Haunted Hospitals (2018) s01e02 Episode Script

1 - The best part of my job was being able to love people.
Hi! I'm Meighan.
- Don't touch me, you bitch.
- The secretary said: "Judith, we've got a problem.
" - It's something I'll never forget.
A face as white as death.
It just terrified me.
- Without a doubt, the place is haunted.
- It scares the ---- out of you.
- It scared the ---- out of me.
- Aaaaah! - The devil was in that room.
- Burn in hell! (ominous music) (musical theme) - (narrator): Senior nurse Judith Whalley excels at maintaining order and has for more than four decades.
- I have worked all over England.
In the city of Liverpool, I've worked out in the country in Yorkshire Dales.
And then, I arrived in Birmingham and stayed there and I worked in the same hospital from 1977 until 2010.
Nursing requires a great deal of empathy and sympathy.
I suppose what's important about nursing to me is the ability to interact with people, to make them better.
- Judith is hands on.
No detail slips passed her.
- I was working in management, so I was walking around the hospital a lot.
I mean, I patrolled the whole hospital at least three times a day.
My responsibility was for making sure that both patients and staff were safe in every aspect of their work.
- Judith is prepared for every situation, except for the one she's about to encounter.
- I was up in the offices and the secretaries came up to see me and said: "Judith, we have a problem.
" "The office is really uncomfortable.
Somebody is moving our papers around every night.
" And so, they were really quite upset about it.
- Judith's colleague Emily finds the papers in the main filing room are also disturbed.
- I'm thinking maybe somebody's getting into the hospital? - Well, I mean, I did wonder if the cleaners we're doing it.
But actually the cleaners were going in first thing in the morning when the office staff were coming in and emptying all the bins from the day before.
So there had to be some other explanation.
- Many employees believe that this century-old hospital is haunted.
(shrieking) - It maybe that these are the spirit entities just trying to make their presence known.
Are they doing it deliberately? We're not entirely sure.
- Judith, rational by necessity, remains open to the paranormal.
- I didn't disbelieve.
My first body, I saw before I was seven.
And that was my father.
And I actually, um saw him, about six weeks later, walk down the stairs and walk out of the house.
But I'd watched him die.
- With Judith back on a night shift, the door to the paranormal opens once more.
- Now they divided this ward in half.
So there was the half that I used and the half that was empty.
The thing was this, the empty half of the ward had the staff toilets, which was fine during the day but at night, very uncomfortable.
(creaking) It's very difficult to know, when you're walking through an open space, what catches your attention.
Cause you're just walking down with one thing in mind.
I didn't see anything.
I just felt something.
(ghastly shrieking) Out of the corner of my eye, something moved.
This was just a movement of some sort that I was seeing on the edge of my peripheral vision in a place that I knew was empty.
- When you have a large location such as this hospital, we could be dealing with numerous spirit entities.
And if you were to find yourself in the dark, it's an extremely creepy place to be.
- I understood why my staff were very uncomfortable.
(shrieking) - My assumption was that there was perhaps somebody there and when I turned to look, there wasn't anybody there.
I don't know who that person was, but I saw something.
- This is plainly some kind of entity that wants her gone from its turf.
It wants her out, it wants to be left alone and it's not shy about telling her that.
- How did that make you feel? - Kind of upset.
I could feel somebody who was quite close to me.
I couldn't see him, but I could feel something close to me.
- Judith and her staff continue to feel watched.
Especially Emily, who's about to start a night shift.
- The hospital changing rooms were in this large, open space that had a very high ceiling.
There was always different people making comments at different times about not liking being up there at night.
(distant banging) - A hospital is all of life in one very concentrated building.
People are dying and passing from this life into the next.
And that leaves behind a residue.
(ominous music) - Is somebody there? (banging) (ominous music) - She said the locker doors had been shut.
You know, they turn their back and the door gets shut.
(creaking) - Some spirits are notoriously territorial.
They can make their displeasure known and they can do it very aggressively if they so choose.
(banging) (panting) (whimpering) - (Judith): I wasn't running the wards, but I was visiting the wards so I was up there.
(panting) (indistinct speaking) What's wrong? - I feel like you just need to go and see it for yourself.
- I took their complaints very seriously.
OK, just calm down.
Calm down.
Can you get her a glass of water? I'm going to go and check.
They were very unhappy and very uncomfortable.
- You should just go and-- - I'll go and have a look.
And I needed to see if I could do something about it.
- Determined to protect her staff, Judith is about to uncover strange and terrifying secrets about her hospital.
- Something is terrifying Judith Whalley's staff.
And it's up to her to find out what.
- It's an old hospital.
People were up there late in the evening and really didn't like it very much.
I felt that I needed to go and find out for myself because if you are going to go and put forward a complaint, the first thing that somebody says is, "What have you done about it?" So I try and find out what the problem is.
And I didn't find anything.
(banging) - As we start to see an increase in paranormal phenomenas, it's just light phenomena.
Objects being thrown, things falling.
It may be that these are the spirit entities just trying to make their presence known.
"Hey, here I am, you can't see me, but I'm here.
" It's equally possible, though, that they are trying to warn the living residents that this isn't a place they should be.
- Whatever spirit continues to haunt this hospital is now Judith's primary concern.
It's very important that we keep our staff safe and they're not frightened either.
- But within days, Judith's colleague Emily is working alone in the filing room.
(electricity crackling) (ominous music) (screams) - The door had shut.
Nobody had been in and nobody had gone out because there was only her in there.
There was not a wind.
There was not a draft.
There wasn't a window open.
(ominous music) - Picture yourself out of the body, invisible, nobody can see you and everyday life is going on all around you.
Wouldn't you want to grab the closest person and say: "I'm still here"? - I just thought that there was obviously some spirit on the ward.
And at that point, that's when I went to find Sandrea.
(phone ringing) - Sandrea Moses, the hospital's ergonomics advisor, is Judith's long time coworker and confident.
(whispering) - I met Judith through my work and Judith had approached me and asked me if I would come and have a look at an area because of experiencing some very strange phenomenon and it was really beginning to spook them.
- So I took Sandrea and explained to her that the staff were really concerned and they felt that they were being watched all the time.
And they were quite frightened about it.
- Sandrea also believes that hospitals spawn supernatural activity.
- If you consider how many people die in a hospital in a day, in a week, there's a greater expectation that you're going to find ghosts.
- So you believe me? - I do.
I really do.
A hospital is steeped in history.
It's over 200 years old.
I was not surprised when Judy said that there were problems, so I was more than willing to go along and help Judith to try and find out what the problem was.
(ominous music) - Three days later, Judith and Sandrea unite to confront the spirit.
- We knew that we needed to go at the end of the working day when there weren't other people around who would be disturbed and it would be relatively quiet.
- Judith and Sandrea centred their efforts on the filing room.
- One end of it had been the matron's bedroom and sitting room and the offices where the problem arose had been the matron's uh, the matron's accommodation.
(sights) (ominous music) (whispering): Did you feel that? I'm cold.
- As soon as you walked in, there was a distinct drop in the temperature.
It was suddenly suddenly this feeling that really was quite cold in there.
- It's been theorized by some that this is the way in which spirit entities actually use the energy of our environment.
They leech the warmth out of the air, convert it into some other form of energy and use that to manifest paranormal phenomena.
- You can sense it, you can feel that there's a presence in here.
Something caught my eye.
(ominous music) And I sensed seeing something in there.
(whimpering) - So you thought the hospital was haunted? - Yes.
Haunted.
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
Without a doubt, the place is haunted.
- In order to defend their hospital, Judith and Sandrea confront an angry spirit.
(gasps) (ominous music) - I turned to Judith and I said: Can you sense something here? - I had a real feeling that there was somebody standing there besides me.
(distant shrieking) - I could see the outline of them.
I could see from the hair that they were female.
Judith didn't see it, but she could sense it.
- We're still not sure how people see ghosts or how they perceive ghosts.
There are many instances in which the person on the left might see an apparition, the person on the right might see nothing, which leads some investigators to speculate that we actually perceive them telepathically rather than see them with our own eyes.
- This lady, such a strong sense of power, and importance.
- If this thing is as powerful as Sandrea fears that it might be, the consequences could be terrible.
- And I begin to describe her Brown dress.
Neat.
Lace hat.
And Judith says to me - It's Anne Gibson.
(shrieking) (screaming) (rattling) - And as she said it, in a second, I turn round to her and I said - Miss Gibson to you! - Anne Gibson was the first lady superintendent, who was employed when this new piece of the hospital was built.
She would have never been anything but Miss Gibson to anybody.
And the fact that I called her by her Christian name, she was not happy about.
- Once I made the communication, once I established that mediumship link, we were having a three way conversation here.
- One of the bigger challenges is to figure out, why are they still haunting this location? Did they leave behind unfinished business when they died? Can something be done to help them move on? - How can we be of service? - Miss Gibson talked to Sandrea and explained that she was very unhappy about the mess.
- This mess! Mess! Mess! Mess! - All these papers.
Oh, all these papers.
Why are they here in my sitting room? - And I was just relaying this, because I didn't know anything about this person.
- So, I explained to her, in our current health service, that unfortunately, everything generated an awful lot of paperwork.
- This person was here with a purpose, who was very unhappy with the way our hospital was being run.
- I'll talk to them about that.
- Judith was placating her and it seemed to work really well.
Miss Gibson said what she wanted to say and she was quite happy to slip back out of our world and back into her own world once her voice had been heard.
- I believe that we gave her the opportunity to say what she thought and we tried to explain to her, so that she would be happy.
- With the spirit of Miss Gibson at rest, Judith has secured the safety of her staff.
- Did this experience bring you and Sandrea closer together? - We made friends before that, but yes, I believe it did, because we had you know, we had a mutual understanding that perhaps, other people that we worked with didn't have.
- The Ghost of Anne Gibson was never seen again.
- Anne Gibson was one of Florence Nightingale's young ladies.
She was one of the group of young women that she first trained as nurses.
A lot of the older nurses, particularly the nurses who nursed, if you like, in the turn of the century, nursing was their life and they very often died quite quickly after they retired.
We, hopefully, put it right, because after we talked to her, the movement stopped.
She stopped moving the papers around.
- Yes.
The medical secretaries promised to try to keep the area tidier and to try to not leave stuff cluttered all over the place.
And that was their promise.
- This experience, in a way, confirmed for me things that I had thought and felt, that people who are hanging around hospital, are sometimes, uh they might be the people with unfinished business.
But I also believe, and this confirmed it, they are the people for whom, that was their life.
And they don't they don't want to leave it.
(heavy breathing) (screaming) (birds chirping) (indistinct announcement over PA) - Meighan Gaubatz is at the top of her game and she enjoys every minute of her job.
- I was working at a skilled nursing facility, otherwise known as a nursing home in 2014, as the director of nursing.
I became a nurse because it comes natural to me to want to take care of people.
Being a really good nurse means humility.
It's the foundation of nursing.
We have to be humble.
- Meighan, hey.
- I think we have to speak everyone's language.
Everyone communicates differently.
- You sure this is what we want to do on this one? - Yeah.
Yeah, we need to definitely run that test.
What we did was we helped people get back on their feet after they had surgery, heart attacks, broken hips, that kind of thing.
The best part of my job was being able to love people.
But everyone, my staff, our patients and our residents' family members, every single person that I met, I got to love them in a different way.
So the facility was 160 beds.
We gave them physical therapy, nursing, IVs, that sort of thing.
- For those closer to the end, the facility offers hospice care.
- The hospice is patient driven care.
They decide that they're ready.
At that point, they say: "I'm no longer going "to pursue curative treatment.
I'm not going to do dialysis.
I'm not going to do heart surgery.
" And they focus on being comfortable instead of pursuing treatment.
- Both patients in Room 117 have terminated medical intervention.
- This patient was profoundly limited.
She was unable to hold her body up anymore.
She was nonverbal.
Hello, my dear.
One of the things that we do with Alzheimer's and dementia patients and people who are nonverbal and are not responding, to attempt stimulation is, we still treat them like they hear us.
We know that they do.
Are you comfortable? Of course, the patient is not going to respond.
You look very beautiful.
What was strange was, that it was her roommate who responded for her.
- Thanks.
She thinks you look beautiful too.
- The roommate responded by saying: "Thank you.
She thinks you're beautiful, too.
" And it was in a very sing-songy, almost mocking tone, which I ignored, and continued to focus on the patient.
- In the beginning was the word.
And the word was with God.
- She recited the book of John.
The very beginning of John 1.
I know that as a nurse, it's very common when you have psychiatric disorders for people to have a religious fixation.
It was very startling and unexpected, for this patient to be able to, suddenly, do what she did in my presence.
The patient had had a profound traumatic brain injury.
She didn't have the attention span to focus on reciting the Bible or memorizing it.
I continued to assess my patient and talk to her and just, you know, use therapeutic touch, to try to interact with her.
(ominous music) The roommate was escalating.
This was something that was completely unexplainable.
(distorted whispering) - (distorted voice): The word was with God.
The word was God.
- When my patient's roommate's voice changed, it - It scared the ---- out you.
- It scared the ---- out of me.
- Nurse Meighan Gaubatz's can't explain the abilities her brain damaged patient has suddenly gained .
- She was acting very strange.
She had an instant change to her voice.
It sounded more male and it was also much more insistent and aggressive.
I've got the two different sides of me arguing.
My intuition says, "Run! This is not good.
" But I'm not gonna jump up and leave because I'm scared or because there's something crazy going on.
I'm gonna stay with the patient and keep her safe and do my job.
- The light shines in the darkness.
The darkness does not overcome it.
- I was definitely freaked out.
I thought to myself: Am I in a horror movie? (ominous music) - Are you a prophet? Are you a prophet? - Someone with a cognitive impairment may be able to speak and they read the Bible a lot, they may have that stored in their brain.
In other cases, where the individual may not have been very religious, or very close to their religion, and they can do that, that could be an indication of a demonic possession.
It's mocking God.
- There was fear in this moment.
The whole time she's very aware of me.
She's watching me intently.
Her eyes are not moving from me.
- Are you a prophet? No! You are not! No! You are not! - That's when my fight or flight instinct kicked in.
As a human being, you get to a point where you say, "OK.
I'm not safe.
I gotta go.
" - If there is something demonic involved, it may not give itself away right away.
In other words, it may not speak in tongues or it may not, you know, change the facial features of the individual that's possessed.
It may be much more subtle.
- At the end of her shift, Meighan remains disturbed.
The next day, Meighan attempts to go about her job as if nothing has happened.
- I was methodically going from room to room, administering medications to our patients for the evening and I came to this particular patient who we had admitted the night prior.
So, I had never seen this patient before in my life.
I had no idea who they were.
They were brand new to me.
Immediately when I came into the room, it felt heavy and thick.
Something changed, as soon as I set foot over the threshold.
Something just wasn't right.
Hello there! Hi, I'm Meighan.
I'm Meighan.
I wanna - Don't touch me, you bitch! (distorted): Come any closer and I'll kill you! - I absolutely know that hospitals and other medical facilities, nursing homes, anywhere that there are strong emotions, where seasons pass from life to death, that they are much more susceptible to paranormal activity.
And I've seen that.
The evidence is anecdotal, but I've seen it over and over again.
As she stood up, she was very deliberate in her movements.
One of my major concerns was that I was going to get hurt.
I don't know this patient.
She may be aggressive.
She may even attack me.
So, these are all concerns.
I realized that I was definitely in danger.
I felt threatened and I ran the hell out of there.
- Remaining professional, Meighan is nonetheless shaken by the experience.
- I went to the nurse's station, and I asked for the charge nurse to find out what the history was on my patient.
- Meighan seeks answers at the nurse's station.
She describes the disturbing incident to a unit manager.
- I told him: Listen, the patient got up out of her wheelchair.
She was staring at me very intently.
And she would not take her eyes off me.
- That's not possible for her to get up or walk.
Didn't you read her admission report? - He verbalized: "Are you sure? Because you don't just start walking if you've been paraplegic for 30 years.
" - All I know is she stood up.
I swear it.
When you are in a motor vehicle accident and your spinal cord is severed rendering you unable to use any of your limbs from the waist down.
It didn't make any sense that that woman was able to do what she did.
- Meighan knows what she saw, but must return to the patient.
(screaming) (shrieking) - She backed herself up against the wall.
With her eyes fixed on me.
(indistinct yelling) - For this woman to just who's a paraplegic, to suddenly be able to stand up, that's not something that's medically possible.
This is someone who, potentially, really is possessed by something.
It's mocking God, by saying, "See, I can make the crippled walk too.
" (screaming) - It felt like her gaze was coming from somewhere else.
It was very piercing.
She was full of rage and full of hate.
There's something evil in this room.
Something malevolent.
I do believe in the devil.
What I learned from Bible college is that demonic possession, when it does happen, can be very dramatic, and it can manifest very suddenly, without warning.
My focus is not looking for demons in people, it's that when I encounter them, I have to take it seriously.
It was at this point that I did think to myself that, "This woman has a demon in her.
" (screaming) "This woman is possessed.
" The devil was in that room.
He was in this patient.
It's OK.
(growling) I needed help.
I couldn't take care of her by myself because of the risk that I'd be hurt or somebody else would be hurt.
I went to get one of my unit managers.
Not all people who believe the way that we do necessarily believe in demonic possession but I knew that he did.
- Come on.
- There was not an idea that I needed to get in there and exercise demons the way that people think of exorcism.
However, I do have the authority to tell them what to do, so we did need to go in there and pray and let them know, we know you're here and you don't have the permission to do this.
(ominous music) - She doesn't look possessed to me.
- Talk.
- Burn in hell! - Are you a prophet? - Meighan Gaubatz has witnessed demonic possessions and must now confront the devil.
- Burn in hell! (distorted shrieking) - I knew that whatever it was, meant to do me harm.
I could see in her eyes that she hated me.
- Burn in hell! - That she wanted to hurt me.
(screaming) - I know who you are, and you're not allowed to come here.
- When you're dealing with exorcism, with demonic cases, it's a battle of faith.
The exorcist is not doing anything.
This is something a lot of people don't understand.
God is channeling his power through them because of their faith in him.
It's not the individual that's doing it, it's God that's doing it.
It comes down to a battle between good and evil.
- You are not allowed to confuse the mind of this patient.
Otherwise you will be severely punished by the holy spirit of God.
I reminded the demon that, in the name of Jesus, it had no power, authority, or control in this building, or over anyone in it.
(growling) - The demon's will is strong.
But Meighan's faith is stronger.
- I knew that my prayers were effective because I could see the patient did not attempt to move.
She wasn't attempting to get away from me.
She was staying still and doing what I told her to do.
She didn't speak a word after that to anyone and she did not put one finger on anyone.
- Free from possession, the patient finally finds peace.
- When someone is finally relieved of their possession through an exorcism, it really comes down to the demon has had enough, it's giving up.
It's releasing the individual.
By the faith of God, it's being driven out.
- A few days later, the patient's family takes her out of care and into their home.
She spends her final days surrounded by loved ones.
- I didn't see any point in telling the patient's family that this event had occurred, because I didn't have a way to explain it scientifically or biologically and there's no point in upsetting them.
I was very relieved that she was gone.
(growling) - Meighan Gaubatz fought the devil and won But Meighan and her colleague know the devil never stays down for long.
- March, 1999, a hospital, southern Germany.
36-year-old Nicole Kobrowski is experiencing excruciating pain.
- The pain in my back went all across the back and it radiated across the front of my abdomen and it was just excruciating to the point where I would double over.
- Nicole recently immigrated to Germany in order to get married.
- The language barrier that I had in the hospital was a huge problem.
I spoke some German, but not enough medical German to be effective.
From the outside, it's this hospital.
It didn't look completely menacing, but once you got inside and you saw the dark corridors and the very little light that came in, it was pretty creepy.
- Nicole is diagnosed with kidney stones.
She requires emergency surgery.
- I was in severe pain, worse than labor.
The intent was for me to have the kidney stones removed via lithotripsy.
They told me that they would be scheduling me for surgery and that's all.
I was very unsettled.
It took me a while to get to sleep but when I did I had this horrifying nightmare.
I could see myself being wheeled into this room.
(ominous music) (screaming) That someone had taken my kidney out and left me on ice.
- Our subconscious is what's in control when we're dreaming and in our dream state, we are much more open to spirits.
(gasps) (panting) - When I woke up, the first thing I did was check to see if my kidney was still there and luckily, it and everything else was still attached.
But I was still extremely uneasy.
I closed my eyes and and tried to get back to sleep but I couldn't.
So I sat up in bed.
When the lights flickered, it was extremely odd.
The lights went out, came back on, went back out, came back on and it did this several times.
I thought that was very strange.
I was watching the lights flicker.
I just kept thinking to myself, "There's something just not right here.
" And yet, no one was moving to find out why.
There was no generator turning on alternate lighting.
Falling asleep in a hospital is not easy.
As I was laying there and I was trying to go back to sleep, I opened my eyes.
And I turned to the left.
And that's when I saw him.
This entity standing in the doorway.
Something that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
- Plagued by nightmares and pain, Nicole Kowbrowski is visited by a mysterious stranger.
- I thought maybe he might be a patient.
But I also thought: Wow, they're pretty strict here.
Why are they just letting him roam around? And I felt like he wanted me to know he was there.
I was a little bit scared, I was also kind of intrigued, - Ignoring her fear, Nicole feels oddly drawn to the stranger.
- He did start walking down the hallway.
You were only allowed to get out and walk around with the okay of the people on staff.
I decided to get up.
I was tired of the regimented standards.
I wanted to go follow him.
Curiosity got the better of me.
(ominous music) I started following him at what I thought was a safe distance, for me.
And I watched him continue to walk down the hall.
(ominous music) It had occurred to me that this might be a hallucination, but I knew that I knew that this had to be real.
- Pursuing the mysterious figure, Nicole is lured deeper into the hospital, farther away from the safety of her room.
- It was almost hypnotic for me.
It was very, it was very much like I was just following him, and he was almost like the Pied Piper, I couldn't do anything but follow him.
- But what happens next is hard to explain.
- Spirits draw energy in order to manifest and as they're manifesting, they're putting out energy.
So that's why sometimes you'll see things turn on, because they're emitting an energy that's going through that electronic device.
- The fan ceases operation once the stranger has passed.
- As I was watching him approach the door, I expected him to open it, just as he had the other one.
- Something unseen forces the door to open.
Nicole is chilled by the realisation that what she is following is not human.
- Did you get a sense that he was aware that you were follow him? - It occurred to me that maybe he knew that I was following him and leading me, for whatever purpose, with him.
I thought at that point that he wasn't just a man who was a patient, I thought maybe he was a ghost.
I was terrified.
But yet, I couldn't do anything but follow him.
I was totally focused on this being in front of me.
I noticed this pattern, the lights on the ward were flickering as he went by them.
- In Nicole's case, with this spirit presenting itself to her, it's drawing from the energy that's within the building, electronics, the lighting, the wiring, it's drawing all this so it can manifest itself for her to see.
- It looked like he was the one that was affecting the lights for sure.
I wanted to know who he was, and what he was doing, and how he could do this.
But it totally freaked me out.
Suddenly, that's when I saw his face.
(screaming) It's something I'll never forget.
A face as white as death.
It just terrified me.
- Nicole stares into the face of something from the other side.
And runs.
(screaming) - It's very possible this whole event occurred because of this individual trying to express to her what they went through and what happened to them.
They're desperate to get somebody's attention and Nicole may have been just susceptible.
She could be someone who's sensitive to this.
- I had the feeling that, at some point, he had been abandoned.
And I felt like he wanted me to know he was there.
- And then, what happened? - He disappeared.
I was in the hospital for one more evening after this event took place and I did not see the man again.
I did not mention it to any of the nurses.
But my husband came to visit, and I told him about it and he did ask if, "Hey, have you ever heard any stories about ghosts?" They poo-pooed him.
They said that that was a bunch of "quatsch," as they call it, nonsense.
- The experience changes the way that Nicole views life.
And death.
- There are too many things in the universe that we don't know about, and so for me, it's one of those instances that I catalog away, and when I have other experiences, or people come to me with their experiences and trust me with their stories, I try to relate back to them to let them know, you're not crazy, these things happen.
You're gonna be okay.