Sue St.Clair and Matthew Didier's Paranormal Blog

Dark Hospital Corridor

When listing our "Ghostly 13" most likely locations to be haunted we decided to list hospitals as our #1. Hospitals are the scene of much human drama ... life .. death .. joy .. grief...hope and despair ... and perhaps in this listing I should have included those specialized hospitals such as asylums.

There is not a single hospital in the Greater Toronto Area, of Ontario, Canada that we do not have at least one ghostly report from. Some are online and others are kept to our private files for various reasons such as privacy and agreed upon confidentiality.

We also include buildings that no longer function as hospitals. We have already written about the hauntings associated with the former Mimico Asylum. Currently housing a local college, the asylum's buildings definitely contain echoes of their past ... and we usually receive emails in regards on a weekly basis!

Many of the hospital reports we have received are of very good quality and are not only just intriguing, but convincing as well. It was not that surprising that at a lecture Matthew gave on ghosts and hauntings at Ryerson (Toronto University) the audience was made up of a large number of nursing students.

Almost all of the hospital ghost stories we've researched or actively investigated are benign in nature and involve either a former staff member or long term patient .....

A cornerstone of the city, St. Michael's is easily one of Toronto's crowning hospitals. Run by the Sisters of St. Joseph, its doors opened in 1892.

Ward 7B however offers an interesting tradition of Sister Vincenza. "Vinnie", as she's called by the staff, turns lights on and off and can be seen occasionally making her rounds. There's only one little problem with "Vinnie" -- she's been dead since the 1950s.

The most eerie part of this combined poltergeist and apparition haunting is that when people see Sister Vincenza, her nun's cowl is circling a black chasm where her face should be.

Devoted to the end and apparently beyond, "Vinnie" is a definite fixture of the lore of St. Mikes.

The following was sent in to us in October of 2000...

"I'm acquainted with one of the staff at St. Michael's on the 7th floor.

Very recently (fall of 2000), the night nurse, while on rounds, came around a corner and almost stumbled right into a figure, dressed in a black robe from head to toe, slowly walking down the hallway away from her. Scared, she turned and ran back to the nursing station.

Not long after, a code blue (cardiac arrest) rang out from the area in which the apparition was heading. Needless to say, the nurses did rounds in pairs for the rest of the night shift!"

In other notes, Sister Vincenza has also been know to give patients blankets, and in general care for them. Perhaps her devotion to the sick and suffering lives on in her after death. In all accounts her appearances seem to be of a helpful nature, even if it is helping one pass out of our world.

Very similar to the St. Michael's Hospital haunting here in Toronto are the following two accounts from the United Kingdom:

Cambridge Military Hospital

Ward 13 is reportedly haunted by the apparition of a "lady in grey." She has been seen numerous times by both patients and staff usually under circumstances of stress such as under staffing. The lady in grey is thought to be a former nursing sister in the Queen Alexandra Imperial Nursing Service who accidently administered a fatal over dose to a patient and later committed suicide. She appears to be making her rounds, much as she may have done in life and is considered non-threatening and perhaps helpful in nature.

St Thomas's Hospital, London

Perhaps best known as the hospital that was the base for Florence Nightingale it is also haunted by the apparition of a woman in an old-fashioned grey nursing uniform. There are several legends as to who this "lady in grey" might be, but the only clue as to her possible identity is the uniform which is described as pre-1920. Whoever she is or was she too seems benign in nature and has been witnessed over several decades by both staff members and patients.

The above two reports were specially included for Nicola and in response to her always kind and interesting commentary. Please do pay her blog Life At The Edge a visit and let her know we've sent you.

Now our more astute readers may have noticed above the keywords "almost all" hospital reports are benign. This is true, but we do have a handful that could be viewed as rather disturbing. We do not include them because they involve currently functioning hospitals and we do not wish to potentially upset either the staff nor patients of these places. It also must be noted that there is no evidence to suggest that it is the intent of these phenomena to frighten, but more likely the fear of the unknown and Hollywood inspired expectations of the witnesses that create feelings of anxiety and panic.

In the future we may write about these darker experiences, but will not for hopefully obvious reasons include their exact locations.