The Tourtured Souls Of Building One
The tortured souls of building one (what the brochures don’t tell you).
“The dead body of Thomas Meredith, an escaped lunatic, has been found hanging to a tree near Avondale Asylum.”
It was this headline in The Evening Post Newspaper which first drew attention to a series of unreported deaths at “lunatic asylums” up and down New Zealand. At the time of Thomas Meredith’s death, in 1897, The Post revealed they had instructions from the police not to report on deaths at the Asylum, so that patients who died were buried without inquest or any public knowledge of their deaths.
World-wide, former mental institutions have drawn accusations of paranormal activity and ghost sightings. Few students who study at Unitec would be unaware of the rumours of ghost sightings in Building One, the main building of the original Asylum. Some ghost-busters attribute the prevalence of sightings at these institutes to the high number of deaths in one location, others fault the fear and stigma surrounding mental heath itself.
On several different occasions professional “ghost-busters” or groups specialising in paranormal activity have come and spent the night in Building One. Some stays have yielded no results. However, last year In Unison writer Joseph Harper spent the evening with the team from Phoen-X Paranormal, and several incidents occurred, including one team member being “led” by a young female ghost and then somewhat possessed, through crying her tears.
When asked, Unitec Security put the ghost rumours down to folklore, urban legends passed down from one student to another. They say eerie noises are the result of air entering joints of old windows, and creaking and banging is caused by the old iron heating systems. They say there is a logical explanation for every peculiar noise. However, they understand it is common for people to believe that, because it was an institute that incarcerated people, the spirituality of some patients remain.
From its beginning, Building One was ill-fated and dogged with mysterious occurrences. Originally The Whau Lunatic Asylum, the first lunatic asylum in Auckland, it suffered many set backs in building consent and funding. It was originally built to sit three miles away from central Auckland and was surrounded by an extensive farm. In 1976, the Carrington Technical Institute (now Unitec) admitted its first students who studied on the grounds alongside the hospital patients. Students of art and design now study in the main Asylum building, and the modern Mason Clinic, provider of Auckland Regional Forensic Psychiatry Services, is still located on the grounds in newer buildings.
Since its creation in 1865 the Whau Lunatic Asylum underwent several name changes (known as The Lunatic Asylum at the Whau, Auckland Lunatic Asylum, Avondale Hospital, Auckland Mental Health Hospital, Oakley Hospital and, finally, Carrington Psychiatric Hospital) it is now most commonly referred to as Carrington/Oakley hospital. It housed many household names, both feared and respected, before eventually closing in 193l. These included celebrated New Zealand author Janet Frame and “Samurai Swordsman” convicted murder Antonie Dixon.
In the late 1800s committed patients averaged 900 in number, with an estimated average of eight deaths a year. The Asylum was gutted by fire twice. The first, and worst, was set by a patient in 1877 and resulted in one female “inmate” being burned to death. In 2007 In Unison reported the woman responsible for lighting the fire was also killed, however this is incorrect as she was alive to give evidence to police and reporters about her role in lighting it.
The spread of the fire remained mysterious, reports show officials could find nothing to indicate why the abundant water supply from Oakley Creek had failed on the night of the fire. Accusations were made that the City Council had turned the water off. Contributors to the NZ Ghosts Forum have accumulated the reports on the incident and drawn attention to the odd coincidence of water being turned off the same night as a fire. Over the years there have been several reports, rumours and sightings of a woman in Building one, these could possibly be linked to the patient who was burned alive.
Additional deaths occurred among both patients and staff in the typhoid epidemic of 1860 and subsequent epidemics. In 1922 alone 60 patients are believed to have fatally contracted typhoid. These deaths were allegedly not made public because they related to the poor sanitation at the hospital, due to the use of dirty water wells. In 1885 records show one of the inmates struck a warden in the neck with a pitchfork, killing him instantly. It is clear from even these limited reported deaths that hundreds of people died on the site during its almost 130 years as a mental heath institute.
A group of Oakly nurses, Photograph from the Margaret Matilda White collection at the Auckland Museum
Patients with senile dementia made up a large portion of patients, due to their age most of them are assumed to have died of natural causes or common diseases such as Typhoid or Tuberculosis. Many of the other deaths were suicides, those few which were recorded including Tomas Meridith’s and Thomas Lynch. Lynch, had been admitted, against his will, for epilepsy - a condition easily treated nowadays with medication.
The most “disturbed” inmates reportedly spent weeks on end shackled in cells deep in the foundations of Building One in a “dungeon” with no ventilation or natural lighting, and were forcibly removed once a fortnight for washing. Hooks are still visible on the walls, used possibly to chain patients to the walls. These underground basement “dungeons” are no longer open to students. Although used at one time for archiving they proved too damp to use as storage. Unitec security are the only members of staff who have keys to access the area. However, renovated wards, common areas and bathrooms are now used as classrooms in Buildings one, 6, 48 and 76. Carrington’s Bar “the pump house” was, in fact, a pump house.
Many ghost-busters believe the high number of ghost sightings at former mental institutes is due to the high incidence of pain, anger, human suffering and resentment suffered by those who died there. Even those who don’t believe in ghosts can’t argue the suffering many patients at Carrington’s underwent.
Much of the abuse in Psychiatric hospitals over the past 100 or so years, and up to the late 1990s, is only just coming to light. In 2004 a man who spent time in “Oakley” the male forensic unit at the Asylum told the New Zealand Herald he had been beaten so badly at times that he would be knocked unconscious for up to three days. He had been committed in 1971, aged 17, for withdrawal from heroin addiction.
In the same article, another patient told of his time at Oakley where he was sent at age 11, for petty theft. He was kept in solitary confinement for six months and given large doses of needless medication. He told the reporter “I was like a zombie for a day or so.”
In June 2004 Police re-opened the death case of an 11-year-old boy at nearby Kingseat Psychiatric hospital in South Auckland. A fellow patient claimed he had died because of systematic abuse, rather than having died of pneumonia as previously believed. This opened the floodgates of complaints from former patients of mental hospitals. Around 15 of these were from Oakley. Wellington Lawyer Sonja Cooper said of the complaints “We’ve got a number of our Porirua clients who ended up at Oakly when it was quite a brutal environment from the sounds of it.” She added that many patients were never mentally ill and should never have been in psychiatric hospitals.
The alleged abuse suffered by former patients included beatings and sexual abuse by staff and other patients, inappropriate and excessive use of electric-shock therapy (ECT), drugs and solitary confinement. Most complainants were aged 8-16 at the time they were patients. Despite the mass of complaints, the government rejected calls for a mass inquiry into the allegations in late 2004. Around 90 former patients took their cases individually to the high court.
Auckland mental health nurse Jim Ferguson, who worked at Oakley/Carrington for about 15 years on and off told the The New Zealand Herald he had not personally seen any abuse “But it would not be beyond belief.” He knew of several patients being hit by staff and said nurses relied of the larger and more assertive patients to help keep those who were more violent “in line”. Former nurses who worked at similar institutes in the 1960s describe psychiatric patients being treated like animals with a disregard for basic human rights. Titewhai Harawira, matriarch of the Maori activist Harawira family, is known for her passionate protests and hikoi. It is less known that she was jailed just over 20 years ago for assaulting a psychiatric patient when she was head of then Carrington Hospital's Maori Health Unit.
Most of the abuse has been swept under the carpet or is unknown by students who study on the Unitec grounds. The mere fact that Building One was a mental heath institute at all continues to intrigue and scare students.
Sightings:
- NZ Ghosts believe that if you hear a woman screaming in one of the bathrooms in the west wing it’s probably the ghost of a female patient who was scalded to death and killed by another patient in the bath with hot water.
- Joseph Harper saw a mug fly across the room and break when he spent a night in the old chapel. Read Joseph’s full account of his night in Building One.
- Phoen-X Paranormal team member saw a young woman during a overnight stay who tells him she needs help. Read full account.
- Dr Louise Allen felt the presence of a man standing behind her in one of the rooms in Building 48 two years ago.
Other occurrences:
- Doors slamming by themselves
- The sound of keys clanging
- Flickering lights
- Whispering voices
- Women screaming
- Books thrown of shelves
- Music playing
Key haunted locations:
- The Building One basement.
- The chapel.
- The Building One library.
- Building One West wing bathrooms.
- The old morgue.
- A tunnel running between Buildings One and 76 (The existence of said tunnel has been strongly disputed, it is said to be an exageration or mistaken for the water pipes running under the campus.)
- Building 76 (was a male ward for the most dangerous patients).
- Building 48 (was a male ward for less dangerous patients).
- Performing and Screen Arts Building (acute admitting ward for the potentially dangerous patients).
Read More:
Stacey Knott’s night with security
Joseph Harpers night Phoen-X Paranormal
Ghosts Attack Student In Building One
Stacey Knott’s History of Building One
Seen a ghost in Building One? Did you work at Carrington’s while it was a hospital? Were you a patient? Contact inunison@unitec.ac.nz and share your story!