The Ideal Place for a Haunting
Tuesday September 25, 2007 8:47 AM
You can't ask much more from a haunted location than an abandoned former psychiatric hospital built right on top of a Confederate cemetery. Jefferson Davis Hospital was built in Houston, Texas in 1924, despite the objections of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who wanted the Confederate cemetery to remain undisturbed. To appease the Daughters, the hospital was named for the former president of the Confederacy, and the hospital's basement was built aboveground to minimize damage to the graves. But Jefferson Davis Hospital was only a hospital for 14 years; when a newer hospital was built in 1937, the old building fell into disrepair. Over the years it served as a juvenile detention center, a psychiatric ward, a VD clinic and a medical records storage facility. Eventually, it was abandoned.
In 1986, the Houston Fire Department was doing excavations at their maintenance facility next to the hospital. The maintenance facility had been built atop the same Confederate cemetery as the hospital, but the excavations uncovered more than just Confederate soldiers. Apparently that cemetery was built on top of another cemetery, this one from the 1600s. Archaeologists found dozens of bodies wrapped in shrouds and oriented east to west. This burial style had been mandated by the City of London in 1563, and was designed to prevent the spread of disease.
That an abandoned psychiatric ward built atop two cemeteries is rumored to be haunted should come as no surprise. The hospital building — windowless, dilapidated, and covered in graffiti — has played host to many ghost-hunters, who report seeing dark red stains on the walls and an empty cradle rocking by itself, and hearing sounds of footsteps and slamming doors. Photographers experience odd shapes in their photos and curious malfunctions of their camera equipment, and one person I know claims that strange things happened in his apartment after he visited the site.
The Jefferson Davis Hospital building was recently renovated and turned into artist lofts, but some of the building's new residents have left, saying that the building and its management do not foster creativity. It's a fitting outcome for a building with such a storied past.
