Inside St. Albans: A History That Still Haunts, Part Two | Grave Talks CLASSIC

0:00Welcome to part two of our interview with Paranormal Investigator Jake V about the St. Elbons sanatorium. Let's continue that conversation. It's one of those stories where you have to wonder what is going through the mind of the nurses of the staff because obviously the reactions from the boy denoises the levitating. This is not part of a normal patient's reaction to anything. What exactly do you think they, if their story is indeed true and it's difficult because this is just a speculative question. But what on earth do you think is going through the mind of the doctors and these nurses when things like that would be going on with that patient? I think they were absolutely terrified. As terrified as a human being, it's capable of being terrified. Like you said, they weren't trained for this. They were prepared to deal with demonic possession or levitating patients and that would

1:01explain why after they got the claim to what happened with the boy from his own uncle, they stuck them immediately in male isolation. Kept him there all day all night not allowed to leave. I think they were absolutely terrified and no one wanted to mess with it. No one wanted to go see if he was alright. No one wanted to try to help. And I think between the patient and the patient's, but the nurse is I think it was more of a you go first, no you go first. I think that's kind of how they would have approached that. And probably a sigh of relief once he was released from the facility and went elsewhere knowing that there was probably nothing they could really do for him. It was probably more what could he do to us. There are any other stories of paranormal activity while it was a functioning facility. There is one and this is out of all the St. Almond legends. Now this actually happened out of all the St. Almond's missions. This is the one no one has been able to solve.

2:04And the one I had tried since I learned about buildings in St. Almond. I believe it was in 1980s. There was this girl named Gina Renee Hall and she was a student at Redford College. She had a boyfriend. Now, her boyfriend, they frequently went out downtown hanging out with her friends. They were known as a really good couple, really stand up citizens. They were both pretty good students. I believe she had almost straight A's in high school and college. So she was pretty smart. And they decided one night they were going to go to his cabin on the lake, which is close to St. Almond's. The thing was Gina never returned. And they ended up finding his car with her stuff in it about a mile away from St. Almond's. And the trunk was open. There was some blood around the trunk and around the road. And that's kind of the end of that.

3:06We don't, you know, in terms of accepted facts, that's really it. They did find a piece of her clothing near this tree at the cabin by the lake. But in terms of, you know, what happened to her body or anything like that, we don't know. It's still a mystery to this day. They're still the rapper police department trying to solve this. Now they immediately questioned her boyfriend. Her boyfriend said, I have no idea what happened. I didn't do this. And still to this day, he still pretty much has that view of, hey, I didn't do this. I don't know what happened. But one of the stories that's told is he actually was a janitor at St. Almond's sanatorium. And one of the theories is he killed her probably by the cabin. Took her, took the vehicle about a mile away from the building, which you know, doesn't

4:06make sense. And took her, while carrying her at night around 1 to 2 in the morning, up to the building or to the bridge over the new river and either dumped her body into the water, which doesn't make sense because body simply washed up. You know, when they're dumped and nobody was ever found, or he took her into the boiler room, or one of the basement level side rooms of St. Almond and literally buried her in the walls or in the ground, that's kind of the story that's told. As for whether or not he was an actual staff member at St. Almond, we don't know that no one in that area really likes to talk about that. A lot of the detectives, a lot of the officers who work that case, a lot of her family members, there's still a lot. So, you know, when you go around there asking questions, you don't get a lot of answers. It's still kind of a source spot. But people have reported seeing a girl that matches Gina's description in the boiler room

5:13of St. Almond and in some of the other places in the building. And so, a lot of people think she's somewhere in the walls. Now, it's interesting when I first started reading about the building, what I had heard is he killed her, took her body to the front right door of the basement level of St. Almond, which I always thought, you know, that's the boiler room. Because, you know, there's a door to the boiler room, which it's boarded up now. But when you walk on the outside of the building, you can see where the door was. That's where I always thought, you know, that's where she would be if she is there. But I was looking recently at some floor plants of the building. There is actually another room, a gigantic storage room behind the boiler room of St. Almond's where, back when he was a sanctuary, and that was used as their storage room for a lot of extra equipment, things like broken restraints, broken chairs, they put them there. And what I'm thinking is maybe for some reason he took her there because there is a small

6:20door. It's enough for a person to get through on the front right side of the building. And you know, since no one ever really went down to that area, if she isn't that building, she's in that room. Now they've instilled the storage room, they don't really let anyone in there. I've never been there. It's one of, I think, three places in that building I've never been. And some people that have gone down there, they have reported some pretty screwed up stuff. I was told a story from the volunteer that during a haunted house, someone went down to that area. They only opened that way, but because there's a little small wing of a few different rooms. And they said that during the haunted house, the volunteer went down there and there was this, almost like a moth man type creature, but it was kind of hunkered down at first and it looked better. It looked like a black mass. And when it looked at her, it had these red eyes and it stood up and it was so tall it

7:21had this scrunched head under the ceiling because you know, it was too tall for the ceiling and it outstretched these wings. And it moved towards the front door of that storage room. And you know, the volunteer completely freaked out. And that was a few years, I think, two or three years ago that happened. And my knowledge, no one has ever investigated that area, but supposedly whenever you get close to that storage room, this being basically chases you off. And as for whether or not that's a sign, telltale sign that there's something in there that's guarding, I don't know. Was the boyfriend ever charged or tried for the murder? Yes, it's actually the very first time in Virginia history that there was a murder conviction without a body. And he is serving a life sentence for that. So they found him guilty.

8:21But he, but he remained early tangents innocence. Yeah, it was circumstantial evidence mainly because you know, there's no DNA that he did it. There's no body, but he's still in jail. To this day, he's still says I didn't do it. I don't know what happened. Right. Oh. Wow. What a dark story there of the body being buried and still possibly in that building somewhere. Have they ever done any sort of testing of the walls, any sort of, you know, x-ray, any sort of, you know, there's sometimes ways of checking if there's odd things in walls without ripping them apart. I'm just curious. No one has ever done that to my knowledge. I've brought that up myself. A few times to some of the people there. That's something I've always wanted to do if I could get my hands on the piece of equipment like that. It is. The last amount of there I took a walk through with a psychic.

9:25Every person has their own views on psychic. I had my views just like everyone else does. I was walking with one and we read this insanely messed up part of the building where I had my worst experience and I was telling her a little bit about it, talking about the history. And she said, yeah, you can feel all the bodies in the walls. And I looked at it and said, you mean Gina? And she said, no, bodies, the floral. And that was really as far as the psychic went. And I've never been able to explain that whether or not you know, that's correct. I don't know. But from what I've been told, it's bodies that might be in the walls of this building. Tell me about your worst experience that occurred there that you were sharing with the psychic. My worst experience, it was actually a public event. I was a cadet in military school. And there was this event at St. Albans, the May 13th, Friday the 13th event.

10:29Now a month earlier April 2nd of 2016, I was a guest speaker there. And there was something about the building. When you go there, it's like, it's almost like earworm. When you have a certain song and you can only think of that song, it controls your mind. The St. Albans has that same effect. And after that investigation on April 2nd, every time I would be doing something, I would be in school. I would be playing sports. And all of a sudden, I would think, I should go back to St. Albans. I wonder what would happen if I would go back to St. Albans. Where should I go right now? I should go to St. Albans. As for whether or not these thoughts were my own or something else, I don't know. But the building was calling me back. And it calls a lot of people back. And so I skipped one of my parades that I was supposed to do to go to this event. Because it was almost like something you have to do or you don't feel right. And so we were there. It was my dad and I.

11:29And the night it had this evil feel to it. Now when I go into an investigation, I like to kind of have, it's open skepticism. I believe we're in the paranormal, but I like to be, skip school until proven otherwise. That's how I approached that night. But when we drove up to it, it felt like there was this dark shroud covering the building. I had never, I've been in the paranormal field for eight years and I've never seen anything like that before or felt anything like that. And everyone, even though they just got there, was kind of on edge. I've looked at each other like, hey, yeah, it's creepy here. And even the volunteers were acting a little strange. So I could tell something was up, something was not right. And we started investigating not really anything was happening. We went down to the boiler room. And the boiler room is one of the areas where the rituals were done by the state canagrid. And it said that there is a goat man that is very aggressive.

12:33And he hangs out there. And so I was going through my voice recorder. And I kept seeing something in the back corner, dark back and forth. But every time I would go to face it, it would vanish. And after about five or six times of this happening, it started pissing me off. I started getting angry. And so I grabbed my voice recorder outstretched in front of me. I said, show yourself. I'm coming back there. Which, you know, that's not typically like me. I don't typically provoke or do anything like that. And so I started walking back towards the back corner away from everyone else. And there was this smell of wet burr. Almost like, you know, when your dog gets out of the pool or something like that, you're sitting right next to him. Almost with your face in his burr. That's what it smelled like. And all of her was just this piss. Almost like I could do not a goat pissing. And there was just, you could feel heat radiating from this corner.

13:35And mind you, the other people in the room were about 10 yards behind me with a very loud spirit box. And they still hurt us. I had my voice recorder outstretched in front of me, and it picked it up clear as day. And so obviously after that, we're like, okay, something's not right here. And there was another person in another group. They were in the burr cage. And they actually got punched by something in her stomach. And there was another person that saw red eyes in this hallway. And we were not dead. Now we were kind of joking like, well, why aren't we seeing anything? Aside from, you know, that hiss, nothing's going on. So we went to the second floor hallway, the King Center. And we were walking some of the people we were supposed to stay in the hallway, which, you know, it's a very long hallway many, many rooms. It used to be the Children's Ward. And you can also go into Jacob's room, which is another sad story. But my dad and I, we split off to go into Jacob's room.

14:38When, because the last time we were there, we had some crazy stuff happen. And so it was my dad and I, and two other people, we were doing a spare box session. And we started getting grouse and grunts come across the spare box. And then nothing for about five minutes. And so we decided to turn off the spare box and see what would happen. So we turned off the box and we started hearing something moving around in the room across from us. Now, we're standing about in the doorway. We can see the room across from us. And it sounds like someone is moving around at kind of a fast pace. And so we start calling out, whoever you are, say something, show yourself. So let us know you're there. Answer a question, that kind of stuff. Not really provoking, but kind of getting curious. Because it seemed like it was trying to get our attention, but it didn't want to reveal itself. So one of the people in our group starts taking burst photos. Basically on iPhone, you hold your finger in on the camera button.

15:39And it takes photos continuously. About the same time he's taking those photos, we hear footsteps outside the doorway, which we thought was really cool. The whole of crap, he's taking photos while we hear the footsteps. When he pulls up the photos, the first view, there is a black mask, a dark black mask on the left side of the door. The second, we're about two or three photos, the entire doorway, the door frame itself, which is about 7 feet high, is completely blacked out. You cannot see anything through it. And this photo was taken with flash. And it was completely clear. It almost looked like it was trying to keep us in the room. And then the last few photos, it was to the right side of the door, and it was gone. Completely, it matched up our footsteps that we heard. So we started asking who the figure was. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, in the room across from us, it sounds like all hell breaks loose. It sounds like someone's throwing glass around.

16:41They're shattering. You can hear boom, boom, boom, boom. People stomping on the floor. It sounds like someone let an elephant and a bull in a child's shop. That's exactly what it sounds like. But we can't see anything. We're looking directly into the room, but nothing's happening. But we can hear these sounds. And what's also weird when I went back on our picture quarter, all of the only sound we recorded was the sound of footsteps. None of the other sounds were picked up on any of our voice recorders. And so after this happened, it falls silent. Nothing happens for the next 10 minutes. Until one of our guides comes running into the room, well, like you've seen a ghost. And he said, we've been looking for you guys. Where have you been? You guys have been gone for 30 minutes. And we were, we all looked at each other. We were like, we told you guys exactly where we were going. Jacob, we've been here this entire time.

17:41And the guy said, no, we've been looking for you up and down the hallways. We haven't found you guys. We couldn't hear you. And which was weird because there were about 10 people in our group. When we walked out of the room, they were all at the landing downstairs, which the stairs are right next to Jacob's room. And the area is very echoey. We should have been able to hear people, and they should have been able to hear us. They never heard or saw us. We never heard or saw them, including walking by to go downstairs, which there's only one way to go up and down those stairs. You have to go by Jacob's room. We never saw anyone or heard anyone. So the last thing I remember, as long as you could start to a story, is I was talking with the guy about what had happened. And the next thing I remember, I'm in this side room of the hallway in something called the Evan Rackford Room, which it's called I have a cause it's written on the wall. I don't know if there's an history behind that,

18:42but I was looking at a newspaper clipping from 19, I believe, a 62 of JFK. And there were a bunch of different news articles, taped to the wall, and my dad had a camera, and he was looking at the different articles. I don't remember walking into that room. I had never been in that room before. And so we're just, you know, I guess, doing our thing, and I catch movement out of the corner of my eye at the doorway. And so when I look at the doorway, there's this thing standing there. If you've ever seen the movie The Blog, that's what it looks like, only standing. And it's just in the doorway of the room across from us, and it was darker than night, but you can make out its eyes and its mouth. It's almost like it protruded from its face, and they were dark black, but for some reason I could see them, and it had this real crooked smile to it. And it looked at me, and I could feel it making eye contact. And I don't know why I've just never done this before.

19:45I chased it. And that was, you know, my natural instinct, I guess. And so I chased it. Dored, it was more like a glide, not running. It just glided across the floor into the main hallway. And my dad's screaming, what is it? What is it? And I'm just taking it off after almost a full sprint with my spirit box in hand and watch recorder. And then in the hallway, I chased it out. It stops right at the foot of the attic. There's it kind of wheyings out, it's like a big square room. And it does like this basket ball pivot, and it just faces me. And where I'm almost at a dead sprint, I don't really stop in time. So when I finally get a stop, I'm about three feet away from this thing. And I remember looking up at it into its eyes, and it's looking at me with this weird grin. And inside its body, it had like these weird, almost like black hole swirls inside of it.

20:46And it was radiating this heat off of it. And there was this strange smell, almost not really a dead smell, but it was a smell that was unpleasant to my nose. And I stood for about three seconds looking at it. And it didn't move, I didn't move it, it didn't say anything. That's how it has to be patient. And finally my dad runs into the room. And he basically says, what a blank. And then he says, Jake, back away, very slowly. So we back up, back all the way into Edmund Rackford's room. And this thing follows us. And it's standing in the doorway of the room we ran into, which is, it was the old nursery. I call it the octopus's garden room, because there's a bunch of creepy looking fish with weird, demented eyes in there. It's an evil room. It feels like, and it just stood there looking at us. And so we pulled out the spirit box. And we started doing a session. And we recorded some of the clearest voices I have ever heard.

21:50It had this very scratchy, metallic voice. And it was answering our questions, like as soon as we would answer them. But it wouldn't tell us who it was or why it was there. But it would answer other questions. The weird thing was, later on when I reviewed the audio, none of the voices were recorded. Even though on the voice recorder, you can hear us respond to answers. It's not recorded. It's nothing. It's just straight up static. And so after about what seemed like five minutes of this session, we decided it's in our best interest, our best safety, to get the heck out of there. So we ended up walking across the hall, back towards the main stairs. And this thing standing in the hallway looking at us. And its body takes up almost the height and width of the wall, which is a wide wall. I'd say maybe five, six feet across. And it's about seven, seven and a half feet tall,

22:51to its side. And it's just looking at us. And so we went back down to the main stairwell. No one had noticed we were gone. And when we talked with a guide, the guide told us that we had been gone maybe two minutes, which doesn't make sense because if you go back on the voice recorder, it actually took up about seven or eight minutes, the entire experience. I had the voice recorder run it through the entire thing. So the guide said, one to two minutes, we were gone. But the voice recorder said we were gone way longer. And no one noticed that we disappeared, which if we were in the back of the group or something like that, that would be one thing. But typically, we're there. We're talking with everyone. And I do remember distinctly talking with a bunch of people about this experience. So if we would have said, hey, we're going to check this out. People would have noticed. People would have said something. For instance, it was close to time for us to go back to the safe from the meeting room.

23:52And technically, we were up in an average room longer than we were supposed to have. The group should have left about five minutes after the Jacob-Droom experience. But when we went back there, they said, oh, no, we still have time, which I've never been able to explain that. And that is the scariest thing I've ever had happen in the panel simply because of how much it affected me, not only in the moment, but it still affected me this day. I believe that it left a part of itself, almost in our mind, not just mine, but my dad's too. Whenever I go to that part of the building, I replay that entire event, almost like watching a YouTube video. I see every little thing again. And it happens every single time I think about the building. And as I'm telling you this story now, the same feeling, I had that night, I'm feeling it now. It's just, it's like almost it left itself that moment imprinted in me to almost as like a sick reminder.

24:54Sure. Well, I mean, that's an understandable reaction to something of that nature. I don't even know if I even need to answer the question, but I would venture to say or ask you, do you think that this was something dark or demonic? Or do you think it was a very dark spirit that maybe once lived here? What's your take on what it was? My first thought was it was demonic. That was my first thought. Now, of course, when it comes to evil entities, it's not just demonic. There's evil elements. There's a long list of negative evil entities. The only one I had run into demonic encounters before, before that. And that was the closest thing I had ever felt to it being. And so my mind instantly chopped it up back to demon. But the more I started experiencing other types of encounters and doing some more reading, I honestly don't know what it was because it had

25:55some characteristics of an elemental. It had some characteristics of a demonic entity. It had some characteristics of a guardian type thing, which it's almost like certain demonic entities. They can dispatch certain creatures to guard certain areas. Typically, the most popular guardian is a hellhound. Hellhound, they guard certain areas for certain reasons. It had some characteristics of a guardian. But to this day, I don't know exactly what it was because I can't say it was demonic. I can't say it was elemental. I don't know what it was. Yo, that's going to wrap up our interview with Jake Vife. Thank you for being a guest on our program today. Until next time for the Grave Talks, I'm Tony Bursky. Thanks for listening.