Articles...
This is the first submission from Rich, one of the more tenured members of our team. Not being a native Minnesotan, he had a rude awakening when it came to "Minnesota Ghosts".
My Introduction to Minnesota Ghosts
By Richard Demo
When I first moved to Minnesota I worked as a mental health counselor at a group home in North East Minnesota. Coming from the Chicago area I experience a total culture shock and never really did meet anyone up there that I could identify with. Just a lot of acquaintances that seemed to have nothing in common aside from a few DUI's so it's not surprise I got really involved in my work. I would work for 25 shifts in a row just so I had something to do. Most of those shifts were midnights.
The building I worked in was (supposedly) the first hospital on the western end of the Iron Range. It was the kind of hospital that had doctor’s quarters on one half the house with the other side as the care facility. Of course places like these in small towns are going to get the typical "haunted" tag branded to it. Just par for the course in small town Minnesota.
The place was very non-threatening except for the basement. Like most basements, it was damp, dark and creepy. You could hear everything that was going on in the house at any given moment. The best part about that basement was the morgue, which was used as a dry storage area. It was perfect temperature and humidity to keep things of that sort down there. There weren't any tables that went into the wall or anything like you'd see in a modern morgue. You almost couldn't stand up in the place. It did have a tilted floor. One could only imagine what that was used for.
Throughout my time there I had several experiences that were just too strange to claim as tricks of the mind or a play in imagination.
One of my duties on the night shift was to do the laundry. Most of the time I had someone working with me and one night my co-worker and I were in the basement, folding towels. The laundry room was at the bottom of the concrete steps. While in there, I saw someone walk across the doorway toward the morgue. This was a locked area of the house that you needed two different keys to access so I know it wasn't a resident. For as fast as it happened, I know for a fact that the person who was down there with us was wearing a flannel shirt. There was no mistaking that.
I was shocked at first and since I was new to the town and the job, I didn't want to label myself as a flake already so I decided not to say anything to my co-worker. About 5 minutes passed and we were done with the basement duties for the night and the co-worker turned to me with a half smile and asked, "Did you see him?” I was shocked. I replied that I had seen him and nothing more was said about it.
Other nights I would work alone. It wasn't a hard shift and sometimes the biggest decision I had to make was which movie to watch. It was around 4am and everyone was sleeping so I was watching some late night cable (the best cable). I was sitting in the activity room that had two French doors that opened to the main hallway and common area. I kept hearing something in the hallway and I've seen enough horror movies to know that you don't investigate those things alone. When I finally calmed myself down the same man in the same clothes walked down the hallway moving past the French doors. He looked solid but as if there was a "milky" aura to him. He walked by and never looked at me. That's when I locked myself in the medication office until the next shift came in. Being new still, I decided not to share this experience with anyone there.
As time went on, I graduated to working the afternoon shift. This was a very active time so I never noticed if anything strange was happening because I had a house full of people to care for and only wanted to deal with the ghosts if they were going to help with dishes. Then winter came and money got tight so yet again, I had to start working midnights. I agreed to do them as long as there was someone in the house with me. I think I made up something about if there was an emergency I'd need a second hand. In reality, I didn't want to come face to face with someone I didn't want to meet.
Everything was good until one very cold northern Minnesota night. The temp that night was one of the coldest I had ever experienced at that point and I think it bottomed out at around -45. At around 3AM the fire alarm went off. Having practiced fire drills with the residents, we had everyone outside in less than 4 minutes and were quickly doing a run through to see if anyone was in the house still and if there was in fact a fire. We found neither and deemed the house safe for everyone to come back in. About an hour later, the same thing happened and since some of theresidents hadn't fallen asleep from the last interruption the house was cleared in record time.
I wanted to do a quick run though since it was so cold outside and need to get people back in the warmth. As I was looking through the section of the house known as the doctor’s quarters the alarm came on again then shut itself off. Then from behind I heard the most evil laugh. It came from over my shoulder in the dark corner of the dining room. It scared me to the point that I tasted copper. It was the kind of fright that hurt even only for a split second, it was severe.
That's when I decided to start looking for another place to work.
I've heard stories about the history but there were never any kind of actual facts to back it up. One of the stories was that there was a major mine disaster and that hospital was where they treated most of the men and stored the bodies. It was reported that they had to stack the bodies in the basement because the morgue was so small. I never did find out if that was true or not but that was my introduction to Minnesota Ghosts.
Richard Demo