Guelph paranormal investigator Krista Maryk isn’t surprised by the number of ghostly encounters that have their legs in healthcare facilities.
“It shouldn’t surprise me that there are so many stories, but at the same time hearing all the crazy, concrete stories of people seeing this stuff is mind-blowing,” the 29-year-old admitted, during an April Zoom conversation.
Maryk portrayed a straight-jacket-wearing shade in Episode 7 of “Haunted Hospitals”, and scenes were shot in an old school in Ontario. Acting was a chance to return to her college days when she attended a Toronto acting college.
“I’ve been on sets before, here and there, so it was nice to be back doing it and to be in action — literally,” she said, adding the whole time shooting her segment she pondered whether the old school was haunted or not. “Whenever I go into places like that or I’m just immersed into an environment that’s kind of spooky, I’m always like I wonder … It’s my paranormal investigator side coming out and trying to feel what I could potentially feel.”
Maryk’s Instagram account is full of short videos of allegedly haunted locations across Ontario, Quebec and the United States — former hospitals included. Her investigative team, Walking Among Us, is starting to film Season 3 of their YouTube series.
The nurses who shared their stories with the producers of “Haunted Hospitals” definitely felt something at their workplaces.
Kim Kidson is a travel nurse who lives in Nanaimo but travels across British Columbia to help out where there is need. She connected with the “Haunted Hospitals” team through a community travel nurse page. For her segment, she focused on one location that had two spirits: the ghost of a little girl and an overwhelming male presence.
The 35-year-old admitted that she does have a sensitivity to the paranormal and has had multiple interactions throughout her 10-year professional career. Some experiences have been stronger than others, including the little girl and male presence.
At this particular small hospital, she heard footsteps and laughter one night, and on another, she heard screaming another night. Upon investigation, she did not find the source. As for the imposing man, Kidson was attending to a patient when the patient screamed.
“I actually said to her, ‘I didn’t mean to scare you”. And she said, ‘You didn’t scare me. That man scared me,’” Kidson recalled.
The episode with Kidson’s story will air on April 12 at 10 p.m.
Meg Harrell is a registered nurse based out of Orlando, Florida, who educates nursing students through her TikTok account NurseMegRN. Although it’s warm and 29 degrees Celsius where she is, Harrell is always game for a cold spot tale and she shares them through social media as well.
For “Haunted Hospitals”, Harrell shared two particular stories that still make her blood run cold. Her main tale, however, focused on a patient who was in for a routine procedure, but no matter what succour was provided, her anxiety would not go away.
“Sometimes people don’t have any knowledge about what they need to have done, and they’re very apprehensive, so of course we educated them as much as we can,” Harrell said, during a late March Zoom call. “Nothing would console her. Her whole family kept trying to convince her, ‘Hey, you need to have this done’.
“I say goodbye to her, get the chart all together and the transporter takes her down to the OR. Not five minutes later I heard Code Blue OR Room 2 and I got goosebumps.”
That patient ended up visiting Harrell one last time as a way of telling her, “I told you so”, by moving the locked bed toward the window and swinging the EKG monitor leads back and forth.
“I was uneasy the rest of that shift,” the 37-year-old admitted, adding her episode will air May 10 at 10 p.m.
Season 5 of “Haunted Hospitals” premieres April 5 at 10 p.m. on T+E Channel. Subject matter experts Christopher Allen Brewer and Richard Estep return to provide insight into the experiences shared by Kidson, Harrell and others.