Sometimes when you least expect it a piece of information falls into your hands and you simply have to think Hmmm. That is what happened to me with my investigation of the Kings Park Mental Hospital grounds.
I wrote about this Hospital and its grounds as they have been said to be a dark and sinister mass of land that once housed thousands of lost broken souls. It has a reputation of being haunted and many have claimed to find that a ghostly figure turned up on the photo’s taken at these deserted buildings and grounds.
Along with a team of people, including a psychic, a skeptic and another paranormal investigator, I did a tour the Kings Park Hospital grounds and did find it a bleak and uncomfortable place. It consisted of beautiful grounds that are graced with wonderful waterfront views. However the dilapidated huge hospital building, with their barred windows, make no mistake that this was once a place of gloom and doom for thousands.
It is rumored that many people were either murdered by other inmates or wandered off and became lost in the large wooded areas that surround the hospital grounds never to be found again. It is also said many drowned in the nearby Long Island sound who simply were listed as missing and never heard from again.
This place is one that you cannot wait to get away from the moment you enter its winding roads and deserted buildings of pain and horror. I think it should be knocked to the ground and the grounds completely turned into anything at all other then the sad deserted wasteland that stands today.
There is a long winding road back entrance to the Kings Park Hospital grounds that most people are not aware of. Unless you’re a local resident of the area, this back route is really not known as an entry to the hospital grounds. This back road is through an established area of lovely old homes adjacent to the coastline on the north shore of Long Island. It is a winding small old country road that typically is only used by the people who live on the road. People in the area know that if they use this road and cut through the hospital grounds you can reach the next town over quickly and miss all the main road traffic. Still isn’t used much. Not many are willing to drive through that dreary part of town.
About a year ago I was asked to drive an older lady friend of the families over to that next town over. She wanted to visit her daughter who was ill and no longer drove. I offered to drop her off and pick her up a few days later.
I was behind schedule the morning I was to drop this woman off at her daughters and decided to make up some time by taking this less traveled route that would take us through the hospital grounds. We were driving down the long winding road that would take us to the back entry of the hospital grounds when we approached a large old mansion on the waterfront side of the road. The large home had recently been bought and was in the pr
ocess of being completely restored to its original beauty.
I slowed down as I was the only car on the road and wanted to view the progress being made on this beautiful old house and its estate full of barns and outer buildings. The work was apparently near completion and done well. The place looked like a photo from a magazine of an old southern plantation. The restoration project was magnificent. As we drove by my elderly friend became very agitated. She turned pale and became nervous. “ I hate this place, every time I drive past this house I can feel the evil drip from it!’ I was stunned at her remark but even more shocked at how upset and frightened she seemed to be. She asked me to please move on, as she felt a bit ill. I did not waste anytime and placed my foot on the gas to get her away from the place.
I didn’t think much about that day until the exact same thing happened again. This time I was with my mother. We were out taking a drive one day when I decided to show her the restoration of this old estate.
We were driving along the road in front of the large mansion when my mother turned to me and said, “This is a horrible place. Don’t you feel the darkness here?” I was a bit surprised to hear my mother say this as she loved older homes and often joined in on historical tours in our area. My mother looked at the house and said, “Something horrible happened in that house”. Once again I hit the gas and left the mansion and the estate it was built on in my rear view mirror.
I didn’t think much about that house since that day. I did not enter the hospital grounds via that route when I did the investigation for my site. I had no reason to connect any of it -until now that is!
I was asked to show the back way into the hospital grounds to a psychic who was planning her own research on the deserted hospital. She happens to know my brother and long story short, I could not say no. She wanted to find a route that was off the beaten path in case she wanted to pull off the road or walk along any areas that beckoned to her while she did her research on the hospital grounds. I agreed and picked her up at mutual destination to show her the back roads into the hospital grounds. She asked if I would drive while she took notes so she would be able to find her way in and out once alone. I agreed and off we went.
Once again we were coming up on the area of the restored estate that spooked both my old friend and my mother. I said nothing and had no intentions of making the mistake of slowing down again. Every time I stopped to look I ended up speeding away!
I was driving along minding my own business calling out street signs for my guest to make note of for her written directions when we started our approach of the old restoration estate site. As soon as the property was in sight the psychic yelled out “ Stop the car!” I threw on the brakes in a panic. Did I hit an animal, ride over glass? Why was she yell
ing?
I stopped the car. The moment my vehicle came to a halt this woman was out of the car walking towards the entrance to this large estates driveway. Not knowing what to do I sat and watched from my car. I rolled down the window and called after her. She just stood there looking down the long driveway that wrapped around the front of the grand old mansion.
After a few minutes the psychic returned to my car. She immediately began to question me concerning who owned the house, and was it known to be haunted? I did not know the answers to either question. We both sat there looking at this huge old house and its surrounding buildings. There was a barn, what looked like a garage or two and some smaller very old shed type buildings behind the barn that were only partly in view. My passenger just sat there, hands folded in her lap, starring for what seemed like a very long time.
Finally she spoke. “This house is extremely busy spiritually. This place has so many souls wandering about it looks like a busy town-only two hundred years ago. This was not a happy place.” Not knowing how to respond I just replied my stupor like “It wasn’t?” “ No it wasn’t” she continued. She then started to madly write down all she could find about the place. She found a name written on the tree and date, she wrote down its address and cross streets. She would stop and look out at the house every few seconds and smile, as if someone was standing there. She was frightening the day lights out of me and so were the old house and all its buildings.
I finished our tour of how to get to the hospital grounds and took the long way back to our original meeting place. There wasn’t any way I was going to drive past that house again!
The psychic talked non-stop about how she was going to research the old house and would be sure to get in touch with me when she knew something. Frankly I did not know what to make of it all.
A few days ago this lady called me up. She told me she finished her research and thinks she found the answer not only to the past of that old house but the bleakness of the Kings Park Hospital grounds. I sat and listened as she told me she had discovered.
It seems that in the early 1700’s that house was a huge plantation of over 2000 acres here on the coast of Long Island. The unusual thing for me to find out was that it was a slave plantation. I was not aware that there were large slave run plantations on Long Island.
The people who now owned the land restored what was left of the estate back to its original condition. The old buildings behind the barn were
a few of the actual original slave quarters. The history of the place was bleak and unhappy. How else would a place that used slaves be? The area was known to be a harsh place where torture of both those working the plantation as well as the owner took place. I found this knowledge disturbing and knew at once that was what all the women were picking up as we drove past this house.
During the late 1920’s, just as the depression was hitting the country, the land was taken away by the state unwillingly from the family who owned it to build the now deserted mental hospital. The bleak darkness of the land went from bad to worse going from slave trade and unhappiness to insanity and lost hope. The entire area seems to have absorbed the pain of so many which is why today it leaves such a dark impression on those who are sensitive to such things.
I did not know what to say. I had no idea about any of this history. I do know I now believe that powerful dark energy can be absorbed by its surroundings and release
d over time to those able to sense it.
I have decided to leave this area to those more equipped to deal with such over powering years of grief and broken dreams. Maybe somehow someday the past history of that beautiful land can somehow be made whole again.
Until then my heart aches for all those who walked so sadly before me under those beautiful trees and along that golden coastline of slavery and lost lives. I often think about what it may have been like to be born during a different time in history.
Even being born 50 years before would have brought me to a very different life experience. The only thing I can think to say about this entire encounter is that but for the Grace of God go I.
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