1 Comments Posted by AC

wrote:
First, thanks for the great photos, I was trying to explain this place to my wife, but your pictures did a far better job than my descriptions.

I grew up in Whitman, right next door to Hanson and while I was in college, my girlfriend (who was a Hanson girl) told me about this place. We visited twice. The first time was summer 1998. She and I plus one of her friends went in the late afternoon and were able to get in and explore the buildings a bit. Understanding tuberculosis and the painful way that it causes death makes you appreciate how many lives ended in an awful way in this building. I am a hard-core atheist and skeptic, but I could not help feeling uncomfortable the whole time we were there. I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder. We left when one of the girls thought she saw something move in front of her and freaked out - so we had to go.

We decided to go back a few weeks later at night. This time we wanted to bring a video camera and record the experience. It was a different group this time, myself, my brother, my girlfriend and another of our friends.

Unfortunately we didn't even make it into the building this time, nor did I have the camera going. As we approached the building a light came on in the room that is on the second floor of the central structure. Its the center window in the straight-on picture in this gallery.

In the light there was clearly someone standing in the window looking at us. Now, I'm not claiming it was anything "spiritual", most likely it was other kids who got there before us, but the light was definitely a light in the ceiling, not a flashlight and as far as I knew at the time, there was no live electricity running to the building. Whatever it was, it freaked us all out royally and we decided to leave.

I don't think that any of us ever went back, but I'd love to go back and check it out again someday, although the police presence seems a lot more common than it was back in the late 90's.

Thanks for the pictures though and letting me rant about the "good-old-days".