Many people think nursing homes are spooky places. Some think they're downright scary and don't ever want to be sent to one.
But one nursing home situation led to an even spookier situation at the Lake County, Ill., coroner's office -- or so it seems. The Chicago Tribune tells the story.
The eerie things that have startled people in the coroner's office started in the late 1990s when the body of a woman was inadvertently left in the cooler at the morgue for several months, the Tribune said in its Oct. 30 editions. Workers at the office suggest strange knocking sounds, sudden movements and glimpses of people walking around what should be an empty autopsy room are because of a spirit angry at being forgotten.
She was a woman named Anna who died in a nursing home. Whether she was a lonely person there isn't clear, though you can infer that she was. She became truly lost after a deputy coroner picked up her body but forgot about her in a rush of other cases. Several months went by before someone got around to caring for her body. Then, when another deputy took her to a funeral home, weirdness began. The doors of the car locked and unlocked, windows went up and down by themselves, and when the deputy reached the home and went to take her out of the car, all the doors locked and the engine turned off.
Ever since, employees have reported odd noises in the morgue, things that one senior deputy, who thinks of himself as a scientist immune to ghost stories and a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, says he can't explain. Employees say they have heard knocking from inside the cooler where bodies are kept. They say a body's hand will fall and that they've seen persons walking in the autopsy room when a worker is the only ones around. They report doors staying open that are supposed to close automatically when they walk through them. They have heard loud whistling, sounding like a woman screaming, and attributed it to the wind.
Deputies have also reported receiving shocks from touching bodies when there were no electrical connections around, and seeing people at accident scenes walking around who were later found to have already been killed.
The deputies admit it's spooky, but say they don't feel it's dangerous.
True or not? These men of science say it happens and they can't explain it. Still, after all, it is the season for ghost stories.
It's just interesting that this one starts with a nursing home.
Michael Kosner, President
The Kosner Firm Chtd.
