Five Haunted Hospitals

Kyle Harris

Hospitals and mental institutions bear witness to endless trauma. As sterile as these spaces seem, the screams of the sick, the tears of the grieving, and the last breaths of the dying echo on decade after decade. For brave souls looking to lift the veil between this world and the other, Colorado has dozens of known haunted medical sites. These five are some of the state’s most notorious.

Rock Ledge Ranch

The good news about the bacterial infection tuberculosis is that only 1 in 10 people who contract the illness show symptoms. But for that unlucky 10 percent, the symptoms are maddening. The victim begins to cough blood, shed weight, panic from night terrors, and soak the bed with sweat. Fifty percent of untreated patients die, and treatment often fails.

In the late 1800s, the Rock Ledge Ranch in Colorado Springs housed tuberculosis patients, and their souls linger on. In the basement, a rocking chair rocks on its own. Lights turn on and off without human touch. Footsteps sound throughout the building, even when nobody’s there.

Aurora Fitzsimons

During World War I, the army brought soldiers to the Fitzsimons Army Hospital, to help them heal from mustard gas attacks. There, soldiers suffered and died, skin blistered, eyes burned, lungs failed.

Now, the glass and chrome Anschutz Medical Center occupies the site. Some say the haunting cries of the dead still fill the buildings, the ghosts of soldiers wander the hallways, and objects crash to the ground when nothing touches them.

Old LoganCounty Hospital

At the abandoned Old Logan County Hospital, a little boy named Sterling has lived there a long, long time. Only, he’s not alive. He tugs the shirts of unsuspecting wanderers who stumble into the building and wreaks havoc on the electrical system, even though it’s been defunct for years.

The Northeast Colorado Health Department shuttered the building two days before a local theater group planned to turn it into a haunted house. The NCHD cited environmental contaminants, but others say the greater threats were the paranormal phenomenon littering the building.

Miramont Castle

Haunted by life, a nun at the Miramont Castle tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other to a radiator and threw herself out the window of the castle’s solarium; at least, that’s what some staffers think. Now, her headless ghost wanders the labyrinthine hallways alongside several other apparitions: a Victorian girl holding a doll, a couple, hand in hand for eternity, and a little boy and his stepfather, too.

Ridge Home

In our world of big box stores and fast food chains, concrete parking lots have been built on haunted ground, and Super Target in Arvada is no exception. It was built over the former site of Ridge Home, a “State Home and Training School for mental defectives.” Rumor has it that before the facility closed, orderlies beat and restrained patients, incapacitated them with drugs, and let them fester in their own waste for days. Their ghosts cried out until the building was demolished in 2007; their spirits may still be seen at the Super Target today.

Check out our other Halloween stories from this issue:

• Colorado’s Ghost Towns
• Ouija, Is Anyone Here?
• Five Haunted Hospitals
• Messages from Beyond the Grave
• Netflix Instant Screaming
• The Stanley Hotel: Colorado’s Premiere Spooky Destination
• Oh, Blucifer
• First stop for UFOs: the Watchtower in Hooper
• The Ghosts of Cheesman Park
• Scientology is Scary [Opinion]
• Halloween Hitmakers
• En Garde