Corridors
"I’ve heard some things in here I can’t explain. But I tell you what: I don't worry about the ghosts and spirits because I have the Holy Spirit of Jesus."
Rick, Construction Manager, 11-05
Corridor, Women's Ward, 2005
One of the first things I noticed whilst walking through the corridors at Dammasch State Hospital is the ceiling. The ceilings are a patchwork of tiles interspersed with gaps in which the blobs of glue affixing now-absent tiles are exposed. Emilie Boyles, a former social worker who visited Dammasch while it was still occupied said that the ceiling tiles had begun falling to the floor as long ago as the 1980's.
Left: A corridor on the 2nd floor by the A B C bays. Middle: Hallway in a solitary confinement corridor. Right: Corridor with solitary confinement rooms and nurse's station.
The Construction Manager, Rick at Costa Pacific Communities explained that there were speakers inserted into the hallway ceilings. These speakers were located in each wing, and were connected by a little network of wires to intercom systems in their respective nurses' stations so that doctors and aides could be summoned from afar. Part of Costa Pacific's reclamation process has included removing all the wires from the speakers and disassembling the intercom systems.
One fine evening before leaving for the day, Rick walked the corridors making sure the locks were sound and that nobody was trapped in the building. While investigating on the second floor, the overhead speakers started crackling. He stood there in disbelief. He poked the speaker to make sure he wasn't hallucinating and to make sure it wasn't just “critters” moving around between floors. But it was clearly an electronic noise…there were no voices -more, it sounded like someone was turning the knob of an old-fashioned radio: all static and white noise. Rick decided to hike over to the old admissions portion of the facility where the offices of Costa Pacific Communities are now housed, to get the Facilities Manager who had been in charge of dismantling the systems. The Facilities Manager followed him back to the second floor speaker, which was still crackling, and confirmed that he HAD, in fact, cut those wires. Rick still can't explain how these sounds emerged from disconnected speakers.
On the Left: Hallway on the 2nd Floor by the Elevators...My camera slipped! One the Right: Corridor on the bottom floor late afternoon sun illumination.
While walking the corridors Rick has also heard other sounds that he simply could not explain: footsteps but no people to attribute them to, keys jingling and whistling are all noises he has heard in the building. Apparently, the “psychic friend” who was employed by the owner of Costa Pacific Communities to clear the spirit-energy from the complex (prior to their occupation of the building) wasn't effective.
The 2 photos on the Left/Middle show opposite aspects of the same hall and go from the main building to the subterranean tunnel system. In the left photo, at the very end of the hallway is the doorway to the main building. In the middle one there are elevators at the end of the hall to the right that take you up to the auxiliary building. At the very end, past the elevators, was a door that led to the tunnels.