As far as she knows, Charlie and Hilda have stayed on the seventh floor of the old Ohio Valley General Hospital throughout their earthbound imprisonment.
She has no idea, though, what ghosts can do and can’t do. Can they travel through walls and floors and ceilings and such, and do they have the choice to crossover or to remain haunting a space of a place where untimely death was their end?
That seventh floor of what became known as the East Building was utilized as office space once the new hospital took root in the West Tower in the 1990s, and that meant former operating rooms were filled by unsuspecting employees like Sharon Schellhase Tarleton.
But Tarleton, an OVMC employee between 2007-14, has no idea where they will go once that seventh floor is destroyed along with the rest of the structure.
Because that’s the plan now. The City of Wheeling established an agreement with WVU Health Systems to transfer ownership of the former campus of the Ohio Valley Medical Center so the six multi-floor structures can be demolished and replaced by a regional cancer center. The medical facility would be a five-floor building measuring approximately 90,000 feet with 150 employees.
“As far as Charlie and Hilda, when I tried to cross them over when I worked there, they chose not to go. I don’t know the reason why, but they both refused and that tells me they are staying here for some reason,” Tarleton revealed. “I know they are still there, too, because I had a chance to go back to that seventh floor after the campus closed, and they let me know they were there when I did.
“They have to have a connection to that hospital, or to the land on which the hospital sits,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know what time period they are from and that hospital has been there forever so anything truly is possible, and yeah, it’s possible they died on the table in that OR and they weren’t supposed to. Who knows? But I know Charlie and Hilda are still there.”
The souls, Tarleton admitted, may refuse her invitation again.
“It could be because they found each other and they’re fine where they are,” she said. “That’s the one thing that can be frustrating about what I’m able to do for those spirits. I never know where they are from or why they are there, but I do feel them.”
The Light Surrounds
A spiritual medium is an individual who can talk to the dead. Some say they need machines for the spirits to speak and others communicate silently with the souls.
Tarleton?
“It’s hard to describe, but I feel it and I can hear things, too,” she said. “And there are times when spirits manifest themselves in front of me.”
That’s because, Tarleton contends, she’s a travel agency offering a real-life-to-afterlife special on “One-Way Tickets to Heaven.”
“For whatever reasons, I can help them move on to the other side,” she insisted. “They stay back sometimes because they feel they are not worthy of moving on to the light.
“If that’s the case, they stay here, and for them I believe it’s something like purgatory,” the former employee explained. “I believe it’s also true that some of souls get stuck right where they died because it happened quickly and tragically.”
For some, this medium maintains some aren’t just stuck, but also unaware of their own death.
“It’s happened to me because they don’t even realize they’re dead because of how quickly it all happened,” Tarleton explained. “They tell me they go to their families and they’re confused because their families don’t pay attention to them. They’re just walking around in limbo until they come across people like who help them cross over.”
Charlie and Hilda have literally touched Tarleton, mostly recently when she visited the seventh floor of the East Building in October 2021.
“I was pretty sure they were going to be there when I went back a couple years ago, and they were. One of them gave me a pretty good pinch, but now that the building is coming down, and I’m not sure what will happen to them,” she said. “Are they going to stay somehow on the seventh floor because that’s where they died, or are they there because there died there before the hospital was ever built?
“There was a lot going on around for a long time before I’ve been around, so who knows? Maybe once the demolition is completed, I’ll be able to go back there and help them cross over then because I don’t believe Charlie and Hilda will go anywhere. I believe those souls will stay right there on that land and it’s sad,” Tarleton added. “That’s why I have to go back as soon as I can.”
