Haunted Hospitals

Spectral Ties: Hospital Hauntings Across the Line of Control
Abstract:
In this article, we trace encounters between humans and phantasmic entities in hospitals in Indian-occupied and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. In Pakistan, the presence of spectral beings (jinni) in hospitals is linked to state and sectarian violence, which precipitates ruptures between jinni and human worlds. Such breaches permit jinni to manifest in themedical present, where insecure actors harness them to ventriloquize unspoken anxieties. In Indian-occupied Kashmir, jinn-like, chronically mentally ill patients haunt psychiatric modernization projects. In embracing a jinneaological approach to medical crises, we theorize hospitals as multi-temporal and multi-dimensional spaces called “tesseracts,” in which human-nonhuman encounters serve existential and political purposes.

Source: Varley, E., & Varma, S. (2018). Spectral Ties: Hospital Hauntings Across the Line of Control. Medical Anthropology, 1–15.​
 

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Ghostly Ethics.
Abstract:
Patients in Madang Hospital Papua New Guinea, where I carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the early 2000s, knew hospitals to be haunted by spirits for a simple reason: people die there. The proximity of death in the hospital – the cold concrete slabs of the morgue lay only a few meters away from wards that housed patient beds – was not unnerving in itself. Rather, it was the unresolved nature of hospital deaths that raised the prospect of malevolent forces circulating. Patients and relatives often perceived hospital deaths as untimely, either brought about by murderous acts (including sorcery or poison) or hastened by the failure of the hospital staff to “see” the patient’s sickness and give it a “name”. But all deaths in the hospital were also unresolved in that they occurred in the wrong place. Admission to the hospital, where a patient is separated from their kin and is unable to contribute to the relationships that sustain life in their home village causes intense wori, which prevents hospital medicine from working, depletes the body, and can ultimately bring about death.

Source: Street, A. (2018). Ghostly Ethics. Medical Anthropology, 37(8), 703–707.
 

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Belling, C. (2020). Haunted Doctors. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 63(3), 466–479.
Abstract:
The idea of being "haunted" appears often in accounts of the experience of health-care professionals and trainees who suffer from unresolved sorrow or regret about past clinical events, in particular the deaths of patients. The trope of haunting draws a direct line between past professional trauma and the dread of future failure, a connection embodied as a spectral patient who revisits the physician with doubt, anxiety, and exhaustion. This article suggests that the sense of being haunted may be a useful index for the unresolved effects of two omnipresent and underappreciated components of clinical practice: emotion and uncertainty. By connecting the aspects of feeling and (not) knowing that lead to physician suffering-in trauma that is inextricably both emotional and epistemological-a sustaining sense of meaning might be generated. Doctors' work is, in several senses, weird, and medicine might benefit from paying closer attention to the etiologies and manifestations of its ghosts.

Source: Belling, C. (2020). Haunted Doctors. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 63(3), 466–479.​
 

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A very interesting book.
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Estep, Richard . The World's Most Haunted Hospitals: True-Life Paranormal Encounters in Asylums, Hospitals, and Institutions, 2016​
 
From the 'Uncanny Fans YOUR STORIES' Facebook page.

Posting anonymously as I’m talking about where I work.

I’m a nurse in a hospital that was built in the 1930’s but previously had a hospital on site.

I’m very much team #onthefence as I’ve had quite a few strange experiences but I’m still not convinced I really believe! I’ve got loads of stories from work but these are the top 2 (heads up this might be a long read…)

1. I work on a high care unit, we have 2 side rooms which are in sight of the nursing station. One of the rooms has a weird atmosphere.

I’m on nights and sat at the nursing station with my colleague, we hear a weird noise coming from the creepy side room which is currently empty, then we both watch the door handle press down and the door opens.

We both go check the room but there is no one in there and we were both watching so no one could have opened it. That room also had the TV turn on and off, the light turn on and off and the call bell go off - it normally stopped for a bit if you went it and told it to stop it!

2. We had a poorly man in the non creepy side room, he unfortunately passed away about 15mins into my shift.

Once he had left the room we admitted another very sick lady into the room whose family were travelling to get to her. It was an all female team on and the SHO and Reg that attended were male but young.

Thankfully with treatment she turned a corner and by the early evening she was sat up in the bed and chatting.

I was taking her observations and she said to me - please say thank you to the man who sat with me when I was admitted as I was scared and he really helped reassure me - I know no one sat with her as I was her named nurse and had been in and out of the room all afternoon.

I asked her to describe the man and she perfectly described the older gentleman who passed away earlier that day - even down to his facial hair and glasses!

I have another great story but will post in the comments if anyone is interested!
 
I've mentioned the following on another thread - but worth repeating here:

I've somewhat lost my wind with Danny Robins and Uncanny. I'm probably being unfair, but the project feels a little mechanical now, a bit of a fable factory. But maybe this process is somewhat inevitable when a thing becomes a thing. Like I say, I may well be being unfair - and maybe I'll think differently again if I revisit somewhere later down the line.

Anyway, I hanker somewhat for the very early days, when it was still fresh and new, and before Uncanny was even Uncanny - the earliest of those days being the Robins podcast, Haunted. (Haunted was basically the same in style and format - before it was taken up by the BBC an relabelled as Uncanny).

Here follows a story from the old Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia (now no more) - the final two episodes of that older podcast:

The Night Shift: 1.

The Night Shift: 2.

Well worth a listen.

(Although it has nothing to do with hospitals, I feel I've also got to dish out some props to the episode The Thing in the Attic. Which manages to be both utterly bonkers, and somehow terrifying.)
 
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