high pitched sound. This was a genuine scream. I thought for a second my mind was playing tricks and then it came again, louder and more prolonged. Dusk was setting in and darkness nestled between the trees and on the forest floor. The scream came a third time echoing off the trees and giving the effect that the sound surrounded me.
I grabbed my backpack and slipped back in the window. I didn’t have a plan but for right now I didn’t want to deal with the forest. It took an hour to hike up here, and that was in the light. I didn’t like my chances of getting back to town without twisting an ankle or worse.
I went to the room with the old bed and crouched on my heels with my back to the wall. I fumbled with the zipper of my backpack and I thrust my hand in and rummaged until I found the small torch. I carried it ever since stepping into a pitch black basement below an old warehouse. I clicked on the torch and let the light shine on the wall opposite. The glow provided comfort but also accentuated the growing blackness out the window.
The thought of spending the night crossed my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time. I drove out to a ghost town on the edge of the desert last year. A long abandoned mining town, it took half a day to get there. I built a campfire and roasted marshmallows below the stars. But that night there had been no forest and no screams.
Thud. Thud. Thud. “Aaaahmm.”
The light from the torch danced on the wall. My head swung round and I stared into the growing darkness of the corridor. I felt exposed in the small room stripped of its door. I had to do something.
I stood and stepped to the doorway and swept the torchlight into the corridor.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I inched down the corridor taking one step and stopping and listening before taking the next.
The stories of this place talk about the basement. The old morgue. It is the home of the man in white. I crept around a corner leading with the light from the torch. The clumps of plaster and fallen strips of paint cast shadows. The silver doors of the old lift reflected dully.
Thud. Thud. Thud. “Aaaahmm.”
The sound sharpened and the volume increased. It came from below my feet. Beside the lifts were a second set of stairs. I opened the door and a flight went up and a second flight went down.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound echoed up the walls of the stair shaft and I took a half breath and shivered. I shone the torch down into the dark. I put my back to the wall and inched down the first riser and flicked the torch back around when I reached the landing. The stair opened into a pitch black room that the torch barely penetrated.
“Aahm, aahm, aahm.”
The voice more urgent now. Whatever was down here had seen me, or at least the light from the torch.
“Is someone there?” My voice sounded thin and somehow small.
“Aahm. Aaahmm.” The voice from the darkness gave an upward inflection at the end. It almost entreated me down. This could be a trap. This could be how I die. But I had come this far and my alternative was a dark forest and the screams.
The torch light shook as I descended the final flight. In the room at the bottom I swept the light from wall to wall. Concrete floors and ceiling reflected back the light and the torch penetrated just enough to get to the windowless back wall. To the right was a corridor. Cold and stale air whistled in and out of my nose. From the corridor came a pale red light. With the torch pointed in front of my feet I peered down the corridor. At the end was a door with a glass window. Red light spilled out making a square on the opposite wall. Then a shadow flickered. Someone was in the room.
Thud. Thud. Rattle.
The door shook. I pointed the torch like a gun. The door had a slide bolt on the outside. The door shook again and the bolt rattled in its track. The shadow flickered and the thud came again and I knew what it was. The sound of hands slapping against the glass window cut in the door. Someone was trapped inside.
“Aaahm. Eeeehh. Aaahm.” The voice pleaded in the dark.
I turned off the torch and slid along the corridor, never taking my eyes off the door and the window and the red light. Then I saw him. A man in a white coat, the front stained with red. His shoulder length hair splayed out as if charged with electricity. He cried out and as he did he spat blood. His palms rapped against the window.
He half laughed and half sobbed. I inched to the door. The man in white looked at me and then turned his eyes down. I followed his gaze to the lock. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish and an ooze of blood trickled down, adding to the red patch on his coat.
I reached out and grabbed the bolt. The man tapped the glass with one hand. I stopped. “Are you going to hurt me?”
The man turned his head and pressed an ear to the glass.
I repeated it louder. “Are you going to hurt me?”
The man shook his head.
My hand trembled as I released the bolt. The door gave a little and I took a step back. The door swung open. The man in white fell to his knees and put his head in his hands and wept. Above him a single lightbulb hung from a wire and burned red. I looked back down the black of the corridor and back up to the lightbulb. Where was the electricity coming from?
The man in white looked up, tears in his eyes. “Aaahm.”
“I don’t understand.”
The man gestured with his palm for me to come. The penny dropped. He was saying come.
I stepped into the room. Beside the door were words written in blood. They read:
They cut out my tongue. They will kill her. My friend Adele. They will kill her.
“Adele?” I said. The Adele of the Adele Barr wing of the hospital? She didn’t die. It came up in my research, she lived still.
“She didn’t die.”
From the corridor came a high pitched squeal. The same I had heard coming from the forest. The man looked up agitated. He jumped to his feet and ran out into the corridor. His footsteps grew fainter and then louder again and he appeared in the doorway.
“Aaaahm.” He gestured with his palm and I followed him into the darkness.
The man in white lumbered for the front door. It was padlocked and boarded up. He shook the door and wailed and droplets of blood sprayed the glass and the floor. The high pitched scream came once more and the man in white spun around looking directly into the light of the torch. I lowered the beam and let him see me.
“Come,” I said.
I gestured with my hand and turned and headed down the corridor and to the room with the open window through which I entered. Below the window I stopped and the scream sounded again, louder now. The man in white pushed past me and hauled himself up and out the window. I threw the torch out and pulled myself up.
The forest was full dark now. There was no moon or stars above and the lights from the town below did not penetrate the forest. The only light was the torch. I picked it up off the ground and together with the man in white ran around the side of the building and to the front. Ahead of us, halfway along the Adele Barr Wing, a door stood cracked open and from the door came a sliver of dull orange light.
The man in white grunted and sprinted for the door and threw it open and almost stumbled as he entered. Adrenaline flowing I followed on his heels. The small rectangular room was barely a few paces wide and had a ceiling low enough that I instinctively lowered my head. In the centre of the room a man sat on a wooden chair. He wore a black suit and had slicked black hair. He brushed his knee with his hand and looked up at the man in white.
“What are you doing out of your cage?”
“Aaaghh.”
“Speak clearly man.”
“Someone cut out his tongue,” I said.
The man in black turned his small dark eyes to me and I shrunk against the wall. “I know perfectly well his tongue has been cut. Are you his liberator?”
I opened my mouth but nothing came. My stomach churned and my heart thumped.
Behind the chair was a wooden trap door cut into the smooth concrete floor. It rattled as if there were someone trapped below. The man in black paid it no mind. The man in white took a step forward and the man in black held up a hand.
“There’s someone down there,” I said.
The man in black smiled. “This does not concern you.”
From the trapdoor came a scream, high pitched and sustained. The man in black stood and reached into his jacket and pulled out a knife. He turned it under the light. It dripped wet with blood. The man in white shrunk back.
“You remember this don’t you?” The man in black smiled and held the tip of the knife up to the chin of the man in white. “We already have your tongue, what shall we take next?”
The trap door rattled and the scream came, so loud now I put my fingers to my ears. The sound lingered and reverberated off the smooth walls.
“Who is down there?” I said.
“A defective child. A child born ill and with half a head of hair and half a brain and no tongue at all. A girl unwanted. A girl who has no name because it has been given to another. A girl whose bones and soul shall lay hidden below the foundations of the building bearing the name stripped of her.”
“Adele.”
“No she is not. She was but is no longer. Replaced by a child worthy of the name. Her parents came to me and begged to help the child. The best medicine and all the money in the world could not right the wrongs. So we provided instead a replacement. There was but one hitch. A hospital orderly who thought the girl a friend and what was worse, discovered the plan. And so we cut out his tongue so he wouldn’t talk and so he could be just like his tongueless friend.”
The man in black smiled and made a gouging motion with the knife. The man in white took a step back and brought his hands up to his bloodied mouth. The man in black pressed forwards and pinned the man in white against the back wall.
I took a step towards the door. The man in black lifted an arm from across the room and the door slammed shut as if there were a sudden gust of wind.
“I can’t let you leave,” he said.
The trap door rattled again. I went to it and ran my hand over it searching for the lock.
“As long as I am here the door remains closed.”
The man in black turned to me and smiled. He rotated the knife in his right hand and with his left squeezed the throat of the man in white.
“If your prison cell can’t hold you, we will have to make other arrangements.”
The man in white cowered, his eyes wide. He buckled at the knees and slid down the wall.
A cry came from below the floor. Something almost intelligible.
The man in black chuckled. “Even now she calls for him. But he couldn’t save her then and he won’t now.”
The man in white narrowed his eyes and scrunched his nose like a dog snarling. He threw a fist and struck the man in black flush on the mouth. The man in black staggered back, blood dripping from a split lip. He regained his balance and lunged at the man in white, leading with the knife. The man in white caught the wrist and they tumbled to the floor. The man in black thrust the knife closer and closer to the face of the man in white, smiling and cackling, his eyes wide. The man in white freed an arm and slapped it across the cheek of the man in black and the knife spilled from his grasp and clattered along the concrete floor. The man in white lunged for the knife and grabbed it and in one swift motion buried it handle deep into the throat of the man in black.
The man in black writhed and choked as his blood spilled onto the floor. He closed his hands around the knife handle and squeezed and then went limp, his hands flopping to the floor. The single light bulb hanging from the ceiling buzzed and brightened until the room was bright white and then the bulb shattered and the room plunged into darkness.
When I opened my eyes daylight streamed in through the open door. There was a red stain where the man in black had died. The man in white sat upright on the concrete floor, his coat no longer stained red and he held a little girl in his arms. The trap door was open. She was free.
An instant later the clean concrete walls and floor turned mottled grey. Dust and leaves covered the floor and where the trap door had been was now solid concrete. The man in white and Adele were gone. I was alone in the room.
I stepped out into late afternoon sunshine. I set up my tripod and took one last photo in the twilight. The cold and lifeless building took on a warmer look in the orange glow of the sun. I gathered my things and hiked back to town.
Before I left I went to the local library. I searched their archive for newspaper stories on the hospital and the Barr family. I found two photos of a baby Adele Barr, smiling wide, not yet conscious of what the man in black had called her ‘defects’.
A third photo showed her parents standing before the wing of the hospital named after her. A child stood between them. The caption noted the girl as Adele, but it wasn’t her. It wasn’t the Adele from the first two photos. It wasn’t the Adele the man in white hugged to his chest.
A man flanked the Barr family. Dark suit and slicked black hair. The man in black. The caption noted his name and title: Louis Schwartz, Chief Warden of Sacred Heart Hospital. He stared out of the page unsmiling and defiant. The man who had buried an unwanted child and mutilated her only friend.
I found nothing on the man in white. The man in black called him an orderly, but of him there are no records. I have done my best to record his deeds such that he may not be forgotten.