Sunday, October 5, 2008

The Darkness Which Dwells in the Ambulance Bay

Years ago, just after leaving the Christian and Missionary Alliance I worked for an ambulance company, Med-Stat Ambulance.


I was hired in the fall of 1995 as a midnight dispatcher and my duties were to watch over the sleeping crew and take any emergency calls that might come in during the graveyard shift.


I met a lot of interesting people at Med-Stat, but the most interesting beings that I met there you could not see. You see the building was haunted by multiple entities.


I was told about the hauntings on my first week by a paramedic named Mary. She was a young woman who was a sensitive and had multiple experiences with the beings that resided in the second story bunkhouse.


One night she was sleeping on the top bunk by the large front window of the bunkroom. At about 3 in the morning she awoke to a strange sound. She thought it was one of the crew talking to her but the sound seemed like it was muffled and came from the direction of the window inches from her head. As she turned over to look out the glass, she froze in terror. There hovering over 30 feet above the ground was a green mist which covered a vaguely humanoid form. It writhed and twisted in the middle of the air as if trying to take a more solid form. All the while the whispering grew louder, “Mary…Mary….” The voice whispering sounded like that of an elderly woman. It seemed to glow in a pulsating fashion as it came into form. When the face began to take shape it looked vaguely to Mary as that of a rotting corpse.


Her scream woke the whole bunkhouse.


After the ensuing chaos many tried to calm her down but she was hysterical and spent the rest of the night sleepless and sitting in a well lit room without any windows. Many ridiculed her but she stuck to her story despite the disbelief surrounding her.


A few weeks later during another midnight shift it happened again. This time she seemed to sense it. It was afar off and came wafting over the tall grass of the front lawn illuminated by the light of the crescent moon. This time it did not call her, she just felt the presence. She woke up again at 3 in the morning and looked out the big glass window that faced Route 19 in Waterford, Pennsylvania. It looked like just a green puff of smoke as it glided toward the building. As it neared the window it once again began to take shape. The arms turned from vague blurry ether to thin bony white appendages as they reached out to caress some unknown form in the shadows. The entity did in fact seem to be that of a woman, but not decayed as she previously had thought, instead the withered form that was materializing before her was that of an aged and decrepit old lady who had been wasted away by disease or old age. It came closer to the window and Mary lay there just as afraid as the weeks before but there was another emotion that began to overpower the fear: compassion. In the withered face of the specter that she saw before her she saw all of the elderly patients that she had cared for who were at the last stages of life. She did not recognize the face, for even though fully formed it seemed to phase in and out of existence. But she embodied it with all the sadness and loss that she had seen in her years tending to the elderly with renal failure who withered and wasted away into nothingness. Then the voices came again, but this time they were not so frightening, a hollow voice that seemed to be familiar, “Mary….Mary…” finally she decided to reply. With a hesitant half stutter she talked to the visage that came from the mist, “Y..yes?” she croaked out.


The entity faded into the mist and the green ectoplasmic cloud was scattered in the wind.


Mary was sure that this was a former patient whom she had cared for, but she could not specifically place the face or the voice. There had been many women whom she had tended to who passed while in her care. And it was no longer frightening, instead it was reassuring. She felt as if one of them had come through from the other side to just say thank you and to encourage her in her tireless duty.


However the green lady was not the only spectral being that Mary had encountered in that ambulance hall many years ago.


While taking her turn cleaning the ambulances late one evening after a very late hospital run she had an encounter that made her refuse to ever go down in the bay alone again. They had transported a bleeder from an accident scene to a local hospital. The person did not make it and the back of the ambulance was full of blood. She had the unluck of the draw and had to wear her hazmat gear and give the ambulance a thorough cleaning. She used a hose and swaths of cloth to mop up the remaining blood. There was a large red tub in which she threw the soiled cloths. Even though flushed with water the cloths were crimson with human body fluids, and almost near the end of the cleaning the bucket looked as if it were full of meat rather than soiled towels.


Then the towels moved.


Mary was just about to throw in the last one and give the ambulance a dousing of bleach when she saw what looked to be something alive in the blood filled bucket. The towels swelled and moved up and down as if something was inside trying to get out.


That was when the arm came out.


It pulled itself out of the bloodied rags and covered in goo the hand grabbed for the side of the bucket. The arm and hand was mangled with tissue and bone protruding from various cuts and gashes. It flung itself around wildly and Mary screamed frantically and threw the bleach bottle at the gory appendage. The bucket was knocked over and the soaked towels sprayed all over the cement floor of the bay. Within minutes the crew who had accompanied Mary had run down the long flight of stairs from the bunk room above to find her cowering in a corner of the ambulance. She was hysterical and it took a few minutes for her to even begin to tell them what she had seen. They went over to investigate the bucket but all they found were the soaked towels that she had placed inside. No arm, no hand, no living tissue-just blood soaked rags. She was taken upstairs and another crew member took over the job of sanitizing the ambulance. He and others complained that this was just a stunt to get away with not doing her share of the work. But to many it was clear that Mary did indeed see something. A few weeks later after doing some research she found out that in the late 1980s there was a bad motorcycle accident on the site. In fact one of the other paramedics at the company had been on site. The poor victim had been literally torn apart and his arms were severed from his body. Marie was sure that what she saw was a remnant of the accident victim that had somehow been evoked by the presence of the blood. She never saw it again, but then again she never cleaned an ambulance alone again either.


When she told me these stories I must confess that I thought she was a little crazy. At that time I had not had any firsthand experience with ghostly apparitions, although I had experienced demonic presences. But late one night an incident happened to me that blew away all such disbelief.


It was a normal midnight shift and I had settled down to read when at about 2am I heard someone walk up the long flight of steps that opened up to the door of the dispatch room. It was hard to not notice the heavy steps and they were a familiar sound whenever the crews came back from a run. But nobody was out, so I turned to see who was making an unexpected visit so late in the morning. But as the steps came to the door, the door did not open. Neither did I hear the sound of someone walking back down the steps, so I rose from my chair to investigate.


I opened the door.


No one was there.


Now the sounds were unmistakable, and since the stairway acted as a magnifier of every little sound that was made in there, it was nigh impossible that someone could have made their way down the stairs without so much as a sound. So I put it down as just a figment of my overactive imagination.


However a few moments after this incident I went to the lavatory down the hall to relieve myself. I shut the door behind me and as I approached the toilet the hand of the door began to turn and rattle. It was unmistakably moving. I quickly opened the door and again, there was nobody there. The crew room was next door, but everyone was asleep. And if it was a practical joke (which we were prone to do to each other) nobody came forward to gloat about it. Everyone was truly asleep.


The door handle had turned on its own.


To me I knew immediately I had just experienced a haunting. But the weirdest thing about it that struck me was the normality of it all. I was not frightened, or even scared in the least. It was just downright odd.


Med Stat Ambulance has long gone out of business. But that two story building with the large first floor garage still stand off of route 19 in Waterford Pennsylvania. And I am certain that whoever occupies the residence now has been visited by some uninvited guests.


I pray their nights are peaceful.


Until next time,

Pastor Swope



10 comments:

Unknown said...

I used to volunteer with a local rescue squad. I used to pull the Friday night watch shift by myself in the building. This same building used to be an ambulance service that also served as a temporary morgue until bodies could be picked up by funeral homes. A lot of people saw strange stuff and I had an experience similar to the author-footsteps coming up out of the ambulance bay and when you looked, no one was there. One late night, I was pulling duty and on the computer, bored and alone. All of a sudden, one of the bay doors directly below me started to open. The only way to open this door was from the inside. I went and checked-no one there. and a really bad feeling permeated the room. Needless to say-I left. People there saw black shadows and people walking in the conference room when there was no one there.

cryptidsrus said...

Good stories, Swope and Paige.
That story with the hand coming out of the bloody clothes is really freaky. Truth is really stranger than fiction. Or movies.

Jason said...

Wow, freaky story. It's kind of funny how ghosts and the paranormal hang around places like hospitals and the like, even when they really had no connection then their possible deaths there. I wonder why they would stay at those locations as opposed to going someplace that had meaning to them in life?

Anonymous said...

Paster Swope,

I was wondering if you had any creepy missionary stories from the Phillippines like the ones you have from missionaries in Africa & Latin America. I love those type of stories.

My wife is from the Phillippines and she always tells me that all these ghost hunter type shows need to go to the Phillippines because there are tons of strange supernatural type things going on in that country. Ghosts, monsters, demons, dwarves. . .

Anyways, thanks for another great story.

Daniel

Pastor Swope said...

Thanks for the Comment Daniel,

Yes I have a few Missionary stories from the Philippines, I am awaiting the consent to use one of them that I like the most.

I will try to go ahead with one of the others this month.

From what I have been told indeed your wife is right!

Anonymous said...

I am a Registered Practical Nurse working in Long Term care (nursing home). Night shift is a good time to see things. I was working alone one night and out of the corner of my eye I saw a resident from the other unit next to mine standing in front of my desk at the nsg station. He didn't say anything, just stood there, this was about 1045 pm near the end of my eve shift. My first reaction was "gee, Stuart doesn't usually stay up this late or come over here, I wonder what he wants?". Then it dawned on me that Stuart had died over a week ago, I looked up quickly but he wasn't there anymore. I was a bit scared but since he never hurt anyone in life I figured he wasn't going to hurt me now. Stuart had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. He died in the same room he shared with his wife of many years who was very ill. I thought maybe Stuart didn't know he was dead and was worried about his wife so I said to the empty hall, "Stuart, I can see you, I know you're here, if you aren't sure, you died last week, it's time for you to go home now, I promise we will take good care of Lucy for you". I never saw him again after that, I think all he wanted was to know that his wife would be looked after.

Anonymous said...

I worked for 15 years as a paramedic and started out as a sceptic, but over the years I had many experiences of looking in my rear view mirror to see the person who we just delivered DOA to the hospital looking back at me as if they didnt realize they were dead yet. we even sometimes talked to them after they had died to be sure to tell them they were dead and they needed to move on.
We also had them follow us around after returning to our station house. It was not un usual after a bad auto wreck to see the transparent figure of the dead person you just wokred on slowly wandering the station house as if they just didnt know what else to do. Maybe since we were the last person to be helping them, they followed us to seek more help not believing they had passed.

Anonymous said...

PastorSwope,and all-
without doubt there are souls wandering the earth but the problem is are they simply lost souls or demons ?
Anybody working in hospitals,nursing homes,military bases,etc experiences these things.
We had the occassional problems with harassing or dominanting spirits and the priest would do his readings and prayers. I worked almost 17 years ,permanent nights in a very busy nyc ER.Those "sensitive" to these things always would see them and sometimes they would make their presence known and create a fearful working evironment for others. We were fortunate that the priest would come,even in the dead of night,to bless out our unit and of course he always came when called to annoint the sick and dying and give ExtremeUnction.
Problems sometimes arose solely due to co-workers occultism bringing in spiritul garbage,but,again--prayer drives them out.
never tolerate it....even "lost souls."--they need to be put to rest and any demonic activity must GO.
We were very fortunate to have these priests .

Pastor Swope said...

Thanks for the comment anonymous,

But for a rational and non judgmental view of the phenomena of 'ghost' and demonic activity please read my article about ghosts and the Bible from last month.

That the Disciples thought they saw a ghost as Jesus approached on the sea of Galilee and did not try to exorcise it speaks volumes.

Please note I do not attempt to try to explain the phenomena but note that demonic activity does not encompass all such phenomena. There is something else happening.

From your letter it seems that if a blessing from a priest stopped the activity then one of three things must have occurred. There were real spirits of the dead lingering at the hospital and the priest showed them the way home through reading of Scripture, You and your coworkers who were afraid because of the mere mention of ghostly activity actually brought the demonic activity that was banished by the cleric (Demonic presences feed on fear and lies), or there is something about your building and the passing of your patients that helps demonic entities manifest themselves.

While your coworkers could be bringing entities with them, they would seldom stay when the coworkers are gone unless there is a reason. What exactly is going on at the hospital to draw demonic activity? How do you know your coworkers are dabbling in the occult?

Your statements just raise a lot of questions, and I am not judging just assessing the situation you describe.

Anonymous said...

Hi....where have you been with your stories?? I miss your posts:)