Those in the paranormal community are a thorough bunch. They leave no stone unturned, no forest unsearched, and no dark corner of any state unexplored. They’ve outed every ghost, documented every haunt, explored every rumor and shrapnel of mythical lore, and yet, here I find myself, alone in the damp and crumbling halls of a building for which no record exists and no investigator has ever truly set foot in. Here, on the periphery of the Mineral Wells city limits, abandoned in the barren fields of this dreary town; I am alone in the Beach Army Hospital.
Beach Army Hospital Researched
I’ve done my research, and the only indisputable fact I can spew about this building is that in the eyes of the world, it might as well not even exist. There are no videos of overnight hunts, no independent publications or blogs that have been written, and no record of it’s past with the Mineral Wells Chamber of Commerce. It once served as an installation of the Fort Wolters Military base. It was a hospital devoted to treating active-duty military personnel, but when Fort Wolters shuttered its doors at the end of the Vietnam War, so too did this facility. So here it has sat since the early 1970s, and here I stand in 2020. The first paranormal investigator ever granted access to the structure in nearly half a century.
I stumbled upon this enigmatic situation at the behest of Brett Hobson, the owner of Beach Army Hospital, LLC. In an effort to help fund the hospital's renovations, Hobson wants to open the doors of Beach Army Hospital for the world to see and wants to do so by allowing private overnight ghost hunts of the facility to any team brave enough to venture to its location.
The dark Past
The site of countless deaths, due to the building's operation as a hospital. There is also the looming threat of something sinister. Hobson and his family had the misfortune of discovering the building had been used as the destination for numerous satanic rituals. They discovered pentagrams and upside-down crosses painted on the walls of a former patient's bedroom. According to Hobson, the energy inside the room was so strong “the family dog nearly jumped out of the second-story window when brought in there.”
While there is no doubt in my mind that Beach Army Hospital will quickly prove itself to be amongst the most haunted locations in Texas, if not the country, it’s the spotlight in the paranormal community that will be short-lived. With construction on the building set to begin later this fall, there will only be a few months open for investigators to explore the inside of the building. Then it will close and at that time it will become the Perfect Technician Academy - a local trades training school catering to the veteran community - has announced they will be leasing the building for their own use. What’s more, with the spirits inside having had no interaction with the living in decades, those few months of investigations are poised to yield some utterly groundbreaking evidence of spirits who are eager to make themselves known.
Voices Heard
The disembodied voices of men and women linger in the stairways and halls. The blackened apparitions of former patients can be seen lurking in shadowed corners. The shuffling of phantom footsteps can be heard all around you, and the resident poltergeists are quick to move objects before your very eyes. All of this evidence and more deserve to be captured, and it will be up to you and your team to do so. Visit The Haunted Historian (@haunted.historian) on Instagram for a link to the locations website for bookings, and prepare to conduct an investigation unlike any you’ve ever done before. Happy hunting!