Date: May 11, 2024
Location: Radford, VA
Investigators: Chris, Matt S, Ana, Matt, Brian, Ryan, Jody, Zoe
Location History
St Albans was originally a boys prep school that opened in 1892. After two decades, the school shut down and was eventually converted into a sanatorium for the mentally ill, being overseen by Dr. JC King. During our tour of the facility, we learned some of the sordid history of the place. One bathroom in particular was the site of four different suicides over the years. We were told a horrific story about a woman named Rebecca who had lost her unborn baby and kept the fetus in a jar, rocking it and singing to it. And in 1980, there is speculation that 18 year old Gina Hall was murdered and buried somewhere on the property. The land itself is said to be the site of a Civil War massacre in 1775. All of these events have led people to believe the facility is now haunted.
Our Experience
St. Albans is actually a bit of a hodgepodge of buildings connected with additions over the years. When you enter and start wandering, there is a certain funhouse effect as you easily get disoriented in the winding twisting hallways. At times, we had to go up a set of stairs, then down another to get to the locations we were trying to find. I certainly could not wrap my head around the architecture.
As we began to set up, I turned on the Ovilus to find one of the first words it blasted out as “casket”… which the room we were in happened to have a prop casket in it for their Halloween events. A bit odd that it chose that word.
We broke into 3 groups to cover the most territory. Chris, Jody, and Zoe headed to the suicide bathroom to investigate, while Matt, Ana, and Matt K sat in a hallway that is said to have shadow people and strange noises, and Ryan and Brian sought out the bowling alley. We set static cameras up near the suicide bathroom, a toy room, and the shadow hallway.
Outside the suicide bathroom we investigated with several methods including digital recorders, cameras, bells, and the Ovilus. I asked the Ovilus to stop me as I said the alphabet to indicate the first letter of a person’s name. It triggered on M. Strangely that night, at 3 different times the Ovilus brought up the letter M. As we peppered yes/no questions at the Ovilus, the story we were able to come up with is that “Little M” was 3 years old and had died here, but we have no evidence that any of that was true.
In the basement is the infamous bowling alley and a boiler room. Many people have reported experiences in these areas having seen or heard something unusual or even experienced a man named “Red” in the boiler room picking on women. We explored both areas thoroughly, but did not have any experiences of our own.
The strangest part of the night for us was in the old autopsy room. We had just acquired a SLS camera and decided to use it for the first time on this hunt. While we were all gathered together in the small room, 2 figures popped up on the SLS screen, one looking to be an adult holding a fist over the second, a child sized person, who was cowering with his arms protecting his head. After watching this scene unfold for a few minutes and trying to command the bigger guy to leave the smaller one alone, we had one of the investigators physically swat at the bigger guy and lo and behold, the arms dropped and the smaller one stopped cowering. Not sure what all this means but it was a strange experience.
Did we capture Paranormal Evidence?
Maybe. We caught an interesting scene on the SLS camera.
