35. The Old Psych Hospital

I worked overnight security in one of the largest, best, and oldest hospitals in the US. My fellow security officers and I all have stories about one building in particular, but the one that I’ll tell is the one that happened to me.

The Backstory: This hospital was built in the late 1800’s and it was the original psychiatric building for this hospital. Now, being the late 1800’s, not much was truly known about psychiatric disorders. On top of that, this hospital was known for its medical research. With both of those facts combined, you can infer that some terrible shit was done to these misunderstood psych patients in this building. A couple years before I started working security there, this building had been converted into offices after the newly built part of the hospital dedicated a section for an updated psych ward.

My story: My rounds for that night happened to include said building. At night this building was empty, due to recently being converted into offices and the drones who worked there wanting to leave promptly at 1700,if not earlier. In some of their haste, they left their office doors unlocked, which is a big no no due to medical information being located in their offices. It was our duty to go to each floor, and make sure every door was locked, and if it wasn’t, to secure it ourselves.

I did my initial sweep of the building to make sure it was clear (nobody in the building), and proceeded to do my door checks. The hallways were pretty narrow, so I could check both sides of the hallway’s doors at once. At the end of this hallway there was two sets of doors you had to go through to reach the final office, which was a dead end. Everything was secure. Awesome. Time for the next floor.

I exited the two sets of doors from the dead end office and stood absolution frozen from what I saw.

Every door ajar. Set perfectly so their own weight wouldn’t cause them to shut again. And one wheelchair, at the end of said hallway, facing towards the steps.

I had heard other security officers outright reject that set of rounds due to strange stuff happening there, but I laughed it off until that night happened. Never took those rounds again.

Second story: The old children’s ICU is currently under construction to be turned into medical labs, so we have to patrol the area. Once again to make sure the area is secure, or to report if the contractor / foreman stayed to plan for the next day.

When patrolling this area, several security officers have reported seeing a single white male child around the age of 5-7 with short brown hair (think 90’s bowl cut). I personally dismissed this (this was before the psych ward incident) as a tall tale told with the intent to scare me because I was new at the time.

I got that buildings patrol one night, and a foreman who stayed late called security and asked for a security officer to come up ‘because a kid locked himself in a room, and I don’t want him to get hurt with all the open wires in there.’ Or something to that effect.

I unlocked the door for him. Looked in what could only be a 10 x 8 room for about 10 min. No kid. Called it in as a false alarm, and finished my patrol.

Third Story: Had a special detail (aka babysitting) a violent psych patient, along with another security officer. He woke up in the middle of the night, recognized the other officer, and said hello.

He sees me and immediately starts screaming at me not to hurt him. Now, I’m a rather large gentleman (at 6’2 and 250 lbs), but I try not to make myself too intimidating around psych patients as to not escalate the situation.

Well, he keeps screaming for me not to hurt him, and he says if I promise not to, he would make something good happen for me. I promise, he calms down, goes back to sleep, and I forget about it.

Next day I got a permanent set of rounds and a pretty good promotion. Easily a coincidence, but interesting nonetheless.

Fourth Story: Fellow security officer had rounds in the aforementioned psych building. Heard a call on the radio, in what could only be described as dry throat terror voice, for one officer for back up. I was close so I responded to his call letting him know I was on the way.

When I got there he had his head between his knees, and was silently crying with a shattered chandelier a couple feet next to him.

Now, before I had experienced the abnormal happenings in this building, I would have written off his testimony off as idiocy. But he claimed that something held him in that spot as the chandelier started swinging wildly until it started to fall. When it started to fall he was ‘let go’ and allowed to move, and scrambled out of the way before it hit him.

Got him up, calmed him down, and took him back to the supervisor. She yelled to one of our other supervisors ‘almost lost another one in [insert building name here]!’ The other supervisor laughed and said ‘Why do you think we send the new guys! Haha, you know I don’t even like going over there!’

That guy is my roommate and hates when I bring up that experience.