Location Description and History

Five hospitals in all were built in Santa Fe; the last one was secularized in 1976. The first, named the Old Seminary, was built in 1853 next to the site of the present day St. Francis Cathedral. That building was remodeled in 1865 and was used as a hospital, convent, and nurses' residence. In 1885, a new hospital was build and called the St. Vincent Sanitarium. In 1886 an annex was built, later to become La Residencia Nursing Home. The third and forth hospitals were completed in 1910 and 1953 in the same location as the others. The fifth was built in 1977 and located away from the historic downtown sites. The old structure how houses state offices and a nursing home, Villa Rivera , named for a beloved priest who was murdered.

LA RESIDENCIA - This nursing home originally housed the community hospital . The muffled crying of a little boy who died in room 311 is still heard by nurses. The child and his father both died of injuries suffered in an automobile accident on Interstate 25. The eerie sounds from Room 311 are so frequent that administrators try to keep the room unoccupied. When the state museum began storing Indian artifacts in the basement here, some nurses refused to enter the area. Strange sounds emanate from the basement rooms, and two nurses once saw a wall there ooze fresh blood.

ST. VINCENT HOSPITAL - The ghost of a very short Hispanic man dressed in old fashioned clothing, appeared several times to a nurse on the top floor of this three-story modern hospital. The ghost of a woman wearing a black mantilla was observed with the man. The ghostly couple seemed confused and in need of some kind of help. The hospital was built in 1977 on top of an old penitentiary graveyard. A more recent hospital operated on this same tract of land also reported paranormal activity.

The most challenging thing about the ghost hunt was navigating the building. The elevators were often the only way to get from one floor to another. The problem surfaced because some elevators do not work, some only stop on certain floors while others seemed to only go up or down. This created a maze of sorts which we had to navigate through.

We found unusual EM fields in the basement and in Room 311. No EVP or video was taken during this ghost hunt.

Photographs

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Other than two odd EM fields, we did not find much of anything.