Demise of alleged Haunted Insane Asylum

Sometimes a building, just because it looks spooky will acquire a reputation for being haunted or being something it is not.

That is the case of this one building. I along with another person who is a ghost hunter worked on researching this story and have now published it.

I have to credit C. Coustier for helping me get in touch with a number of people and also have post this disclaimer that I have to respect the privacy of those that offered to be interviewed.

The pictures that is here was taken by Cameron Platt/CameronObscura.com, more can be found on his Flicker site.

The Truth about the Haunted Insane Asylum of Alameda



A FIERY END FOR ALLEGED “HAUNTED INSANE ASYLUM”

Date Line: Alameda, CA. March 29 - April 2, 2009

At 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning, March 29, 2009, in a pre-dawn fire of spectacularly evil beauty, the alleged Haunted Insane Asylum of Alameda met its fiery end, not with a whimper at the metallic hands of a crushing bulldozer, but in a Valhalla-like Glory that would make a Valkyrie proud.

Alameda firefighters responded to three separate alarms at the abandoned Army Medical Depot at the area that is currently referred to as Alameda Landing. The first two fires were classified as “nuisance” fires.

But by 2:30 a.m. early Sunday morning, the fire department confronted the building fully engulfed by a fire that refused to be extinguished, it was noted that the center core of the building was extremely hot and would not be put down, the second and third stories of the building eventually collapsed, ash flew more than 3 miles south of the fire, with heavy smoke blanketing much of the area causing breathing difficultly for many people that a Health advisory was called for everyone within a mile east of the building.

Fire Chief Ricci Zombeck stated that all 24 of the city’s on-duty firefighters were at the scene at some point during the blaze of the 150,000 foot square building.

Since the building was abandoned and not slated for refurbishing or of any historical merit, the plan to deal with the fire was control to prevent it from spreading, by doing this it did not place any fire personnel at risk. Fire personnel from Oakland also assisted stating that the flames could be seen well up into the Oakland Hills.

By late Monday evening, the final embers were finally smothered out, leaving a burned ruined hulk of the old facility.

The land that it was on was not the Naval Air Station proper but an annex to it, originally part of the 1930’s Army Air Corp known as Benton Field until it was
transferred to the Navy Department.

The abandon military building had a checkered past, originally built in 1941 as a hospital and dental unit for military personnel, it also distributed medical supplies and equipment to different military posts and ships in the Bay Area.

In the 1950’s the hospital portion was only sporadically used except for emergencies until a patient could be stabilized then transferred to the Oakland Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. Eventually it was used only for distribution of Medical supplies since it was next to the railroad and truck transportation terminals for Naval Air Station Alameda.

By the 1970’s its hospital and dental usage was gone with the downsizing after the Vietnam War, with much of the medical usage completely transferred to the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital located in Oakland.

The building continued to be used to distribute medical supplies through out NAS Alameda, its ships and other military locations in a more than 100 mile radius; by that time it was known as the Navy FISC Administration Building, since the administration for said distribution was controlled within the former aging hospital.

By the mid 1990’s with the base closures going on through out the United States, Naval Air Station Alameda, CA. was officially closed and the now-known Navy Fleet Industrial Supply Center aka FISC Administration Building, was abandoned.

The warehouses just on the other side of the railroad tracks were rented out to different private companies to truck their various goods around the Bay Area and other locations. The rail road tracks between the old Admin Building and the warehouses had fallen into disuse during the 1980’s since rail service was no longer needed to service the Naval Air Station.

With the building being abandoned, it was now a prime target for graffiti vandals, teenagers looking to do mischief and drug users who used it as a hide out to deal drugs and to shoot up. Rumor had it that on several occasions’ bodies of drug users were found in the building, allegly having died from drug overdose.

According to an Alameda Police Technician such rumors were false, since no bodies had been found in the building each time a police officer was called out. Police Officers are required to inspect a premises, and officers had gone through the building each time, considering it was extremely dangerous with weakened and rotting floorboards.

The FISC building was eventually slated for demolition and development by the Catellus Company, but was halted due to a down turn in the economy.

In late 2006 the FISC building started on its last and final phase, that it was
a haunted insane asylum.

Posted on the web site known as “Shadowlands” was this imaginative blurb:

“Alameda - Haunted Insane Asylum -. - At the intersection of Marina Village Pkwy and Mariner Square Dr, turn left and go straight. Take the first right into an industrial parking lot and you'll see the asylum straight ahead. Patients used to be tortured and killed there, and it's abandoned now. At nighttime, stand out in the front and look at the fifth window from the right on the second story.

The blinds open and close themselves. Sometimes when you walk inside, you'll hear a loud scream the second you enter the door. Also, you get the chills and have the feeling that someones behind you. When you're inside, you will hear screaming coming from a distant room in the house. Down in the basement there are ropes that people used to hang themselves with. Even during the day, if you take pictures occasionally there will be orbs or even a glowing, ghostly figure in the picture.”

Soon this false rumor spread over the Internet, with a high degree of interest among the local youth.

According to one retired navy person R. Hughes (full name withheld), who started a business in ship and building clean up, he had gone through the building in 2005 to put a bid in to clean it out, knowing the building when it was in working operation and after his examination of it, prior to bidding, he stated to this writer that the description given in the “Shadowlands” post was entirely false, a total fiction, most likely invented by a teen’s over active imagination.

The gentleman stated "In that Shadowlands Website, it states about this basement, well I've been down there and it's not very tall, mostly it was set up to house the 'plant equipment' like generators, heating and cooling systems, also old file cabinets with outdated information, lots of that, there was nothing like what was described on that website. The kid who posted that thing on "Shadowlands" should take up writing horror novels, because that's all a lie."

Said one very frustrated Librarian Technician C. Coustier,
“You get these idiot people just believing this out of hand without researching anything properly, I had a woman come in mid-April 2007 and she insisted that it was a ‘haunted insane asylum’ when I told her what it really was she refused to believe me and when I told her where the real mental hospital was located she refused to believe that even more. Then she had the nerve to tell me that she could ‘feel the pain of those trapped souls’, I can tell you where that pain was and it may have been her having a headache from the bad air of the place. And to top it off she said that there were needles all over the place, when I told her that it was used by dopers to shoot up, she could have contracted Hepatitus C or AIDS, yet she still refused to believe me! Young people can be so foolish!”

The Technician found out that the wildly exaggerated rumor had spread to Face book, Meet-Up.com, Yelp and other social networking sites like a virus.

She continued, and shaking her head at the thought "That's the problem with young people they choose to believe only what they want to believe to fit their own personal ideas, even when the truth is right in front of their noses; maybe that's why this government is so messed up."

This disbelieving young female amateur ghost hunter was not the only one, the same technician was asked to speak to two young men less than 2 months later, who had gone to investigate it and was met with the same reaction from these young men
“…complete refusal to listen to the truth and total disregard for their own
safety. Just stupid, absolutly stupid.”

Finally when the technician found out that it was on “Shadowlands” and was told that “since it’s on that site, that it must be true,” by several of these non-trained ghost hunters, she e-mailed the web masters 3 times, demanding that the posting be removed, that it was false story and was placing a lot of people in danger.

Instead the web masters of “Shadowlands” put up this disclaimer:

“October 2007 Warning: as with every haunted place on this site; make sure you get permission to investigate. Trespassing is a crime. You could get arrested or
worse, hurt. Be smart, courteous, and be legal.”

Said the Technician: "Unbelievable! Even they, the webmasters had no regard for the truth! That's why I do not trust those types of websites."

But the trespassing continued, with young people going there on a dare. One couple, who requested anonymity, decided to ride over one evening just to look at the building safely from the outside and maybe take photos to see if they could capture orbs, and EVP (electronic voice phenomena) but instead were confronted by three (3)very real and very rough looking men, not security guards. These men demanded that the couple come over to them. The couple thinking these men were drug dealers they quickly left the area.

Later on several legitimate ghost hunters and their groups had gone over to take pictures and see if they could capture EVP, without entering the grounds deeming that the building was structurally unsafe, but found their results were inconclusive.

Security officers for BOBAC C.F.S., the company that rents the warehouses, have often been frustrated by the actions of trespassers and on several occasions over the past few years had to call the local fire department to quickly put out nuisance fires.

During the times that the base and annex area were still under military control before the final transfer to City of Alameda hands, the military police, then later the local police had to be called out for the same reasons.

The same Library Technician researched the exact location of the original mental hospital which she had discovered was located 3 miles south of the FISC building.

According to her findings a privately run mental asylum was located on what is now Park Street on the East side of the street bordered by Park and Everett Streets and Central and Webb avenues; at that time Santa Clara Avenue did not run completely through to High Street.

The hospital for the mentally insane called the Alameda Park Asylum, was owned and operated by Doctors Eustace Trenor and Joseph C. Tucker; the doctors had purchased the property from A. A. Cohen when it was Cohen’s Park Hotel.

The doctors operated it from about 1861 to December of 1870, when it closed down; the empty building was destroyed in a fire that occurred on January 31, 1871.

The land was later portioned off, Santa Clara Avenue was completed and Dr. Tucker built a three story Victorian style office building on the corner of what is now the southwest corner of Santa Clara Avenue and Park Street.

Park Street was in fact named for the Sanatorium, perhaps the only time a street was named for an insane asylum.

In the 1930’s the Tucker building, as it was later called, was remodeled to reflect the popular art moderne style of the times and currently houses La Piñata Restaurant that sits on the site of the former mental hospital, where, according to the Technician "They serve great food and spirits of a different sort."

In October of 2008, a series of lectures were started at the Alameda Free Library dealing with the history of Alameda. Since October was associated with ghosts, the first lecture was about hauntings in Alameda both real and imagined and as part of the imagined portion of the lecture, the FISC building was featured to demonstrate how falsehoods can create ghostly hauntings when none is there.

This was done in the hopes of putting the rumor of it being what it wasn’t to rest, unfortunately it didn’t succeed. The name and false urban legend stuck until its fiery end in 2009.

According to one of the security company’s officials, at approximately 10:30 p.m. late Saturday evening, March 28, the officer on duty called the Alameda Fire Department to report a fire at the abandoned building. It was quickly put out, but by about Midnight the same evening the fire Department was called out again, and again put the fire out.

When the third and final call came in early Sunday morning, at 2:30 a.m. the fire department found the building fully engulfed in flames. Recent reports say that witnesses saw two people quickly leaving the building before the final fire.

Fire Investigators say that the fire is of suspicious origins since there was no electrical or gas connections working and the possibility of an accelerant may have been used.

It is this writers’ belief that since the building was slated to be soon demolished that the investigation may not go any further.

It is also this writers’ belief that since there were 3 fires all within the same night at the same location with the final one being successful, that there was a person or persons unknown who had made a determined effort in seeking to destroy this building well before it’s demolition date.

It is hoped that Alameda and Oakland does not have to deal with a mentally unbalanced “fire bug” on their hands, but since it was reported that at least two people were seen leaving the building, there is several other theories that have been bandied about by local citizens:

1-- that it may have been homeless people trying to get warm,
2--drug users possibly freebasing,
3--teenagers or young people seeking to do some serious damage on a dare,
4--or perhaps someone hired to destroy the building since it was free standing and not connected to any other building.

A fifth idea that went around is that perhaps some people believed that the building was so "evil" that it should be destroyed.

Until the Fire Investigators complete their findings, those theories are pure speculation.

By Summer of 2009 if not sooner, what is left of the alleged “Haunted Insane Asylum of Alameda” will be no more, torn down and hauled way as so much burnt debris, bulldozed and grated, filled in, covered and buried.

Hopefully its alleged ghosts finally laid to rest, hopefully its falsely fictional tales of hauntings, horrible and terrifying to fade away to some dim forgotten memory;or will they?

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