Halloween is upon us! And in keeping with the theme, we have some particularly interesting and frightfully creepy local area information to share with you today!
The locals refer to the Sanatorio de Sierra Espuña as the “happy house”, and it’s thought to be one among the creepiest sites in the region. A great deal of this story was propagated by a Spanish tv crew that spent the night in the hospital and allegedly caught a spectral being, referred to as “The White Woman”, poking her head slightly out of a window on one of the upper floors of the abandoned sanatorium. The truth, however… is much more frightening!!!
In the early twentieth century, the region of Murcia in Spain was riddled with tuberculosis and infectious diseases. Mortality rates were skyrocketing and a call to quarantine the sick was quickly adopted.
In 1913, construction began on a sanatorium and the first floor was finished in 1917, but the whole complex wasn’t complete until 1934, as a result of the patients who were well enough to be tasked with finishing construction throughout the scorching summer months.
During its tenure as a hospital, hundreds of sick patients lived out their final days on the top floor of the building, usually awfully sick and in complete agony.
Beginning in 1949, several patients with access to the newly discovered antibiotic drug began to get better and move out of the hospital, but the haunting history of the place would suggest otherwise.
By the middle Nineteen Fifties, it had been devoid of the sick and dying, and bit by bit, repurposed as an orphanage. However, the orphanage was only temporary and closed in 1962 because the complex was way oversized to run efficiently and cash was drying up to fund the project.
Until the Nineteen Eighties, the hospital sat abandoned, becoming perilously decrepit and attracting a variety of young thrill-seekers, excited to take part in the alleged paranormal experiences that befell within the hospital.
Playing on this market, a move to convert the building into a hostel was shortly tried, however, the sheer size of the building once more stopped the project cold.
Since 1995, the building has been utterly abandoned and solely attracts the occasional traveller in search of spectral beings.
Over the years there have been many paranormal sightings and even reports of loud screams and distant cries of pain that would send chills down the spine of even the bravest of us.
Will you be taking a trip up to the Sanatorium this Halloween?
