Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum (10 page)

Zach’s reaction to Bryce’s speech was being
filmed, so he nodded. He had to admit that Bryce had pretty much nailed that
explanation. Typically, there were important reasons for a spirit to conduct an
intelligent haunting; they weren’t always logical motivations, but uncovering
them was what Zach did best, thanks to his special gift.

Bryce’s monologue was drawing to a close.
“Now, without further ado, here is Patrizia.”

Patrizia smiled at the camera, and then led
the group down the long hallway toward the cafeteria. They peeked in each room
taking pictures and EMF readings just in case a daytime apparition lurked naked
to the visible eye. Angel needed to unlock a few of the rooms but most were
open. Many of the doors had long been removed, perhaps ported and used in other
hospitals.

They approached the doors of the cafeteria.
“Hey,” Shelly yelled out. “My EMF meter just leapt from .04 to 1.8. Did anybody
else get that?”

“I caught it,” Rico said.

“Me too.” Zach’s reading dipped back to an
ambient .04.

“It would make sense to get readings here,”
Patrizia said. “With this being the largest inside gathering place on the
property, it was also the most active spot for violence.”

Zach, Shelly, and Rico scanned the room with
their EMF meters. None of them picked up a reading above .05 anywhere in the
room.

Rico positioned himself in front of one of
the cameras. “That was a definite paranormal spike!”

Bryce turned to Patrizia. “Did anyone die in
here?”

“Well, I didn’t find any records of specific
locations where people died,” she said. “It would be likely that those injured
in fights here would have passed away after being taken to the infirmary.”

“Not just gorgeous, folks,” Bryce said into
the camera, “but smart too!”

Patrizia ignored the comment. “There were
several reports of violent acts here:  patients smashing trays into other
patient’s faces, fistfights, and even a couple incidents of forks used to gouge
out fellow combatants’ eyes.”

She proceeded through the double doors and
into the wide-open space. Oversized windows made the room bright, but the bars
outside must have provided ample reminder to the long-ago diners that they
weren’t free. Along one wall, large square openings would have allowed staff to
pass food to patients and linked the dining hall with the kitchen.

“I want to see the kitchen!” Shelly said.

They herded through a door and into the
adjoining room. Dented and rusted metal cabinetry and countertops adorned the
room, but all appliances had been ripped out.

“Yo, you guys, these aren’t the originals,”
Rico said, banging on one of the counters. “I’d say these are circa 1960.”

“If they’re new, why are they all dented?”
Shelly asked.

“Good question.” Zach’s finger outlined a
gash deep enough to have been caused by an angry gorilla. “Were there any
reports of suspicious fires in here?”

“As opposed to
unsuspicious
ones?” It
may have been Patrizia’s attempt at a joke. “No. There were no reported major
fires or accidents in the kitchen.”

The group soon continued out into the back
corridor of the hospital.  Rooms on the interior half of the hall had no
windows to the outside world. They reminded Zach of prison cells he’d seen
while touring Alcatraz—the flaking tan paint and grime on the walls cemented
the impression. Conversely, the outer side of the hallway contained what may
have once been nicer rooms with windows, large meeting areas and solariums
which would have looked out onto the back gardens.

“Generally speaking, the patients kept on
the outer main floor were the least violent and safest to the hospital staff
and visitors,” Patrizia said. “Many roamed the halls with minimal supervision
and may have been people today who would be diagnosed with clinical depression.
Some were alcoholics needing to dry out. The upstairs rooms housed the more
dangerous elements.”

“The folks they didn’t want decent people to
have contact with,” Rebecca whispered to Zach. “The ones likely to be haunting
this place.”

XPI’s
Occult Specialist maintained a strong connection to the supernatural
that had emerged from personal experience. Her mother passed away when Rebecca
was a toddler, but her only memories of her mom were from when she’d been six
or seven-years old. The discrepancy confused Rebecca; she and Zach had
developed a theory that her mom’s spirit must have visited her until she’d been
old enough to care for herself.

“Are you picking up any psychic vibrations?”
Zach asked her.

Rebecca shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing,
yet.”

Sara and her cameraman swarmed in and out of
the group as they proceeded down the long hallway. Zach guessed that
ninety-five percent of the tour, absent any drama, would end up on the cutting
room floor. Still, it was necessary for them to understand the asylum’s layout
before wandering these halls in the dark.

“This was the visitor’s area,” Patrizia said
when they arrived at a great room at the end of the hall.

The room, situated at the asylum’s back
corner, connected the two long hallways that jutted out in 90-degree angles. It
would have allowed visitors to meet their friends and relatives in a place with
a nice view of the gardens without having to venture inside Rosewood’s innards.
Devoid of any furniture, the room was large, but felt unthreatening. The group
rambled down the hallway that led to the infirmary using thermal cameras to
check for cold spots and continuing to look for EMF anomalies. Zach couldn’t
help but chuckle at Winkler’s earlier comment. It
did
look like a field
trip.

“Are the hallways this long on the upper two
floors?” Angel asked Patrizia.

“Longer. Those floors are all patient
quarters. No large rooms on either end. There are also connecting hallways in
the middle of each wing.”

Angel turned to Zach. “Between the two
groups, we’ve got fourteen stationary night-vision cameras.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yes, but without known ‘hot spots,’ we’re
only going to be able to cover a fraction of this place after dark.”

“How many mini digital cameras do we have?”
Zach asked.

“Six total.”

“And we’ll have three pairs of investigators
each with at least one of those, an EMF meter and a thermal cam.”

“Three pairs? Are you going to let Matthew
investigate?”

“No,” Zach said quietly. He pulled Angel
aside. “Patrizia is going to team up with Shelly.”

“Ohhhhh. That will go over well,
mi hijo
.”

“Don’t you worry about it. As soon as we get
done with the tour, I want you to set up a technical command post in the lobby,
and I want you to take charge of the tech group and make as many of the
decisions as you can,” Zach said. “No slight to our Australian friend but you’re
the guy I trust.”

“
Gracias, señor
.” He mixed cultures
and bowed, Japanese style, at the waist.

“I mean it, Angel. If something isn’t right
in regards to the set up, I’m going to hold you responsible, and if something
isn’t sitting well with you, I expect you to come to me pronto.”

Angel’s acne-scarred face beamed. “Seriously
Zach, I appreciate that. I won’t let you down.”

“Boys. Boys.” Sara’s voice echoed through
the vacant hallway. “Keep up!”

The group had reached the infirmary.

By the time Zach and Angel entered, the rest
of the group stared around the series of connected rooms with stark
disappointment.

“I thought there’d be…like…stuff,” Ray said
to a chorus of “Me too’s.”

The infirmary rooms looked like all the
others in the vacant hospital–empty, dirty and bland.

“In here!”

Sara and the camera crew led a stampede into
the adjoining room where the shout had come from. Rico and Turk stood next to a
row of five-foot tall metal file cabinets. The rest of the group descended on
the drawers like starving vultures on a dead wildebeest.

“These aren’t…” Rico had gotten a head start
and was examining the contents of a folder. He shook his head. “They’re court
records.”

“From the 1940s,” Rebecca chimed in.

“Misdemeanors,” Bryce said. “Traffic
violations and whatnot. What the fuck?”

“The State of Illinois used this building
for record storage from the 1920s until the 1960s,” Patrizia said. “I’m fairly
certain that none of this is from the period of the asylum.”

A few uttered growls and groans. Matthew
slammed a drawer closed. Shelly continued taking EMF readings that showed no
abnormalities.

“Guys, this was the infirmary, so as
harmless as it may appear now, people would have passed away in here,” Zach
said. “We’ll want this room heavily video monitored and explored tonight.”

“Maybe we pitch one of the tents in here
tonight?” Bryce’s tone made it clear he wasn’t volunteering to sleep there.

Zach noticed that no one leapt at the chance
to camp out in the room people had died. “I think we’ll want to keep together
tonight,” he said. “Two groups of tents. One in the lobby where the nerve
center will be and a group outside on the front lawn not far from the vans. And
while we’re on the subject, no one roams the grounds or any building on the
property alone after dark. Safety first, people.”

Shelly raised her hand. “Hey Patrizia?” She
looked around the infirmary. “Wouldn’t there have been a morgue around here
somewhere?”

Patrizia scoured the map but didn’t locate
one.

“If I might?” Rebecca spoke up and waited
for Sara to get a shot of her. “It’s doubtful that in those days there was one.
Cadavers were at a premium and would likely have been sold to medical schools.”

“All of them? Wouldn’t their families want
them?” Bryce asked.

“To be realistic, maybe some of them had
close family relationships, but they’d have been in the minority. This was a
public institution. Visitor facilities notwithstanding, the vast majority of
these patients were outcasts, forgotten about and never recovered their mental
health. Any corpses not given over to family burial would have been sold.
Except those with infectious diseases and maybe…”

“And maybe?” Bryce asked.

“Well, back in that day, the medical schools
wouldn’t have accepted suicides.”

“What would they have done with those?” Zach
asked.

“They wouldn’t have been entitled to a
Catholic burial, so they likely just dumped them in the ground somewhere on the
property—probably in unmarked graves.”

Although no one’s thermal camera detected a
cold spot, a few in the room shuddered.

“They probably stored dead bodies
temporarily downstairs, in the basement,” Patrizia said.

“A basement?” Rico’s eyes were ablaze.

“Can we go there next?” Shelly asked.

“Hey guys, c’mon. This is Patrizia’s tour.”
Zach winked at her. To his surprise she flashed him a grateful smile.

“I was saving the basement for last,” she
said.

“First, I have some stories of patients who
stayed on the upper floors.”

“Onward,” Sara instructed.

They all clodded up a concrete stairwell
next to the infirmary to the 2nd floor. Apparently, there had been less
salvaging on the upper level. Unlike many of the rooms below, most of the rooms
still had doors—most of them barred. To Zach, the second storey more resembled
an abandoned prison’s solitary confinement holdings than a hospital wing.

“Room 217.” Patrizia stopped outside the
room and ushered the group into the vacant cell. It was located on the interior
side of the hallway. Absent windows to the outside except for the barred door,
living in the room must have been hell. “It was in this room, in 1897,” she
said “over the course of a weekend, patient Kurt Wozniak ate his entire bed.
Mattress. Pillows. Wooden frame and sheets.”

“Did it kill him?” Rebecca asked.

“No, but later that year, despite attempts
to keep a closer eye on him, he managed to sneak a jar of peaches into his
room. They found the peaches on the floor the next morning. Wozniak’s dead body
was lying in here, the glass from the jar, inside his shredded stomach and
intestines.”

“Eww,” Shelly whispered. “I may never eat
peaches again.”

“So does that qualify as a suicide, or was
it just stupidity?” Bryce asked, smirking.

“Mental illness is
not
stupidity.”
Rebecca’s face had ripened with anger. “And it’s certainly no laughing matter!”

“Of course not,” Bryce said feigning
sincerity for the camera. “This poor man’s spirit could still be lingering in
room 217.”

The hypocrisy was more than Zach could take.
He turned to Patrizia. “Were there any incidents that involved fire or arson?”

“Yes,” she said. She pointed up. “Upstairs a
patient set his room ablaze.”