Finding Slimer : Newsham Park Hospital

Newsham Park Hospital in Liverpool lies derelict now but was the Liverpool Seamen's Orphan Institution. It is a beautiful grade II listed building in a state of disrepair.

It's taken me a long time to write this because even though the hunt turned out to be quite uneventful, it drained every ounce of energy I have. Be that just an emotional thing linked with lack of sleep or a spiritual thing, I don't know, but I do know I have not been able to sleep properly or concentrate. So here is the slightly late ghosty report.

The building is wonderful and I really didn't know much about it at all, I didn't look up anything so I could avoid being influenced by any outside information on the hunt.

Area 1

This was the laundry area. It had a nice feel to it and was full of staff lockers and steam presses. We sat and did some calling out but nothing came back other than through our medium Susan. She said there was a young boy and he was saying he was not allowed to play with us, a man was stopping him.

There were plastic bottles put out and the spirits were invited to knock them down, but this didn't happen. There was a bed pan in the hallway that oddly vanished and then turned up in the room we had just come out of. We think someone was just playing silly buggers but you never know.

We did have a large cardboard box down there and used it like a table for tipping. It did get rocking like crazy but didn't tip unfortunately.

Area 2

The only part of the place that bothered me was the naughty boys cupboards. I felt instantly horrid when I first walked in. I had no idea that was even there until the night, and when it was first mentioned to me I thought it was rooms that they were locked in. As soon as I stepped in the corridor I felt almost panicked, then I opened the first door and saw the tiny space and thought it was just a little storage cubby but then it just hit me that that was it and I wanted to cry. I didn't think I could stay in there to start with and felt like just running off, but I managed to compose myself. It was just a short corridor with these tiny cubby holes and lockable doors. I have since been told that a boy died in there after being locked in for a long time. Susan picked up on a boy with human bite marks, he had been locked in with two other boys for days. She also spoke to a young girl who was left there by her mother. She was locked in to give birth alone, not knowing what was happening to her. The baby was taken away and she was left there for a few more days. There was a man who would bang on the doors to make sure none of them could sleep.

We walked around some of the wards and tried a Ouija board, but nothing would come through. A go with the baby monitor did bring some results in the form of feedback that only seemed to come after asking questions. I am not sure if that might have just been a result of sound going through and then settling down though. We had a short call out in the dark too in a day room. It was a room for the mental patients and still had the furniture from those days. One of the seats had been picked apart, all the foam of the seat pulled to bits. I could just picture someone sat there pulling at it mindlessly for hours. During our call out in this room, a few reported a feeling of someone blowing on their face and touching their hair. Then one of our girls burst in to tears out of nowhere. She said it was just an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

Area 3

We went on to the kitchen area which had been a mortuary before it was a kitchen. I know, how lovely. We tried to table tip but found the room completely flat so moved on quickly.

Then was ward G which is meant to be the most haunted area of the whole building. I had been told this before the night, but did not actually realise that the area I was in was ward G until the day after. In this area I did start to feel as though someone was near me when I knew there was no one. We tried the franks box and got a few answers that seemed to be in context. We asked how many were there and it said a very clear 46. On looking up information in the following days, I saw that in the first year of the orphanage being open, it housed 14 girls and 46 boys. Might we have been in what was in the early days the boys dorm?

We did have a quick visit to the morgue where it had been relocated outside the main building. It was quite small and had the body trays still in the fridges and the rusted trolley for moving them around. The cremation/incinerator was more like a mid sized room than a chamber like I would have expected, and was only accessible through a small hatch low to the ground.

There is probably a few things I have missed out but my head has been that fuzzy that it's hard to pull it all together. I will add things in later if I find they are noteworthy.

I found a story from a lady who spent time in the orphanage. She painted a bleak picture.

Lady who lived in the orphanage