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| Mercy Hospital in Logan, ca 1950s Photo courtesy of Dewey Stepp (Logan County History and Nostalgia) |
In the late 1940s and into the early 1950s, nurses and orderlies working the night shift at Logan's Mercy Hospital, in Logan, WV shared their space with a harmless, yet annoying entity they called 'George.' George, the resident ghost of the hospital, had only one purpose in his afterlife: man the elevator.
Every night, nurses and other graveyard shift staff would peek out from their desks and see that the red signal button for the elevator had been activated, despite no living persons having called it. The elevator cage slightly whirred as it ascended to the top floor, then all the way to the basement, then finally coming back up to the second floor where it would finally come to a stop.
When the Charleston Gazette published its story on George in December of 1950, George had been teasing the staff at Mercy Hospital for about two years. They all seemed to accept George as just another member of the overnight crew, but they were concerned that George would engage in his elevator shenanigans at a moment when the elevator was needed for a medical emergency.
But who was George and why was he taking a round trip throughout the entire building every night?
From the nature of the ghost's behavior, it seems likely that George was a former employee of the hospital, still making his nightly rounds. Unfortunately, as of this writing, I haven't had any insight into an actual identity.
Mercy Hospital began in the early 1900s as the Logan Hospital and was housed in the home seen to the left in the picture above. That structure later became a nurses' home when the new Mercy Hospital, with interests from Dr. H.H. Farley, Dr. L.E. Steele, and Dr. S.B. Lawson, was built in 1914. This new hospital building was built upon the former home of Elias Hatfield, who was the father of Dr. Henry D. Hatfield, former governor of West Virginia.
The 1914 building, located at 396 Dingess Street, would later be home to the Guyan Valley Hospital. As of 2015 it was still standing, although many of the buildings around it were long gone. Whether or not George has stuck around all these years, or has finally moved on, remains a mystery.
The website, Logan County WV History and Nostalgia, has quite a few photos of the old Mercy Hospital and the 1914 building, as well as more information about the medical history of Logan County.
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| Mercy Hospital Building, 2015 Google Maps |
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| Charleston Gazette 30 December 1950 |
