EL PASO — Who are you going to call when a long dead woman dressed in white, wearing an old-fashioned nurse’s cap is still trying to make herself useful changing the bed sheets at Southwestern General Hospital in Central El Paso?  El Paso Ghost Hunters of Science and Technology (GHOST), that’s who.

Last week two members of GHOST’s paranormal investigative team say they spotted the ghostly apparition making beds in the hospital’s abandoned fourth floor and then saw her later walking around the halls.

Paranormal activity within the hospital was first documented in 1936.

Although the hospital’s second and fourth floors are abandoned, the third floor is still used to house patients with critical injuries or illnesses that need round-the-clock attention.

With reports of ghostlike activities at the hospital since 1936, the group asked hospital managers for permission to investigate. The first visit occurred in November 2008 when the team spent a night on site equipped with high-end video cameras, digital still cameras, audio recording devices, and k2 meters that calculate temperature changes.

Espie Valadez, assistant property manager at Southwestern General Hospital, gave permission for the most recent investigation by the GHOST team.  “We’ve known of all the stories that were being told so we thought it would be a good idea to let them come down and check it out,” she said.

Leon Metz Jr., CEO of El Paso Long Term Acute Care (LTAC), provided the group with background and sources about the hospital’s haunted history.

The GHOST group, established in July of last year has 61 official members and apprentices and is led by Alyn Macleod and Chris Medina.  The group was created as a non-profit organization and does not accept money for its paranormal investigations.  Individual members instead rely on their own funds and donations from friends to carry on their work.

“If they are going to pay me to do it then it takes the reality away from” the investigation, said Medina, a manager for Southwest Auto Glass and a GHOST member.  “I’ve got nothing to gain.”

Medina said he detected an Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), of a woman’s voice, when he replayed a recording.  “I told her we don’t know your name, but is it OK if we call you Jesusita and she said ‘yes that’s fine Chris,’” Medina said.

During the same investigation, the GHOST team was able to contact the spirits of children, Medina said. Investigators witnessed toy cars placed on a floor moving of their own volition, he said.

In 2005, doctors and investors launched plans to renovate the 100-room Southwestern General Hospital in Central El Paso. Three years later, workers began the renovation to give the hospital a new life.

Although the renovation was expected to expand medical services at the 80-year-old building, officials hoped to preserve the institution’s colorful history as a hospital for tubercular patients and a place with a ghostly past.

David C. Baldwin, a transplant from New Orleans who suffered from tuberculosis, established the hospital in 1903 as a “sanatorium” for tuberculosis patients. Since that time its name and purpose has been an evolving proposition, following several changes of ownership.

El Paso resident Shirley Anaya, who was visiting her stepmother at Southwestern General Hospital recently, said she does not believe in ghosts or spirits, but will not deny she detects an unusual presence inside the building. “Do I feel anything in there? Well, I do because it’s old,” Anaya said.

Diana Calamia, a well-known psychic also known as Lady D., conducted one of the first investigations of the hospital in 1936. She detected the ghost of a woman, possibly decapitated, and a man who died of unknown causes inside an elevator, according to published reports.

But even among GHOST team members there are skeptics.

“It’s a checks and balances for us. We don’t want everybody to come in and say everything is a ghost because everything is not a ghost,” said Medina.

At the same time, GHOST has concluded that the hospital is a hot spot for paranormal activity, Medina said. The group’s conclusion was generated by their first investigation when they spent several nights over the period of one month at the hospital.

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