Eerie images show a sanatorium in ruins that’s said to be haunted by the those who died after being treated there in the early 1900s.
Located in a secluded area on top of a hill, The Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium was built in 1921 to care for adults and children suffering from Tuberculosis.
When advanced treatments for the condition were discovered, the declining need for the sanatorium closed the facility in 1975. It has remained unoccupied since, falling into ruins.
Now, the hospital that appears in tact from the outside is broken and dilapidated from the inside. Brick and rubble line the abandoned hallways and plants have begun to grow in what once were children’s bedrooms.
American photographer Dax Ward, who is now based in Bangkok, captured the withering historic building as he travels around the world searching for the beauty in decaying structures.
Eerie images show a sanatorium in ruins that’s said to be haunted by the those who died after being treated there in the early 1900s
The Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium was built in 1921 to care for adults and children suffering from Tuberculosis
American photographer Dax Ward captured the withering historic building as he travels around the world searching for the beauty in decaying structures
Advanced treatment and a declining need for the sanatorium closed the facility in 1975
Now, the hospital that appears in tact from the outside is broken and dilapidated from the inside
Ward said that he was in the US visiting family for a month and looking for sites to shoot and explore when he came across this building.
‘I’ve been wanting to document an old TB sanatorium for a long time & jumped at the chance to shoot this one, even though I wasn’t sure if it still existed,’ he said.
Since all the windows and doors are barred shut, Ward and his father were lucky to find a window whose rusty iron gates had been removed. They moved the gate to the side and entered through the basement area which seemed to be the only entrance point at the time.
He said it was certainly eerie inside but the sun and clear blue skies outside offset any uneasy feelings.
‘The location of the building is very serene, sitting on a grassy hillside and overlooking a small lake and wooded area. I can only hope that the location brought the patients some sort of aesthetic relief for all of the pain that they surely suffered there,’ the photographer added.
Brick and rubble line the abandoned hallways and bathrooms of the building
The photographer said he’d been wanting to document an old TB sanatorium for a long time and jumped at the chance to shoot this one
Plants have begun to grow in what once were children’s bedrooms
The photographer said the floor was covered with brick and debris making for treacherous stair climbing
Ward snuck in through an open window with his father. All the other windows and doors were barred shut
The Harper building was the children’s section of the hospital where it’s rumored many died and their spirits still haunt the facility.
Those rumors are partly due to the testing that was done on Native American children to find cures for the disease.
Oklahoma author Cheryl Pierson, whose dad had Tuberculosis, met a Native American who had been admitted to the sanatorium.
She said the woman had been admitted as a teenager and lost many of her friends to the bacterial infection.
The woman remembered one creepy encounter where the janitor, who also helped dig graves, pointed at her and said: ‘When will I be coming to you?’
Cheryl researched the sanatorium and found that experiments were done on the Native children.
She said there was a white Tuberculosis hospital in the area, of which Cheryl’s dad was a patient, and experiments were done on the Native children to find advances in treating the white hospital patients. It’s believed many of the spirits which haunt the facility are of those children.
In the early 20th century, nurses lived at the hospital and the head nurse lived in the children’s quarters.
The central portion of the children’s Harper building had a large reception area for visitors, a treatment room and a kitchen and dining hall.
The second floor housed isolation wards, a solarium and a school room.
Other sections of the building were used as sleeping porches on the south and dressing rooms on the opposite to the north.
Much of the building photographed by Dax is now structurally unsound and leaks from the roof making it almost impossible to renovate.
Ward said the unstable bricks around the staircase were their main concern.
‘I was walking around the place with my dad and we had to be careful where we stepped as the floor is covered with debris and the loose bricks make for some treacherous stair climbing,’ he said.
And though the facility seems less-eerie during the day, Ward said he wouldn’t want to go there at night ‘due to a combination of the creepy atmosphere and the danger of low visibility in an unsafe structure.’
The building is still owned by the Oklahoma Government and the Harper building where the children lived is in danger of being demolished.
Ward is now planning to explore more historical sites in Thailand and South Africa.
The Harper building was the children’s section of the hospital where it’s rumored many died and their spirits still haunt the facility
The building is still owned by the Oklahoma Government and the Harper building where the children lived is in danger of being demolished
Though Ward said the sun and clear blue sky took away from the eerie feeling, he wouldn’t dare go there at night