Just like every other hospital floor, there are long hallways and a bunch of rooms inside the original Ohio Valley General Hospital. The structure is now known as the South Building, and since the West Tower was completed in the 1970s, the former hospital was transitioned into more of an administration and rental property.
Many of the former 200 patient rooms became offices or storage areas, and the nurses’ stations met the same fate. One of the operating rooms on the seventh floor, a green tiled room that had been employed since 1890 until the renovations began nearly 50 years ago, was wired for OVMC’s Information Technology Department.
As she told LEDE News in September during our look inside the buildings on the OVMC campus, Sharon Tarleton introduced our readers to “Hilda” and “Charlie,” a pair of spirits she insists she encountered while working the midnight shift.
“When I started that shift, I was all by myself,” she said. “Not long after I started working at the hospital in the IT department, and after I got through training and was on my own, I began to have a strong feeling of I wasn’t alone. Then came the shoulder taps and the blowing in my ear.
“I have no clue where the names Hilda and Charlie came from, but they just popped into my head and just felt right,” she explained. “I don’t even know anyone named Hilda, and I am not even sure I heard the name before it came to me, so yes, that is strange to me. Charlie just seemed right, as well. The names just seemed right, if that makes any sense.
Ghostly Games
There were no clanging chains or moans off in the distance, but instead it was as if Hilda and Charlie wished to tease Sharon while she was managing an IT system that reached all of the buildings and employees on the campus.
At first, though, Tarleton feels she was tested.
“They never did anything that would scare me, but maybe the taps and the ear blowing scared others before me,” she theorized. “I believe the shoulder tap was their way of saying, ‘Hey, we are here; let’s see if you are cool or not.’ And I wasn’t scared, but just very curious
“And I think once they realized that I wasn’t scared, they began to play their games with me. Coffee pot turned off; light objects being moved; things like that,” Tarleton described. “We had many bats get into the building at night, too, and they would chase me. Now that scared me. The living things scare me more than the non-living, I guess.”
Only one of her co-workers, though, acknowledged that he, too, had, “a feeling” of a presence while working on the seventh floor, a level that included everything from the IT Department to computer software/hardware training areas for the facilities’ physicians and nursing staff members.
“One guy said he definitely knew something was there, and he was just too scared to think about it, so he would turn radio on or just drown it out,” Tarleton recalled. “I told them all about Charlie and Hilda, but they didn’t experience the things I did. I would say because I am open to welcoming spirits, and they were not.
“I believe the souls that are still here with us are ones who just chose to stay earthbound, or they feel they are not going to be welcome on the other side. That’s my belief,” she continued. “Charlie and Hilda probably passed away in that room and, for some reason, they are comfortable being there. Maybe they are husband and wife; I am not sure. But they are definitely friendly and ornery.”
Unafraid of the Unexplained
Tarleton is in her late 40s and her belief in spirits began when she was very young, and to this day she remembered every diminutive detail of the encounter.
“I saw my first ghost at 5 years old,” she explained. “My brother and I were watching TV one evening in our recreation room at home, and we were eating snacks while sitting on the floor. We had a sliding glass door to the left of us, and it was dark outside. Then something caught my eye on the side, so I turned my head, and there was a woman standing in the door. She was all white, and that’s why I call her the ‘Albino Woman.’
“I could see through her while she just peacefully was looking in at me and my brother. I stared for a what seemed like a minute, and then I screamed, and my brother took off upstairs,” Tarleton remembered. “I looked at him running, then looked back, and she was gone. But I remember it so vividly. I can remember the pajamas my brother was wearing, what we were eating and the Pepsi we were drinking, and we were watching Planet of the Apes. It was so vivid like it was yesterday.”
That first time, however, is not the only time Sharon has experienced the paranormal. For a time, though, she attempted forget her ability.
“As years went by, I saw spirits here and there; I knew they were spirits because I could see through them even though they had cloths on,” Tarleton said. “I tried to block it, and I believe I succeeded because I wasn’t seeing them as often as when I was younger. Until I was older, maybe in my 30s, I just became open to spirits.
“I am not afraid because they give me a sense of peace that I can’t explain. I know they’ll never hurt me, so I just got used to them being around. I have even been in crowds and just looked away,” she added. “I have told some of them that it is OK move on like I did Charlie and Hilda, but they seem content where they are. There is definitely an afterlife, and whether they choose to stay earthbound or to move on to a higher place is something I can’t answer until I get to that choice. But for now, I embrace them.”
