A newly-released collection of ghost stories from hospitals and asylums across Canada and the United States features a page about the Weyburn Mental Hospital.
The collection, entitled, “Haunted Hospitals: Eerie Tales About Hospitals, Sanatoriums and Other Institutions”, was put together by Mark Leslie and Rhonda Parrish, and was published by Dundurn Press of Toronto.
The book is divided into the provinces and states, and the Weyburn Mental Hospital, also known as Saskatchewan Hospital and the Souris Valley Extended Care Centre, is featured.
The writeup about Weyburn’s former mental hospital is entitled “Notorious Treatments and Ghostly Sightings”, and makes reference to the treatments at the hospital, including the development and use of LSD, as well as references to ghosts.
The ghostly references speak of the sounds of shuffling feet, shadows of people walking the hallways and stories of a woman who could be seen at the windows in an area where no woman should have been.
Souris Valley was first built in 1921, and at the time, was the largest structure in the Commonwealth. It was closed as a long-term care centre in 2005, then was demolished in 2008-09. The area has since been redeveloped as a residential subdivision called Riverwood.
Mark Leslie is the author of “Creepy Capital” and “Tomes of Terror”, along with other books on the fascinating and the paranormal. Rhonda Parrish founded and ran “Niteblade Magazine”, and is the editor of a number of anthologies, including “Sirens” and “C is for Chimera”.
