Knightstown

 

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I spent time as a ward of the state for a while. Part of that time I was at the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors childrens home in Knightstown Indiana, about 40 miles east of Indianapolis. This facility was a large campus where we all lived, went to school, ate and the older kids even worked on campus where they could learn a trade. We rarely ever left the campus. This story was told to me by a couple of my female classmates. The buildings were all very old the facility was established in 1865. The property had a large lake on it that separated the girls dorms from the boys. The girls live in a large multiple story building that was separated into dorms by grade, and the boys lived in much smaller houses across the lake each house was a different grade. One day during an activity when the boys and girls were allowed to interact, some of the girls started talking about some of the strange things that they had been experiencing in there building. At night, they would hear sounds that sounded like foot steps, and sometimes here things rolling across the floor in the attic. One day a small group of girls got up the courage to sneak up to the attic to investigate and see what could be making the noises. What they found when they got up there was lots of old medical equipment stored away thing like crutches, and wheelchairs and other such things. While they were in the attic exploring they were being very quiet as to not alert the house mothers that they were up there, since it was off limits to the students. All of a sudden one of the girls heard a noise and turned around to see one of the wheelchairs rolling across the floor straight towards her. She screamed, which alerted the rest of the group who saw what was going on and the all ran back down stairs, and never ventured back up to the attic again. When thay asked someone about the history of the building they were told that it had been a hospital during the Civil War. I did some searches and found that the year the facility was established is the same year the Civil war ended but I wasn't able to confirm that it was hospital before that. I'm not sure if this story is real, or if it was a product of the imagination of teenage girls trying to spin a scary story. This all happened in the late 60'S and the facility closed in 2009. So I have no way to find out if anyone else remembers this story. So I'll leave it at that true story or just the imagination of some teenage girls you decide.

D.L.Garvin