(Publisher’s Note: This is a fictional piece republished for the spooky season.)
The sheriff of Ohio County has confirmed that a poltergeist is now in custody after authorities received reports late Saturday night of loud screams coming from inside a former mental health hospital near Valley Grove.
According to Sheriff Howard Thomas, the Roney’s Point Sanitarium has a long history of alleged paranormal activity, but not until now could the presence of such “lost souls” be verified.
“Our office had received a lot of calls about trespassers on the property, but usually the reports come from the residents that live nearby,” Thomas explained. “Those folks usually just called the office, but these calls were made by people calling 9-1-1. One of them told a dispatcher that it sounded like someone was being murdered.”
Deputies did not hear screaming when they arrived at the dilapidated building, according to the report, but did notice a light that was on inside the structure.
“This place has been vacant for almost 50 years, and the electric has been turned off since then, so we thought someone had to be inside for sure with a flashlight or a lantern,” Thomas said. “Well, that’s not what we found to be the source of the light.”
A Bright Light
Instead, Thomas and three deputies entered the structure through a door in the back of the building and discovered a glowing image of a woman who appeared to in her late 20’s or early 30s. According to the report, the apparition was standing in a large room on the east side of the former asylum.
That room, according to local historian Jane Finsley, was one of two rooms that housed 20 patients in each. The female patients, Finsley said, were cared for on the east side of the hospital.
“After we walked up the steps to the second floor, we followed the glow to the room where we found her, and when I walked in, she turned toward me,” the sheriff said. “I didn’t move. None of us did. That’s when she said, ‘Take me home.’ The only thing I said back was, ‘We’ll do our best.’
“Right now, we’re not sure if she was the one screaming or if someone else was in the building, and they encountered her and reacted that way,” he said. “No one has come forward and told us that, though, so we don’t know for sure.”
The hospital in Roney’s Point was opened in September 1936 during the nation’s tuberculosis epidemic so individuals who became infected with the disease could be separated from the healthy population in Ohio County. A little more than a decade later, the building was transitioned into a mental health facility. It was closed in April 1972 and has sat empty ever since.
No Miranda Rights Read
Technically, the poltergeist was not placed under arrest but was transported to the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Wheeling.
“’Take me home’ is still the only thing that she has said to us, so we’re hoping she will say more about where her home might be. If she is talking about where she grew up? Or does she mean where she was buried? We just don’t know,” Thomas explained. “And I don’t believe we’ll be able to help her until she shares more information with us.
“She has been in our conference room since we brought the spirit here, and we have placed a map of Ohio County on the table hoping that she will at least point at something on it. That would at least give us some clues, but that’s not happened yet,” he said. “She’s just standing just like she was in that room in the old hospital, and when someone goes in to see her, she turns toward them.”
The sheriff did confirm that the apparition is translucent and appears to be wearing a hospital gown. Thomas said it also looks as if she is wearing a wedding ring on her left hand.
“The gown and the ring tell us some things like she was probably a patient at the hospital, and was separated from her family, but that’s really it at this point,” he said. “She has not displayed any aggression toward us and has not done anything like flying around the office or walking through walls. She’s just been standing in that room.
“I have to be honest here,” Thomas added. “I wasn’t a big believer in stuff like this, the paranormal, and when I would hear stories about Roney’s Point being haunted, I excused it as malarkey. But, oh boy, am I a believer now.”
