According to history and written sources, this facility once operated as a private school for girls. But for most of its existence, this campus in Maysville, Kentucky, has been a hospital. Now abandoned by the living, there are many who believe that the spirits of some former staff and patients remain.
The odyssey begins in the 1800s with a lady named Mrs. May Pearl Wilson who ran the first hospital built on the site, the Wilson Infirmary. After her death in 1908, the hospital was demolished, and a new building erected. Initially serving as a school for girls under the name of Hayswood Seminary, it wasn’t long before the place was once again used as a hospital, known as Hayswood Hospital.
Samuel Hannaford, the man who built the Hoffner Masonic Lodge among other notable buildings, was commissioned to design a new hospital on the campus. The new three story structure was completed in 1925.
But time showed that the hospital needed more space and so an another story was added, and in 1971 further additions were made. Hayswood Hospital now had 87 patient beds which was plenty enough to serve the community of Maysville.
But as the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge officially opened for traffic, the population to be served by the Hayswood Hospital grew even more. This bridge allowed the crossing of the Ohio River and a connection between Maysville in Kentucky and Aberdeen in Ohio. And so some of the residents from Ohio came to this hospital to receive their treatment. Hayswood Hospital did its job so well that it received a lot of awards from various national accreditation groups.
Even the military, particularly the United States Navy, used this institution to treat servicemen suffering after the assault of the Japanese Navy Air Service upon Pearl Harbor.
However, technological progress in the medical field and a growing city meant that the healthcare facilities at Hayswood hospital began to fall behind those of other, more modern hospitals. There was just no room for expansion of the building.
This small hospital tried to keep up with the big boys, but it just wasn’t enough. Even nature played a major role in the closure of this place when an earthquake close to the City of Maysville shook the foundations of the hospital.
Construction of a brand new hospital was deemed to be the only solution. The Meadowview Regional Medical Center opened on the outskirts of the city and Hayswood Hospital was closed down in 1983.
And then something else began to happen. According to some accounts, strange lights and noises started to appear. People felt uneasy as if someone was watching them and it is said that the sounds of crying babies and disembodied voices can be heard from the empty hospital.
There is even a viral video online that seems to show a creepy and ghostly face watching down from the window. Once the camera turns and tries to zoom this entity, it disappears completely.
It is a place of choice for some ghost hunters and all sorts of explorers. The stories range from a woman holding her baby as she walks down the hallway of the maternity ward, to the ghosts of those who died in this hospital and now are unable to move on.
The most creepy of all the shadows and ghouls and ghosts is the entity the looms on the third floor. Taller than a grown man, and most definitely given its size, stronger than one. It stands quietly with its face (or something similar to it) pressed up against the corner window watching over the front yard of the hospital.
People who report having seen this entity also say that before the encounter itself, they feel as if someone (or something) reached and called out to them. What is going on with this place is still a mystery, and many say it remains trapped between two worlds, ours and theirs.