Before 1983, the building was the old St. Vincent’s Hospital, but it became better known as La Residencia. Many employees believed the hospital to be haunted.
According to a former employee, the basement of La Residencia was hell. She claims that the museum offices next door housed old Indian artifacts in a hallway in that basement.
“It would not surprise me if there were skeletal remains down there in cardboard boxes,” she told Garcez in an interview for his book “New Mexico Ghost Stories.”
She recalls how employees would send newcomers into the basement alone as a “rite of passage,” and once she went with them. When the person they were sending down had not come back, she went back to investigate. She claims she saw shadows, and once she found the woman, her flashlight shone on blood oozing from the walls. The blood seems to be a recurring event, as others have claimed to have seen it.
The other story is about Room 311. One nurse recounts how one night she heard continual crying coming from the room. She checked the room several times before reporting it to a superior. The other woman told her, “Honey, everyone who has ever worked that third floor has heard that same crying sound.” The nurse then listened carefully and realized it sounded more like a child gasping for breath.
“In the pediatric unit, I would at times cradle and rock babies who had been given a terminal prognosis, so I can never erase from my memory the sounds of a baby’s last few breaths of life, that sad drawn-out, labored cry. So there was no doubt in my mind the cries I was hearing were the gasps of a dying baby,” She told Garcez.
Room 311
She also stated that she brought it up at lunch with her colleagues a few days later, and one of them told a tragic story.
“It was Christmas Eve, and we received an emergency radio call from the state police informing us of a fatal accident on I-25. A father and son were in a two-car collision; the father had been killed instantly, but the little boy had sustained internal injuries. He was still alive, in critical condition. I can still recall the child’s little body gasping for breath and his long intermittent cries of pain,” she said.
When asked which room he was admitted to, the answer was Room 311.
The first recorded claims from SGHA
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.
Links to more Ghost Stories:
Haunted New Mexico: St. Vincent Hospital
Source:
Santa Fe: Oldest Capital in the U.S Overrun with Ghosts?