Who Ya Gonna Call?

Friday night I went on the "ghost hunt" in the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium. It's a monstrous and creepy old building that was built in 1939 and housed tuberculosis patients within it's 140,000 square feet of room and 6 floors. It's been closed for that type of usage for 35 years, but all that it houses now are some administrative offices and storage on a couple of floors. The rest of it stands empty. Well, unless you count ghosts.

We got there about dusk and the first thing you notice upon driving through the old gates it just how massive and imposing the building is. It's a bit intimidating actually. We got inside and got a quick seminar on the host group, River Valley Paranormal Research and Investigations out of Fort Smith, and got to see some of their equipment and told a bit about the building and the hunt. Then we broke in to 2 groups of about 14 or 15 people and were off to different parts of the building.


Was I a believer going in? Well, yes and no I guess. I've always been a big fan of the paranormal stuff but I've never really seen anything in person to make me believe. Sure I've seen some neat video and photos, but usually when it comes to things like this I need my own proof. So to say I was going in with an open mind would be correct. To say I wanted to see, feel or hear something would also be correct.


But, I never really had an experience in there I would chalk up to anything other than imagination. It's a spooky setting for starters, and compounded by the fact that I really wanted to see something I'd have to seriously question anything at all I jumped to conclusions about. We walked through dark hallways and sat down in an old morgue and went off on our own investigating rooms that we'd been told had previous activity. Still really nothing. The hallways are long and dark but there are windows in each room with outside light coming in, added to people's flashlights casting shadows and the fact that the floor is a checkered design... I think the mind could run wild with seeing "shadow people". The same goes with hearing things. The building is just conducive to "unexplained" noises.

Do I think other people saw or heard things that night? Sure I do. At one point we were all sitting in the middle of a hallway and several people said they saw something shadowy moving around. I never saw it personally. There were a few times though when I thought maybe I saw something, but again it's just such and easy place to let the mind run wild. And I'm sure other nights the group that does their research with all their high tech equipment they see and hear things that might change my mind, who knows. I do know I wouldn't feel as relaxed in a place like that alone, or with just a few other people.

So for now, I'm still on the side of the skeptics I guess, despite a really cool and spooky night of wandering around the dark halls of an old sanatorium.