Haunted Hospitals, Part 6

Today, we visit sunny Florida in our look at haunted hospitals!

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Spanish Military Hospital, St. Augustine, Florida

History

The Spanish Military Hospital is located in the Spanish Quarter of St. Augustine, the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States. The current structure is used as a museum, and is a replica of the original hospital that stood between 1784 and 1821 on the same site. According to GHOST! Magazine, when the city overhauled its waterlines, which went underneath the structure, they found piles of human bones. It is now believed that the hospital was built over an old Indian burial site.

Hauntings

The building is called "Florida's Most Haunted Hospital," and stories abound of beds moving across rooms, footsteps coming from an empty upper floor, the sounds of moans and screams, the smell of sulfur, and visitors being touched by invisible presences. In the mourning room, the sounds of praying and sobbing can be heard; in the surgeon's office, objects move and shake on their own; and in the apothecary, shadows move strangely across walls, while the sounds of a sobbing man can be heard.

When Jeff Reynolds of North Florida Paranormal Research, Inc. visited the old hospital, a garden stake that had been leaning against a wall slid – not rolled as if it had simply fallen – across the floor in his direction. Reynolds believes a spirit was trying to send him a message and, if it wanted to, could have chosen to kill him with the stake.

See the previous installment, Haunted Hospitals, Part 5.

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