Dear Readers,
I have to credit "Vida Diva" aka the News Diva for writing this well researched article about the alleged Haunted Insane Asylum of Alameda, California.
She and I working together, investigated this alleged haunting and we both interviewed several people in regards to their experiences. We both were there during the day when the fire was finally being put out and spoke to one of the guards on site and even met a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who was putting together a story.
She and I working together, investigated this alleged haunting and we both interviewed several people in regards to their experiences. We both were there during the day when the fire was finally being put out and spoke to one of the guards on site and even met a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who was putting together a story.
Ms. Vida has closed her account because she is going into a new direction she has given it to me to print it here with my updates.
Anyone wishing to re-print this article needs to contact me for permission and credit any references or quotes back to me.
All Updates are printed at the end. Along with pictures showing the former location of the original insane Asylum. Credit or locations of the pictures will be listed either within the article or at the end.
Friday, April 16, 2010
That is the case of this one building. I along with another
person who is a ghost hunter worked on researching this story and have now
published it.
I have to credit C. Coustier for helping me get in touch
with a number of people and also have post this disclaimer that I have to
respect the privacy of those that offered to be interviewed.
The pictures that is here was taken by Cameron
Platt/CameronObscura.com, more can be found on his Flicker site.
The Truth about the Haunted Insane Asylum of Alameda
A FIERY END FOR ALLEGED “HAUNTED INSANE ASYLUM”
Date Line: Alameda, CA. March 29 - April 2, 2009
Alameda firefighters responded to three separate alarms at
the abandoned Army Medical Depot at the area that is currently referred to as
Alameda Landing. The first two fires were classified as “nuisance” fires.
But by 2:30 a.m. early Sunday morning, the fire department
confronted the building fully engulfed by a fire that refused to be
extinguished, it was noted that the center core of the building was extremely
hot and would not be put down, the second and third stories of the building
eventually collapsed, ash flew more than 3 miles south of the fire, with heavy
smoke blanketing much of the area causing breathing difficultly for many people
that a Health advisory was called for everyone within a mile east of the
building.
Fire Chief Ricci Zombeck stated that all 24 of the city’s
on-duty firefighters were at the scene at some point during the blaze of the
150,000 foot square building.
Since the building was abandoned and not slated for
refurbishing or of any historical merit, the plan to deal with the fire was
control to prevent it from spreading, by doing this it did not place any fire
personnel at risk. Fire personnel from Oakland also assisted stating that the
flames could be seen well up into the Oakland Hills.
By late Monday evening, the final embers were finally
smothered out, leaving a burned ruined hulk of the old facility.
The land that it was on was not the Naval Air Station proper
but an annex to it, originally part of the 1930’s Army Air Corp known as Benton
Field until it was transferred to the Navy Department.
The abandon military building had a checkered past,
originally built in 1941 as a hospital and dental unit for military personnel,
it also distributed medical supplies and equipment to different military posts
and ships in the Bay Area.
In the 1950’s the hospital portion was only sporadically
used except for emergencies until a patient could be stabilized then
transferred to the Oakland Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. Eventually it was used
only for distribution of Medical supplies since it was next to the railroad and
truck transportation terminals for Naval Air Station Alameda.
By the 1970’s its hospital and dental usage was gone with
the downsizing after the Vietnam War, with much of the medical usage completely
transferred to the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital located in Oakland.
The building continued to be used to distribute medical
supplies through out NAS Alameda, its ships and other military locations in a
more than 100 mile radius; by that time it was known as the Navy FISC
Administration Building, since the administration for said distribution was
controlled within the former aging hospital.
By the mid 1990’s with the base closures going on through
out the United States, Naval Air Station Alameda, CA. was officially closed and
the now-known Navy Fleet Industrial Supply Center aka FISC Administration
Building, was abandoned.
The warehouses just on the other side of the railroad tracks
were rented out to different private companies to truck their various goods
around the Bay Area and other locations. The rail road tracks between the old
Admin Building and the warehouses had fallen into disuse during the 1980’s
since rail service was no longer needed to service the Naval Air Station.
With the building being abandoned, it was now a prime target
for graffiti vandals, teenagers looking to do mischief and drug users who used
it as a hide out to deal drugs and to shoot up. Rumor had it that on several
occasions’ bodies of drug users were found in the building, allegly having died
from drug overdose.
According to an Alameda Police Technician such rumors were
false, since no bodies had been found in the building each time a police
officer was called out. Police Officers are required to inspect a premises, and
officers had gone through the building each time, considering it was extremely
dangerous with weakened and rotting floorboards.
The FISC building was eventually slated for demolition and
development by the Catellus Company, but was halted due to a down turn in the
economy.
In late 2006 the FISC building started on its last and final
phase, that it was a haunted insane asylum.
Posted on the web site known as “Shadowlands” was this
imaginative blurb:
“Alameda - Haunted Insane Asylum -. - At the intersection of
Marina Village Pkwy and Mariner Square Dr, turn left and go straight. Take the
first right into an industrial parking lot and you'll see the asylum straight
ahead. Patients used to be tortured and killed there, and it's abandoned now.
At nighttime, stand out in the front and look at the fifth window from the
right on the second story.
The blinds open and close themselves. Sometimes when you
walk inside, you'll hear a loud scream the second you enter the door. Also, you
get the chills and have the feeling that someones behind you. When you're
inside, you will hear screaming coming from a distant room in the house. Down
in the basement there are ropes that people used to hang themselves with. Even
during the day, if you take pictures occasionally there will be orbs or even a
glowing, ghostly figure in the picture.”
Soon this false rumor spread over the Internet, with a high
degree of interest among the local youth.
According to one retired navy person R. Hughes (full name
withheld), who started a business in ship and building clean up, he had gone
through the building in 2005 to put a bid in to clean it out, knowing the
building when it was in working operation and after his examination of it,
prior to bidding, he stated to this writer that the description given in the “Shadowlands”
post was entirely false, a total fiction, most likely invented by a teen’s over
active imagination.
The gentleman stated "In that Shadowlands Website, it
states about this basement, well I've been down there and it's not very tall,
mostly it was set up to house the 'plant equipment' like generators, heating
and cooling systems, also old file cabinets with outdated information, lots of
that, there was nothing like what was described on that website. The kid who
posted that thing on "Shadowlands" should take up writing horror
novels, because that's all a lie."
Said one very frustrated Librarian Technician C. Coustier,
“You get these idiot people just believing this out of hand
without researching anything properly, I had a woman come in mid-April 2007 and
she insisted that it was a ‘haunted insane asylum’ when I told her what it
really was she refused to believe me and when I told her where the real mental
hospital was located she refused to believe that even more. Then she had the
nerve to tell me that she could ‘feel the pain of those trapped souls’, I can
tell you where that pain was and it may have been her having a headache from
the bad air of the place. And to top it off she said that there were needles
all over the place, when I told her that it was used by dopers to shoot up, she
could have contracted Hepatitus C or AIDS, yet she still refused to believe me!
Young people can be so foolish!”
The Technician found out that the wildly exaggerated rumor
had spread to Face book, Meet-Up.com, Yelp and other social networking sites
like a virus.
She continued, and shaking her head at the thought
"That's the problem with young people they choose to believe only what
they want to believe to fit their own personal ideas, even when the truth is
right in front of their noses; maybe that's why this government is so messed
up."
This disbelieving young female amateur ghost hunter was not
the only one, the same technician was asked to speak to two young men less than
2 months later, who had gone to investigate it and was met with the same
reaction from these young men
“…complete refusal to listen to the truth and total
disregard for their own safety. Just stupid, absolutly stupid.”
Finally when the technician found out that it was on
“Shadowlands” and was told that “since it’s on that site, that it must be
true,” by several of these non-trained ghost hunters, she e-mailed the web
masters 3 times, demanding that the posting be removed, that it was false story
and was placing a lot of people in danger.
Instead the web masters of “Shadowlands” put up this
disclaimer:
“October 2007 Warning: as with every haunted place on this
site; make sure you get permission to investigate. Trespassing is a crime. You
could get arrested or worse, hurt. Be smart, courteous, and be legal.”
Said the Technician: "Unbelievable! Even they, the
webmasters had no regard for the truth! That's why I do not trust those types
of websites."
But the trespassing continued, with young people going there
on a dare. One couple, who requested anonymity, decided to ride over one
evening just to look at the building safely from the outside and maybe take
photos to see if they could capture orbs, and EVP (electronic voice phenomena)
but instead were confronted by three (3)very real and very rough looking men,
not security guards. These men demanded that the couple come over to them. The
couple thinking these men were drug dealers they quickly left the area.
Later on several legitimate ghost hunters and their groups
had gone over to take pictures and see if they could capture EVP, without
entering the grounds deeming that the building was structurally unsafe, but
found their results were inconclusive.
Security officers for BOBAC C.F.S., the company that rents
the warehouses, have often been frustrated by the actions of trespassers and on
several occasions over the past few years had to call the local fire department
to quickly put out nuisance fires.
During the times that the base and annex area were still
under military control before the final transfer to City of Alameda hands, the
military police, then later the local police had to be called out for the same
reasons.
The same Library Technician researched the exact location of
the original mental hospital which she had discovered was located 3 miles south
of the FISC building.
According to her findings a privately run mental asylum was
located on what is now Park Street on the East side of the street bordered by
Park and Everett Streets and Central and Webb avenues; at that time Santa Clara
Avenue did not run completely through to High Street.
The hospital for the mentally insane called the Alameda Park
Asylum, was owned and operated by Doctors Eustace Trenor and Joseph C. Tucker;
the doctors had purchased the property from A. A. Cohen when it was Cohen’s
Park Hotel.
The doctors operated it from about 1861 to December of 1870,
when it closed down; the empty building was destroyed in a fire that occurred
on January 31, 1871.
The land was later portioned off, Santa Clara Avenue was
completed and Dr. Tucker built a three story Victorian style office building on
the corner of what is now the southwest corner of Santa Clara Avenue and Park
Street.
Above is the current building, below is the Tucker building after the old Sanatorium was torn down and it was built, it was remodeled in the 1930's.
Park Street was in fact named for the Sanatorium, perhaps
the only time a street was named for an insane asylum.
In the 1930’s the Tucker building, as it was later called,
was remodeled to reflect the popular art moderne style of the times and
currently houses La PiƱata Restaurant that sits on the site of the former
mental hospital, where, according to the Technician "They serve great food
and spirits of a different sort."
(3 years after the posting of this article on the original web site, the restaurant has since changed it's name but still does great business)
In October of 2008, a series of lectures were started at the
Alameda Free Library dealing with the history of Alameda. Since October was
associated with ghosts, the first lecture was about hauntings in Alameda both
real and imagined and as part of the imagined portion of the lecture, the FISC
building was featured to demonstrate how falsehoods can create ghostly
hauntings when none is there.
This was done in the hopes of putting the rumor of it being
what it wasn’t to rest, unfortunately it didn’t succeed. The name and false
urban legend stuck until its fiery end in 2009.
According to one of the security company’s officials, at
approximately 10:30 p.m. late Saturday evening, March 28, the officer on duty
called the Alameda Fire Department to report a fire at the abandoned building.
It was quickly put out, but by about Midnight the same evening the fire
Department was called out again, and again put the fire out.
When the third and final call came in early Sunday morning,
at 2:30 a.m. the fire department found the building fully engulfed in flames.
Recent reports say that witnesses saw two people quickly leaving the building
before the final fire.
Fire Investigators say that the fire is of suspicious
origins since there was no electrical or gas connections working and the
possibility of an accelerant may have been used.
It is this writers’ belief that since the building was
slated to be soon demolished that the investigation may not go any further.
It is also this writers’ belief that since there were 3
fires all within the same night at the same location with the final one being
successful, that there was a person or persons unknown who had made a
determined effort in seeking to destroy this building well before it’s
demolition date.
It is hoped that Alameda and Oakland does not have to deal
with a mentally unbalanced “fire bug” on their hands, but since it was reported
that at least two people were seen leaving the building, there is several other
theories that have been bandied about by local citizens:
1-- that it may have been homeless people trying to get
warm,
2--drug users possibly freebasing,
3--teenagers or young people seeking to do some serious
damage on a dare,
4--or perhaps someone hired to destroy the building since it
was free standing and not connected to any other building.
A fifth idea that went around is that perhaps some people
believed that the building was so "evil" that it should be destroyed.
Until the Fire Investigators complete their findings, those
theories are pure speculation.
By Summer of 2009 if not sooner, what is left of the alleged
“Haunted Insane Asylum of Alameda” will be no more, torn down and hauled way as
so much burnt debris, bulldozed and grated, filled in, covered and buried.
Hopefully its alleged ghosts finally laid to rest, hopefully
its falsely fictional tales of hauntings, horrible and terrifying to fade away
to some dim forgotten memory; or will they?
-30-
Since the writing of this article the former burned out Naval Hospital has since been torn down, almost any land mark of it's original location has been obliterated but if you want to know where it was, just go to the Target Store in that area. The store and it's parking lot now sits where the former hospital was located.
Safe to say if you want to do EVP recordings you'll stand less chance of meeting up with drug dealers like the previous adventurous couple.
The general theory is that it might have been arson, and is now considered a "cold case".
Safe to say if you want to do EVP recordings you'll stand less chance of meeting up with drug dealers like the previous adventurous couple.
The general theory is that it might have been arson, and is now considered a "cold case".