Everybody loves a ghost story, but the real-life incidents behind them are often truly horrible tales.
The Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton, Canada, is notorious for sightings of figures behind windows, late-night screams, and the flashing on and off lights inside the building.
As this hospital has been abandoned for more than the last 20 years, it’s not hard to understand why the locals call this place the most haunted building in town.
Unfortunately, while the possible hauntings may be seen as a bit of fun by some people, the reality of what took place here many years ago is no laughing matter.
An innocuous beginning
First established as a Jesuit College way back in the early 1900s, the Camsell Hospital would later be used as a military base for the many U.S. Army soldiers who were sent north to build the Alaska Highway. And the hospital was then used to treat servicemen who were suffering from tuberculosis and other respiratory issues.
It was in 1946, however, when things started to take a sinister turn.
The Edmonton abandoned hospital is not a safe place
Between the years of 1946 and 1966, the Canadian government decided to turn Camsell Hospital into an “Indian Sanitorium.” This move was undertaken due to the terrible toll that TB was having on First Nations people.
What sounds like a positive endeavor seemingly turned into something much more unpleasant as the years passed by. And for over 20 years, First Nations men, women, children, and babies were sent to the Camsell Hosptial from all across Northern Canada and the prairies.
The terrible truth is that while this was a place where these people were sent with the hope of getting better, many of them were never to be seen again.
Beyond belief
The full truth of what happened at Camsell Hosptial will likely never be known, but the rumors are genuinely awful. It is said that the First Nations people were subjected to experimental procedures that had nothing to do with the TB they were suffering from.
Shock treatments, nutritional experiments, enforced sterilization, and scores and scores of deaths are just some of the heinous acts that are said to have taken place in the name of science.
What’s worse, the families of those who died were often not notified of their loved one’s death, and the bodies were instead dumped in a mass grave close to a residential school in St. Albert.
Crying to be heard at the abandoned hospital Edmonton
The rumors behind what really happened at the Charles Camsell Hosptial are why so many locals believe the abandoned building is haunted to this day.
The spirits of those who lost their lives at the abandoned hospital are thought to be walking the halls. Hoping, maybe, that they will one day escape their prison and be reunited with the loved ones they were so cruelly taken away from.
Whatever the truth, the hospital has been abandoned for so long for a reason. Prime pieces of real estate such as this simply do not remain abandoned for such a long period of time.
A new developer is thought to have recently taken possession of the building and plans to build a $200 million apartment complex. Those plans sound like grand ones, but the buyer may not have planned for the fact that those who suffered here are not ready to quietly disappear anytime soon.
