Christian Church Hospital – Kansas City
Anyone who comes close to the hospital immediately feels the sorrow, the loss, and the sense of death from the many spirits who still inhabit its crumbling façade. Any digital camera that takes a picture at any time can catch hundreds or even thousands of orbs that swirl around the exterior. Pictures taken at dusk reveal even more strange and sinister shapes and shadows in its windows. The ghost of Dr. Patterson can sometimes be seen in the windows of the staff offices. Some said it was a bad choice to open the hospital on October 31, 1914, but to the serving veterans and poor alike, it became well-known for its exceptional healthcare. It was so well-known that hundreds of citizens flocked to its corridors seeking cures during the 1919 flu pandemic. Unwilling to turn any away, the hospital took them all in. With little understanding of the flu virus, more died than survived. Then, in the years that followed, the hospital was sold to the federal government, then abandoned, and finally bought in 1927 by Dr. Robert Patterson, a European-trained and locally wellknown psychiatrist. Though trained in the most advanced theories of the day, methods of cures still included using chains, cages, wet sheets, beatings, and some say the worst of all, the ice pick method of frontal lobotomies for unruly and unresponsive patients. For 30 years, Patterson continued using these methods. In 1957, even though he was in fine health, Patterson suddenly went insane and after all attempts at trying to cure him failed, his own staff made him victim of his own method, the ice pick lobotomy. Patterson didn’t live long afterward, and shortly after his death, the building was again abandoned. The city stepped in, bought the hospital, and converted it to hold the criminally insane. For 20 more years, the city used the same methods that Patterson had used. Even though cruelly efficient at “cures,” the city decided it didn’t need the costly upkeep of the building and moved out of it in 1975. Thus it now stands crumbling and empty of the living. The marble exterior is slowly yielding to the elements, and its windows are empty of glass. But it hasn’t succumbed yet. The city finally sold the buildings to a private concern, and it is now surrounded by a fence, as steps are being taken to turn the main hospital into retirement apartments. Progress seems to be very slow,because no one wants to keep working in its haunted corridors. With doors opening and closing, unknown sounds, and tools being moved and thrown at workers, it may be quite a while before the hospital is redone.
Written by — Tim and Sueanne Pool Kansas City Ghost Hunters
CHRISTIAN CHURCH HOSPITAL
2697 WEST PASEO BOULEVARD WEST PASEO AND 27TH STREET
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI 64108
Taken from the: Encyclopedia of Haunted Places -Ghostly Locales from around the World – Compiled & Edited by Jeff Belanger – Copyright 2005 by Jeff Belanger
