Hotel Parq Central

The story

When the Santa Fe Railway opened this Italianate medical complex in 1926 to treat injured rail workers, the multi-building campus was built strictly for physical rehabilitation. That purpose took a darker turn in 1981 when a group of psychiatrists purchased the property and renamed it Memorial Hospital, operating it as a residential psychiatric facility for children and teenagers. For twenty-five years, young patients underwent mental health treatment behind these walls until the facility shuttered in 2006, leaving the property dark and vacant on the hill above Central Avenue.

A $21 million historic renovation in 2010 converted the abandoned complex into a 74-room hotel, enclosing the old ambulance port into a sunlit conservatory lobby and restoring 160 original 1920s windows. But you can't just repaint a quarter-century of institutional distress. During the psychiatric era, patients and overnight medical staff logged identical unexplainable occurrences: oppressive heaviness in the air, disembodied whispers spoken directly into their ears, and unseen hands tugging bedsheets off sleeping bodies in the dead of night.

The concentration of unexplained activity centers on the top floor of the main building. Visitors and staff consistently report a female apparition lurking at the end of the right-wing hallway, watching anyone who walks down the corridor. Night security staff will tell you off the record that the elevators have a recurring habit of ascending to the top floor entirely unprompted. Look closely while walking the grounds and you'll spot wide hallways designed for hospital stretchers and archival postcard photos from its days as a railway ward.