Eloise - Spirits Remain

Iam telling this story from my own experience, as a sort of fare-thee-well to all of the spirits that comforted my friends and I during many dark nights in an abandoned asylum. It is true, it is long, please bear with me.

It started as a sort of test between my four closest friends and I. Who wouldn't have been afraid to enter the dark, hulking remains of what once housed innumerable insane patients? The large, many winged hospital had once been a part of an actual city made up strictly for the mentally ill. There was a piggery and cannery opposite the large building and many of the small cottages and homes of the doctors and janitors could still be seen for some miles, though most were torn down.

On this cool November night we were giddy with anticipation as we sat in the car across the street from the fenced in hospital. There were five, myself, Raven, Timmy, Bob and Will. Will and I exited the car and moved the seats forward to let the others out. We went single file up to the break in the weed covered fence and that's where the real world seemed to give way to the supernatural.

There was a feeling you got passing other small buildings on the way to the larger, more enticing Hospital. One of these buildings was once a school/day care on the left. It's bulk loomed eerily quiet.

Once inside the building we all seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. It seemed that though the stories we had heard had been of a horrific type, the feeling of the building itself was non threatening.

Directly in front of the door we entered from were two sets of stairs one to the left going up and one forward going down. We soon found the morgue in the trashed and paper strewn basement, complete with autopsy table and sliding drawers. It was this table that drew us back long after that night upon the knowledge that the building was being torn down.

The males entered the building to get the table on this last night. Will, thinking it would be nice to recover it and use it in his business as he was a tattooist. Raven and I stood outside, smoking and keeping watch for cops and other teenagers. The building loomed three stories on both sides and to the left, and behind us stood what we had assumed to be the Gymnasium due to it's size and shape. It was a full two stories taller than the rest of the buildings and had three tall windows facing us. Raven and I discussed how much we would miss the building and the sense of security we had always had there. Whatever spirits were there had decided to like us and we had never been harmed or scared in any way.

Suddenly the door at the end of the building to our left crashed open and shut. Keep in mind these doors were designed to keep people IN, they had no windows and were about 3 inches thick, made up of steel all the way through. At first we thought it was the guys bringing the table out a different way. But we snuck to the first door which was directly in front of us and called to them, they were still trying to manoeuvre it.

We looked at each other for a second and went back to our discussion. I then felt as if I were being watched from one of the now demolished windows of the gymnasium. Looking over my shoulder I saw a fleeting glimpse of darker shadow, as if someone had been watching and ducked. Before I could ask Raven about it I glanced up to the third story window directly above our heads and I got a vision of a woman, leaning on the window sill, arms crossed, staring at us through the wire mesh grating. I waved, but it was gone. I said nothing to Raven as the guys had come stumbling out with their table.

We finally got it back to the car and in the trunk when I decided to tell about my vision. Suddenly everyone started to speak at once. We had all seen the same thing. The guys had been just emerging through the steel door way when they had seen the woman too. We all agreed that she looked sad and we thought that she had been saying good bye.

All of us had sensed a terrible sadness in the building where people were once tortured and beaten and locked up against their will and similarly experienced a sense of gratitude from them that we should be so interested in them and learning their history. We loved them, all the spirits that roamed the dark corridors of Eloise. And we miss them still. The building is gone and now is a golf course from which we have been escorted, because it is privately owned. I wanted to say good bye to the spirits that had always kept us safe in those ramshackle buildings, but I guess we will have to settle for accepting the woman's last good bye.

We still think about you guys, you poor tortured souls.

Thank you!