Many thanks to Gay Baldwin for his next instalment of ghostly goings on in Ventnor. Ed
For almost a century, the Royal National Hospital at Ventnor was at the forefront of the fight against the highly infectious disease, tuberculosis.
More than 100,000 patients were treated there. Many were cured. Others weren’t so fortunate. Much pioneering and experimental surgery was carried out in the operating theatre, but until the discovery of new and effective drugs, consumption was a highly infectious killer disease.
When the last patient left in May 1964, the hospital doors were ceremonially locked. Five years later, the eleven blocks of balconied cottages, which stretched for almost half-a-mile, were demolished, and like a phoenix from the ashes, the Ventnor Botanic Gardens rose from the ruins.
But the old hospital did not give in gracefully. Its death throes brought ghost hunters and psychic investigators from all over the world. The hospital was haunted.
Psychic activity was centred very strongly around the old operating theatre. Virtually the last part of the building to be torn down, it resisted all efforts at demolition by mechanical means. Four tractors, excavators and a ball crane were wrecked in the attempt. The operating theatre was left standing while the rest of the hospital was reduced to rubble.
Roy Dore, of St Lawrence, was curator at the time of the demolition in 1969, and worked for the former Ventnor Urban District Council which bought the 33-acre site from the Ministry of Health. He recalls what a headache the operating theatre caused for Gosport demolition contractors, Treloar and Sons. “They tried to knock it down with a crane and ball, but the steel cable snapped. Then they brought in a large tracked tractor. Three huge pieces of masonry fell on it, crushing the cab, smashing the transmission and breaking the steel tracks.
“A small caterpillar tractor with a steel hawser was used to pull the walls down, but the hook and cable attachment on the back snapped right off. Another caterpillar tractor became entangled with the broken cable from the first attempt, and at that point, they gave up.”
Long after the rest of the hospital was just a pile of bricks, the empty operating theatre held out. Ether could still be smelled and Roy was among those who noticed it. Workmen talked openly of ghosts. Two men told to demolish the operating theatre with sledgehammers, were confronted by a ghostly figure standing in a doorway.
Moaning, Weeping and Groaning
A young ghost girl looking very pale and ill, with deep sunken eyes, often appeared to keep watch on workmen as they dismantled the old hospital. John Slade of Cowes remembers her well.
Then a lad of 16, he did demolition and salvage work at the site. It was a job he will never forget. Workmen do not frighten easily, but those men at Ventnor Hospital always left the site well before darkness fell. Nearby, residents complained constantly – not about the noise and dust from the demolition – but about the moaning, weeping and groaning coming from the empty hospital buildings at night.
Grey misty shapes were seen flitting about the ruins like wisps of cloud, and the temperature around the old operating theatre always felt several degrees colder than the rest of the site. After the theatre had defied all efforts at demolition by mechanical means, John was one of those sent in with sledgehammers to finish the job by hand. “I always felt there was something very wrong there. It was like we were being watched all the time. You could be running with sweat but still feel icy cold. It was a bad place and even after it was pulled down and levelled, nothing would grow there, no weeds, no grass, and it still felt cold.
“That operating theatre was the coldest place I have ever worked in. It was also the hardest to knock down. I don’t know why, because it was built the same as the rest. It just didn’t seem to want to go.”
John often saw the ghost girl standing in the corner of a ward adjoining the theatre. She was about ten years old and four feet tall. Her face and features were solid; the rest of her misty. She would appear in the early mornings or late afternoons and stand there in the ruined, roofless building, staring at the workmen. Then she would vanish.
Ghost Hunters Arrive
Finally, the site was levelled and a car park built over the top. But weird things continued to happen. A council surveyor peering through his theodolite, saw the ghosts of two Victorian nurses pass in front of the instrument.
The former hospital became a magnet for ghost hunters and students of the supernatural who came from all over the world to try to discover its secret. News of the hauntings even reached American comedian Dick Van Dyke, who was so intrigued by the stories that he had several lengthy transatlantic telephone talks with Roy Dore about the happenings there, and featured them on his popular TV talk show in the States.
Despite a service of exorcism by local clergy, ghosts continued to make their presence felt. A four-inch thick, armour-plated power cable buried in a trench running across the operating theatre site suddenly stopped functioning, cutting off power to the Garden Tavern. When the trench was opened up, electricity board workers found the thick cable had been neatly chopped into 2ft 6in lengths. How it was done and by whom was never discovered. Meanwhile, one of the engineers replacing the cable suffered a nasty shock – but not from any electrical source.
While using the nearby toilets, situated in a block converted from the hospital shop, he glanced up to see a ghost sitting on top of the toilet door, watching him. “He came flying out of there with his trousers undone, jumped into his van and left. He never came back,” recalled Roy with a grin.
With the car park surfaced over, few visitors now realise there was ever a hospital on the site. But that old operating theatre still exerts a malign and disturbing influence. Some dogs grow agitated refusing to walk across that area of the car park, and an unusually high number of accidents happen there. “If a kiddie falls down and cuts a knee, or someone trips and sprains an ankle, it will always be in that area,” said Roy. “It’s uncanny.”
Copyright Gay Baldwin. Not to be reproduced without permission.
