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Buildings Converted Into Houses Or Other Residences

realspooky

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Sep 14, 2003
Messages
283
No, I'm not an architect plugging my latest designs...

It's something that has always spooked me. A good mate of mine's girlfriend has just moved into a house (well, she moved in 7 months ago). Now this is no ordinary house. The location is in the grounds of an old asylum (which closed in 1987 I do believe. Over half of it was knocked down shortly after) The houses are the some of the old buildings converted into living quarters.

We arent sure what part she currently lives in, but I believe, going on size and design, that it was the admin block. Some of the other pads are quite a bit larger, the corner plots the size of a ward maybe...

Anyways, the point being is that myself and the wife stayed over the other week. And although the pad is very smart and cosey (it is mid terrace) you cant help picturing the past still being permanetly attatched to the rooms. Like the upstairs bathroom is a small cupboard, the 2nd bedroom resembles he size of a padded cell. Imagination maybe, but believe me, mirrors are a no no, and you dont half look over your shoulder everynow and then...

The owner has had strange feeling about being watched, especially when gardening. She has felt that someone has been watching her, from the patio. The spooky thing is, on the back wall of the house which is adjacent to the patio, there are markings scraped into the morter. Someone has attempted to sand blast them off, but you can still make out most of the names and years. The earliest we can see dates back to 1931. Certain out building for the patients still remain aswell, such as sun houses and benches. You assume patients were once left to wander the gardens on their own accord. Or was her house part of the admin block?......

Has anyone else ever purchased or stayed at a house which has been converted from a hospital or something equally as spooky? How did you feel? I know I have an overactive imagination, but it was working overtime that night I slept there....
 
Frankly, I dont know why people do it....."it" being want to live in houses that were built on prison or asylum grounds, or ancient burial grounds. ( which is always popular)
This is an equation for disaster or at the very least, a good old fashioned haunting.
You wouldn't get me to live in a place like that if they were giving them away. But that's just me.

I wish your friend all the luck in the world.
 
This all sounds VERY much like the development that was done to the Asylum near my parent's house, right down to the year it closed. Where is it, if you don't want to say on the open forum PM me, I know some really weird stories about the place when it was working and if it is the same place it didn't have an admin building
 
Where I used to live in Surrey, there was an abattoir, and every market day you could hear the pigs screaming and screaming before they were slaughtered and the smell of blood and pigs was terrible. Ten years ago or so they turned it into a row of twee little houses and called it something Mews.

I always wonder if people who move into those places with no knowledge of the past sense anything. There is no way I could ever live there. Or an ex-asylum.
 
Personally I don't like the idea of living in a converted hospital/psychiatric hospital... Even if there were no evidence of paranormal activity, I think the thought would get me down. I mean, I don't know what everyone thinks, but I believe atmosphere/strangeness can be generated by people's presence and state of mind. If I were living in such a place, I'd find it difficult not to think about the previous occupants..over a period of time I can imagine it would really have an effect on me.
 
Are we talking about a closed asylum in London - perhaps near Richmond?
 
How strange that I log on tonight after an afternoon of viewing condos with my husband to find this thread. The first place we looked at in Haverhill Massachusetts, called Buttonwoods Ave. Condominiums (sounds so cutesy, eh?) apparently used to be a hospital. I don't know much of the history but it is a converted Garrison. It is beautiful, but nothing seemed weird or spooky about the place. The second place we looked at was an elementary school. Again, nothing out of the ordinary about it. Except for the towtruck that barreled down the street blaring his horn for no good reason...plus the guy who did the showing seemed pretty desperate to get rid of it ;D
 
I live in Melbourne these days. Over the last few years, an infamous prison---Pentridge---has been transformed into an expensive, highly desirable (nice thick bluestone walls, big ol' security fence, Ned Kelly chic) walled community. It's kind of strange to think that people tried so hard to get out of that place not so long ago, and now people are paying a lot of money to live there and be safe from the kind of people who used to live there.

There must have been a lot of misery in that place. Who in their right mind would choose to live there?

Strange times.
 
Why would an asylum be any more likely to have ghosts than any other house? Are mentally ill people any more likely to haunt their last home than anyone else?

This romantic notion of old asylums populated by mad gibbering ghosts is one which has its roots firmly in fiction, not fact. I've known quite a few mentally ill people (and no, they weren't mad axe murderers who ran around slavering at the jaws) and believe me, the last place they'd want to hang around as a ghost is a mental hospital. They hate the places and can't wait to get out of them.
 
graylien said:
Why would an asylum be any more likely to have ghosts than any other house? Are mentally ill people any more likely to haunt their last home than anyone else

If you believe that buildings absorb the emotional energy of the people that resided there, then places like these ,where there must have been a lot of negative energy built up, would have a greater effect than a single 'ghost' in a suburban semi!
 
bigaggie1 said:
graylien said:
Why would an asylum be any more likely to have ghosts than any other house? Are mentally ill people any more likely to haunt their last home than anyone else

If you believe that buildings absorb the emotional energy of the people that resided there, then places like these ,where there must have been a lot of negative energy built up, would have a greater effect than a single 'ghost' in a suburban semi!


What if there was multiple psycho families that lived in the house. Then they might work together in their spectral deviance?
 
Another FTMB coincidence.

Yesterday I was out in the Peak District and walked through Millers Dale and the fabulously named Water-cum-Jolly Dale on the Monsal Trail. I've known the area since I was a kid and there were two derelict mills, Cressbrook and Litton, which we used to play in. I later learnt that these were the mills featured in Walt Unsworth's book The Devil's Mill which, when I was at primary school in the 70's, was, along with a lot of Alan Garners novels, a standard text.

The mills have now been converted into apartments. I often wonder, once I've got over the initial surrealism of finding luxury apartments in a place which I always associate with childhood games amongst the rubble, not to mention the fact that someone's developed luxury, city-style, industrial heritage apartments in the middle of nowhere, if when people are walking up the stairs to their pads at night they ever feel any resonance from the age when the places were a symbol of expoitation, child slavery and early death.
 
tonyblair11 said:
bigaggie1 said:
graylien said:
Why would an asylum be any more likely to have ghosts than any other house? Are mentally ill people any more likely to haunt their last home than anyone else

If you believe that buildings absorb the emotional energy of the people that resided there, then places like these ,where there must have been a lot of negative energy built up, would have a greater effect than a single 'ghost' in a suburban semi!


What if there was multiple psycho families that lived in the house. Then they might work together in their spectral deviance?

:roll: I said single ghost , tonyblair11
How are the famly, by th way :lol:
 
Haunted spots

Redhead666 wrote:
You would get me to live in a place like that

Well, I don't wish to spook you, but how do you know you're not.

As the man once said: 'The earth you say? That is a matter of great legend even though you walk it every day'

Depending on how far you want to go back, someone will have lived where you do now - the very fact that it is a settled area means it has considered suitable for many, many years ;)
 
Trust me.....I know what I'm talking about here. I grew up in a house that was and still is completely and utterly haunted. So I would never wish to put myself in such a position knowingly ( back then I had no choice).


Are mentally ill people any more likely to haunt their last home than anyone else?
No. BUT.......let's look at what the spectres might be capable of based on their behaviour when they were living.
A mentally ill person can be quite over the edge and I personally would not want to wake up in the middle of the night and find a ghost banging his head against a wall that used to be rubber screaming, "Let me out Let me out!!"

Now not everyone in a mental hospital does that, but some certainly do.
There is a lot more chance of that happening in a building that used to be an asylum than in an everyday ordinary house.

My point was that I personally would never buy or live in a house that had a suspicious background and might be a ghostly hazard. I speak from experience.

Come spend the night at my mother's haunted house.....you'd be saying the same thing when you left to go home.
 
mossy_sloth said:
Personally I don't like the idea of living in a converted hospital/psychiatric hospital... Even if there were no evidence of paranormal activity, I think the thought would get me down. I mean, I don't know what everyone thinks, but I believe atmosphere/strangeness can be generated by people's presence and state of mind. If I were living in such a place, I'd find it difficult not to think about the previous occupants..over a period of time I can imagine it would really have an effect on me.

Precisely the problem I had. Everyone I went in, as lovely a setup as it was, I couldnt help but think who had been in there previosuly, whether it be an office bod shuffling patients records or something a little more disturbing....
 
graylien said:
Why would an asylum be any more likely to have ghosts than any other house? Are mentally ill people any more likely to haunt their last home than anyone else?

This romantic notion of old asylums populated by mad gibbering ghosts is one which has its roots firmly in fiction, not fact. I've known quite a few mentally ill people (and no, they weren't mad axe murderers who ran around slavering at the jaws) and believe me, the last place they'd want to hang around as a ghost is a mental hospital. They hate the places and can't wait to get out of them.

I agree in a way, but if you look at this on a physological/Paranormal basis, negative energy is transmitted from the brain. If the person is distressed and wants to get out the hospital, surely this is negative energy, that as they say, is absorbed by the walls? The average household is surrounded by mainly positive vibes.

I'm not saying that in a way to offend the people you know, but it is a fact that those people are there in the hospital for a reason.

RS
 
Haunted

Aha, point taken.

My mother's ex boss, Mrs H., used to live in a very grand, but also haunted, house.

The house was perfectly pleasant during the day, and indeed during the night, but at night the ghost did manifest, apparently.

It was a little girl - you couldn't see it, but you could hear it very clearly, calling for it's mother.

It never did anything unfriendly to anyone.

Mrs H. moved many years ago, I wonder if the ghost is still there?...
 
The place we went on holiday this year was an old converted barn in Yorkshire. No ghosts to my knowledge I may add, but it still spooked me? I guess it's because you know it was something else, and your imagination is working overtime trying to figure out what it looked like (barn door here, horse dung there). The thing is, if there are no pictures you will never know, so the mind creates endless pictures.

Therefore when the lights go out, unless you've polished off a case of Fosters, you see nothing but these images, and thats when you begin to interpret noises.....
 
It's not exactly a spooky or creepy conversion, but our last house was converted from an old sports pavilion.
It was originally intended for the use of the locals in the village it was built in but they wouldn't use it for some reason, they said it was too far out of the village.
The owners decided to split it in half, put a lower ceiling in and convert it into two large semi detached bungalows.
It had a really odd feeling, we'd often get the feeling someone was watching us, things would get moved, we'd hear voices and see shadowy figures moving around. The oddest occurence was when we kept hearing babies crying all over the house, very creepy.
All of the old fittings were still present in the loft, along with streamers and banners from a party, almost like somebody had just left.
 
zoltan_g said:
All of the old fittings were still present in the loft, along with streamers and banners from a party, almost like somebody had just left.

Anything like that gives me the creeps. The sound of a baby crying without an entity is bad, but seeing things like that in the loft just confirms that the buildings past is still firmly attatched to its foundations...
 
When I were a student in Edinburgh, most of my classes were in a former mental hospital (Craighouse, if anyone knows the city). One time, and one time only, we had a class in a room in the basement and I spent the whole time feeling rather uneasy. Nothing happened, but the atmosphere just felt weird.
I mentioned this to a fellow student after the class and he said it was because the room was in what used to be morgue :eek: A security guard who I often chatted too confirmed this, and said he hated going into that part of the building, even though there were never any reports of odd goings on.
So, no, I wouldn't live in a former mental hospital!
 
Two buildings local to me had strong 'deathly' connections and both were offered unsuccessfully on the market for some time.

One was the old cottage hospital mortuary. It was set in a nice corner of the grounds and had plenty of space for gardens and parking, and was in itself a charming little building with a pitched roof. There were no takers and it was eventually demolished.

Another is a large house whose gardens protrude into the cemetery grounds and whose windows overlook the graves. This didn't sell either and was converted into flats and let out.

I'd have bought either or both of these lovely places but didn't have the wherewithal. Of the two, the cemetery house seems creepier, with its unusual views! But the mortuary house might have been more exciting to live in. In a morbid sort of way.

Incidentally, a friend of my mother's was a cleaner at the mortuary and she loved her job. She never felt uncomfortable there and enjoyed checking up on the guests, in case knew them.

My mother was somewhat taken aback to learn that when someone with her surname had come in, her mate had peeped at her face, in case it was her. It was actually my grandmother.

Hospital cleaners are made of stern stuff. ;)
 
Although the "stone tape" theory of ghosts is certainly an attractive one, I don't subscribe to it. I find it hard to believe that the walls of a building can soak up "negative energy" as if it were seeping damp.

Firstly, if this is the same kind of "energy" referred to by proponents of Astral projection and telepathy, then it seems to pass through walls with the greatest of ease.

Secondly, surely the "energy" stored in the walls would gradually weaken over time; so would not the building be far more likely to "play back" recent events rather than scenes played out years ago by people now dead? We would surely be more likely to be haunted by the ghosts of ourselves from last week rather than the ghosts of people who lived in our house decades ago.
 
It makes sense to reuse buildings, but it's better not to know what they used to be. Once, in a cafe on Waterloo station, my brother suddenly exclaimed that it used to be the gents' toilet "The urinals were over there ..." Another time during a works Xmas dinner in a trendy restaurant in Cambridge, a colleague said, "This used to be part of the hospital - somewhere in this room I had some polyps removed from my nose."

You could never have guessed what either place used to be unless someone told you.
 
There's an old mortuary in what used to be part of Falmouth's churchyard which has been a home for many years. (I think Sidecar jon knows the occupants, actually).

Presumably they don't get bad vibes there, as the building has been extended in recent years!
 
It strikes me that worse things happen in normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill houses than do in morgues, hospitals and insane asylums. Maybe we just fear certain things because its easier to do so than to examine what's close to home.
 
Spookdaddy said:
It strikes me that worse things happen in normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill houses than do in morgues, hospitals and insane asylums. Maybe we just fear certain things because its easier to do so than to examine what's close to home.


I don't know what "every day run of the mill houses" surround you, but I tend to think that in the ones around me, there aren't worse things than what goes on in morgues, hospitals, and asylums!
 
Redhead666 said:
Spookdaddy said:
It strikes me that worse things happen in normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill houses than do in morgues, hospitals and insane asylums. Maybe we just fear certain things because its easier to do so than to examine what's close to home.


I don't know what "every day run of the mill houses" surround you, but I tend to think that in the ones around me, there aren't worse things than what goes on in morgues, hospitals, and asylums!

Murder, child abuse, rape, domestic violence - the horrors of modern life generally occur in peoples homes or their environs - not in morgues, hospitals and asylums. That was my point.
 
Imprinting

We may not be dealing as much with traditional ghostly hauntings in cases of former asylums, prisons and the like but instead with what the psychical researchers call "imprinting."

The theory is that strong releases of emotional energies (or even weaker ones over longer periods of time) permeate the very bricks of a building and can be sort of "replayed" at later dates.

I had a somewhat similar experience when I visited the Washington, D. C., former hotel (it had actually been a rooming house) where Abraham Lincoln died. I certainly expected nothing "psychic." But I walked into a veritable sea of CRYING. It was as though 20 or 30 people were sobbing their hearts out. (Only four or five people were actually present besides myself and two of those were staff.)

There was absolute stillness in the actual death chamber. (I was physically alone in that room, just me and Lincoln's blood-stained pillow - which has since been moved to Ford's Theater across the street.)

But when I left that room I once again walked into that same ocean of heart-rending misery. Interestingly, the voices which seemed closest to me when I first entered from the street door, now seemed the furthest away, and vice versa - sort of a reverse stereo effect.

There was of course nothing hostile or evil about those crying voices - just my fellow-citizens separated from me by more than a century.
 
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