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I've got a personal ghost story that is really creepy--unbelievable, but it is the honest to God's truth.

I was doing a paper on a mental hospital in Maine for college a couple of years ago. It was called Pineland, in Pownal Maine. It had been shut down for a long time.

When I looked into the long history of Pineland, I found all kinds of horrible things. The patients sat around naked in their own feces for days, or just chained up and forgotton about. The conditions there were extremely bad for a long time--mostly because they had no staffing, but also because of the view the medical establishment had about mentally retarded folk back then. There were a number of sadistic doctors that worked there, and many people died at a young age in Pineland. I don't think that place saw many happy days.

Well, I found out that a humanitarian group had bought Pineland and decided to renovate it. I decided that I could augment my paper by taking some video footage of Pineland before it was gone forever. So I rounded up a friend and we rolled out around five, after we knew the construction workers would be gone.

Now, Pineland is huge. It is not one building, but a cluster of about fifteen buildings. So the property is huge. We get on it and start looking around. A lot of the buildings had already been gutted, windows and doors gone but boarded up.

I started filming, talking a little about each building and what it had been used for. It was then that we heard some noise in the building.

There was no wind that day. We heard loud, loud pounding inside the building I was filming. But no one was inside! You know how I know? The doors were all padlocked and the windows were boarded. There was no way in.

Sufficently creeped out, we began to stalk around some other buildings. We found a ground window without a board, and stuck the camera in it. We heard the same pounding noise. Then, nothing. Then, BANG! Right next to the camera!

I screamed and pulled out of the window. We decided to do the ultimate test--get into one of the buildings.

We looked around for a building with a way in. Finally we found a forgotten back door on the side of what had been the hospital. We squeezed through the opening and went up some stairs.

We were in a huge, empty room. There was a wide corridor to the left, and then an identical large room. We were silent as I slowly panned the camera around.

Then we heard the banging. At first it was above us. Then it was quiet. Then the banging started in the other room. We edged to the stairs. Then came a bang in the hallway, and we ran for it.

We ran out the building, down the driveway, and into the car. When we got home, freaked out, my friend and I decided to make my husband watch the tape.

On the tape, all the noises can clearly be heard, and even some weird noises that I didn't hear while there. The creepy part? On the tape, when we enter the hospital and are going up the stairs, you can see little balls of light zipping around the screen. Diagonally, horizontally, and vertically. They form clusters and are sometimes lone. They were going across the screen the entire time we were in the hospital. When the noises occured, the balls of light intensified. I DID NOT SEE THIS WHILE FILMING.

My friend took her video camera home with the tape in it. She was going to make copies of it for me. While she was at work the next day, her teenage son used the camera to film some footage of their new dog. He taped over our Pineland visit.

So, I had proof but the tape was destroyed. Argh!

Teach you to hang around Maine!

Have you gone back? Tearing down buildings shouldn't have disturbed whatever was there...if anything was.

Did you believe in such things before you went?

Creepy sidebar to my ghost story in post 39. Ever since I posted that, my TV has been turning off by itself. All day. Is my TV on the fritz or is it something else.....

While she was at work the next day, her teenage son used the camera to film some footage of their new dog. He taped over our Pineland visit.

Wouldn't you know it. My dog would always eat my homework.

Seriously though; I've had a thing or two happen over the years and I don't doubt your story.

I’m not one to doubt your experiences, but I feel it my duty to offer up a possible explanation-

Do you have any idea of what the composition of the buildings were then?

Is it possible that the banging you heard was simply loose things falling about within the walls? Decayed boards, plaster/paint chunks... dead animals (or even pieces of people)?

The lights, I can’t claim any explanation for, but then, again, I am not fully aware of your observations.

Just some thoughts....