Courtesy Photo | This aerial photograph of the old hospital shows the 64-acre complex. The hospital was...... read more read more
FORT CARSON, Colo. -- Tales of escaped German prisoners of war living in tunnels, handwriting on the hallways of corridors and the sounds of footsteps and moaning still send shudders through employees of the old hospital complex.
“A lot of people didn’t want to be there on the weekends or at night or alone any time,” said Susan Galentine, Directorate of Public Works public relations contractor who worked in the complex from 2006-2009. Galentine said co-workers told her they heard footsteps on the floors above them and moaning in the hallways, even though there wasn’t anyone else in the building.
Built in 1942, the 64-acre complex contained 59 buildings including a mess hall, library, post exchange and Red Cross station. The “800 Series” buildings featured large bays connected by covered corridors. At the peak of its operation, the hospital cared for 3,000 patients, including up to 130 prisoners of war.
One urban legend tells the story of military police investigating an open door in the tunnels of the hospital. According to http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com, military police found “an old setup of children’s toys, a small chair (and) a small kids table.”
The site also claims employees in the buildings heard banging noises and saw faces peering through barred windows.
Despite its size, the hospital was not intended to be a long-lasting structure since Fort Carson, Camp Carson at the time, was not intended to be a permanent military installation. The hospital was only fully functional for three years, but parts of its buildings were used for medical purposes until 1986 when Evans Army Community Hospital opened. Some buildings were occupied by various offices until 2011.
Mike Wheeler, an administrator at the Fort Carson Army Hospital in 1986, said navigating the 12.5 miles of corridors was spooky, especially at night.
“The lights would go out in a storm,” said Wheeler, now the administrator for the obstetrics and gynecology department at EACH. “If you had ever been (attendant on duty) in the old hospital and gone down to the morgue in the middle of the night to check the temperatures of the body coolers when the electricity was off, you would have thought it was haunted. I always got the sense I wasn’t alone whenever I walked the long dark corridors at night.”
“The lighting hung down from a wire. It was a bare bulb,” said Marvin Songer, non-commissioned-officer-in-charge of patient administration in 1986 and currently a health systems specialist in contract support at EACH. “When you got close, the shadows would bounce off the walls. It really made it look like the body on the gurney was moving.”
In the book, “Fort Carson in World War II: The Old Hospital Complex,” authors Melissa Connor and James Schneck write that the buildings’ electrical system could not keep up with demands of modern medical technology, which may explain the frequent blackouts.
Jean Dusenberry, a teller and accounting technician with the treasurer’s office in 1980, said she never experienced anything firsthand, but she heard stories.
“The old hospital, when it was still here, had many corridors that were not used for the hospital,” she said. “They used it for ‘med hold’ mainly, but when soldiers would go AWOL or come up missing, sometimes they would find them in one of these old wards. I also heard of the underground tunnels. The old engineers … used to tell me about AWOLs living down there. They even said that the tunnels went all the way to Manitou Springs and had been used for meetings of the underworld.”
Now in the final stages of demolition, the old hospital main complex was located south of Prussman Boulevard and west of Ironhorse Park.
Fort Carson residents used to enter the vacant buildings, trying to connect with supernatural beings. However, the employees of the hospital insist it was just an old complex.
“It was a quaint, old building,” said Dusenberry, now the uniformed business office manager. “The people that worked there have memories. And that’s the way we like to keep them, memories.”
| Date Taken: | 10.28.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 10.31.2011 11:00 |
| Story ID: | 79323 |
| Location: | FORT CARSON, COLORADO, US |
| Web Views: | 347 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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