Greenville’s Haunted Herdklotz Park
Between 1930 and the early 1950s, the Greenville County Tuberculosis Hospital treated hundreds of patients suffering from tuberculosis. Several patients succumbed to the deadly disease, though it’s not clear just how many never made it home.
After closing for good sometime in the 1950s, the South Carolina hospital sat largely abandoned until a fire ravaged the building in 2002. Before its fiery demise, people exploring the old building claimed to hear screams, sobs, and footsteps pounding down empty halls. And locals say the ghosts are still there.
Though the building is long gone, legend has it that deceased patients now haunt Herdklotz Park which stands where the hospital once did. In Haunted South Carolina, author Alan Brown reports that visitors hear a number of strange sounds on the playground, including banging, screaming, and the clanging of unseen bells. At night, people spot shadows flitting in the darkness. In fact, some people living near the park claim these shadowy beings enter their homes after dark.
Reports of pools of blood also surround Herdklotz Park. In Haunted Hospitals of the South, author Randy Russell writes:
“All that is left of the former sanatorium is a few puddles that turn red with blood after a rain. The puddles are located near a memorial bench in Herdklotz Park. Locals suggest the blood is from patients who died at the TB hospital, and that the park bench stands on the site of the institution’s former morgue.”
