by Anonymous kitchen staff member
(Rutland, Vermont)
Let me start off by saying that I personally have experienced activity in this location. I've been working at St. Joe's for almost two years and I have near countless stories. The now nursing home used to be a convent and an orphanage, so there is a lot of energy just floating around. One day I was resetting the dining room with the only door that somebody who isn't an employee can get through closed. I was singing to myself because it gets really quiet, and as I turned around I found myself face to face with a priest. The man was not a resident, and not anybody I had ever seen. I hadn't heard the door open, and if it had, I would've. The man complemented my voice, turned around and went into the kitchen. I followed him in and asked my coworkers where he went. They told me that nobody had come into the kitchen except me. A few months after that, I was taking laundry to the laundry room that is about 200 feet from the kitchen and dining room. The hallway is creepy enough by it's self, let alone the 30 foot dirt floor hallway that extends from it. I always wondered what that was for, so out of habit I looked down as I passed. There was a man dressed in clothes that didn't fit the time, leaning against the wall smoking. Once again, this was not a man I recognized. I told him that he couldn't smoke inside, he looked at me, told me that he didn't have to listen to any teenager who hasn't experienced life, and walked straight through a wall. Last month, I went to a residents rooms on the fifth floor. This was around 7 o'clock pm. Once on the floor, I heard children laughing rather loudly in one of the other rooms. Because many of the residents were trying to sleep, I went to ask them to quite down. There was nobody in the room. There was nowhere else they could have been. Almost 2 years ago, there was a specific resident who was very deaf would tell me about the 'ghost children'. She would tell me that she could hear kids playing outside her door. She would open her door to tell them to hush, and there wasn't anybody there. She also lived on the fifth floor.