Spirits haunt deserted hospital, says nurse

"I was spooked? I felt a lot of cold, horrible feelings."
This was a psychiatric nurse's experience when she returned to derelict Lake Alice Hospital.
The nurse, now a Manawatu resident, had worked for eight years on the open side and five years in the national security unit.
Cheryl (a pseudonym) and a friend wandered through the site on one of the recent open days. She had not been there since she quit in 1996.
She felt a mixture of anger and shock at the facility's decay and destruction in the years since closure. Nor was she prepared for her experience of what she calls spirits. "There are a lot of spirits in the place," she said. "I felt chilled.
"My friend, who's psychic, picked up on things. She felt spirits were still roaming round."
Cheryl, who insisted she has not been into this sort of thing herself, was rattled when her friend sensed the presence of a girl who had taken her life at Lake Alice. "I could feel a hand going down the side of my hair," Cheryl said. "I'd watched her die, and she was the one who stroked my hair."
She was also stunned to find information that ought to have been confidential.
"I couldn't believe how they could leave patients' names and files. There was a board with patients' names and room numbers. It blew me away."
Cheryl said she had signed a secrecy paper for her Lake Alice job yet this sort of information was there for all to see a few years later at an open day.
"There was paperwork in my handwriting."
One of the first female psychiatric nurses to work in the national security unit, she considered she had a brilliant rapport with patients and loved her job.
"It's heart-breaking to see the way it is. Because of what I saw there, I'd bowl the place over. I never want to set foot in the place again.
"It needs to be bulldozed. And blessed? it would put the spirits at rest."
Cheryl said the spookiest part of the site on the open day was villa 14, where patients had been assessed.
"There were a lot of suicides ? and electric shock treatment."
She and her friend heard an old-fashioned telephone ring as they were leaving villa 15, the geriatric unit.
"We both heard it ring twice in the office but there was none there. I couldn't handle any more."
When the hospital's life drew to a close the authorities "took what they wanted and left the rest."
Summing up, Cheryl asked: "Where's the dignity? Somebody's got to answer for it."