Guest Post: An Incident at the Ridges
Photograph by Barbara Fisher
Barbara here—this blog post is one written by a guest. It’s a print version of the story sent to us for our second Haunted Asylum episode, that I read on air. It was so well written and interesting, I thought I would feature it here on the blog and will do so with any written stories we get from listeners and readers—with their permission of course. (As always, we will keep you anonymous if you want.)
Before we get to the story, a few words about the author, Bryian.
He was the first friend Zak and I met in Athens, only about five or six days after moving here.
We met Bry in the local bead store, “Beads & Things,” which is an Athens institution—much more than a craft store—it’s where you go when you need a special gift or a long talk with the amazingly wonderful, well travelled and fascinating proprietors, Joey and Phil.
Beads & Things was, in fact, the reason we visited Athens the first time.
I made beaded jewelry at the time and a friend and coworker in Huntington, West Virginia, heard on the radio an ad for a bead shop in Athens, Ohio, and seeing it was only an hour and a half or so drive, we all headed out to find it.
The ad wasn’t for Beads & Things, however, it was for a different bead store—a competitor (which is not longer here), but a lady on Court Street saw us come out of that bead store and told us how to find Beads & Things, so we went there and our eyes were opened and we continued to fall in love with Athens.
In love enough that I transferred my college credits from Marshall University and finished my degree at Ohio University.
But I digress—we ended up getting. a house up the block and around the corner from Beads & Things, so after we unpacked, we walked down to do some shopping (it’s dangerous to the wallet to live within walking distance of that store), and there we were confronted with a tall, soft-spoken man showing Joey a pair of earrings he had wrought himself out of the finest silver chain mail—that he called “insane mail”— and I knew we had found our people.
I went right up to him and said, “You’re in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) aren’t you?”
Of course he was. And they had meetings every Tuesday on campus in Morton Hall, and you should come out, and before we knew it, we were told three SCA folk lived up the street from us,. In a few breaths after that, Bry had asked us to come that weekend to join a Dungeons and Dragons game he was running, and the rest is history.
That’s how Zak and I met and became part of what we call, “The Athens Family.”
So, the author of this true story is my oldest friend in Athens, and I trust his word implicitly.
”An Incident at the Ridges”
by Bryian Winner
I used to work for a computer service company who had their office in a “newer” part of the Ridges. Building 20 has been demolished now but I will tell you of an odd occurrence I had there and the later information that made it even creepier.
It may sound a bit trite, but in fact, it was a dark and stormy night. I got an emergency call from a client around 2:45 am that one of their critical systems had lost a power supply. While I will not name the client, let me just say they were no one I could ignore till the next day for everyone’s sake. I jumped in my car and drove the 10 minutes to The Ridges to get a replacement power supply before heading to the clients.
Our office was on the second floor of the building, on one end of a very long hallway that once housed individual patient rooms.. I unlocked the front door and rode the elevator to the second floor. I headed directly to our office and entered it, but I had a very uneasy feeling. You know that “something is not quite right” feeling in the pit of your stomach.
The storm had mostly subsided by this point as I turned the lights on and headed to the workbench. I grabbed the power supply and started back to the door when I heard a sound. Now, mind you this is in the wee hours, the staff and everyone one else, including the custodians, had gone home. I knew for a fact I was all alone.
That is when I heard it. A squeaking noise coming from the hallway outside from the far end (which at this point had no client offices in it at all.)
The sound was like a squeak from a gurney wheel.
There had been no gurneys in this area for more than 10 years so I know that is was not just someone messing around. The squeak got louder and louder as it came closer to me.
To give you an idea of the layout this floor was like a giant u shape with the elevator at the bottom of the u and stairs at either tip. My office was near the elevators.
I looked down the hallway and it was empty. No mist, no shadows, just the sound coming closer to me. I thought it might be some sort of mechanical sound but after working in that building for a few years I had never heard it before.
The noise got louder and then began to fade a little as if it was moving away from me.
Then suddenly, the elevator doors opened. They then closed and it went to the first floor. Now, this may not seem strange but, the elevator was on a “will call” state so since I left it last the doors would only open when the button was pushed and it would not move until a floor was selected.
I exited the building by the stairs with great expediency.
Soon thereafter I kept a supply of replacement parts in my car.
Now what I had learned later on:
This building was part of the center hospital and originally used as the receiving area. Dr. Walter Freeman, pioneer in trans-orbital technique, demonstrated how lobotomies are performed on over 200 Athens State Hospital patients in that very building. Also, Kirkbride Plan asylums like the main building at the Ridges, occupy a unique niche in our culture. As more than 70 were built across the nation (with 25 surviving as of 2019) they are a uniquely accessible and idyllic representation of the allures of urban exploration. Kirkbride Plan asylums have appeared in films and television, been the subjects of notable photographers, and inspired fictional locations such as Arkham Asylum in Batman, and Parsons State Insane Asylum in Fallout 4.
