Kempton Park Hospital: Abandoned building a hive of paranormal activity

A group of ghost hunters who often visit the gutted Kempton Park Hospital claim it has the most paranormal activity and report seeing shadows and doctor’s figures during tours.

The hospital closed its doors the day after Christmas in 1997, apparently due to under-utilisation, and since then it’s been an object of curiosity.

Rivas Bright, founder of Upside Down Adventures – a paranormal investigation group from Pretoria, and his team have travelled as far as Barberton looking for paranormal activity.

Bright started the paranormal group 12 years ago with a friend who conducted a few investigations after they ordered equipment from eBay.

Things started getting serious four years ago when Right founded the Upside Down Adventures. Bright said Kempton Park Hospital was on every ghost hunter’s list in South Africa.

“Kempton [Park Hospital] has provided me with some of the most credible evidence I have ever captured and some life-altering experiences.

“Where you see something you know nobody else will believe. “I’ve had those experiences on two occasions at Kempton Park.”

Upside Down Adventures co-founder Nigel Millender has visited the hospital more than 50 times. He said his love for the paranormal also started from a young age.

“I could see, feel and perceive paranormal stuff as a young kid. It was hard to explain it to people. It’s very taboo,” he said.

Millender said as he got older, he just accepted the fact, started researching and became more intrigued. “Ghost hunting with Rivos and the team over the years has been an absolute pleasure,” he said.

“We have been to fantastic places and caught a lot of evidence where sometimes I don’t even believe it’s real.”

Millender said he has been going to the hospital since his teenage years. “We had to sneak in or bribe the guards to [let us] go in.

“The first time I went in, I fell in love with the place. It just drew me in. I could never get enough of it. After going there 50 times, it feels like home.”

Millender said the more he visited the hospital the more he became intrigued about its history. “The story has been close to my heart.

I tried to do as much research on it as I could but the information has been far and few between.” Millender said he had many tangible and scary moments ghost hunting, including seeing a 2.5-metre figure.

“I cannot tell you, there is not one investigation or visit [there] that I haven’t had some form of paranormal activity or experience,” he said.

“The most memorable for me was when I saw a doctor at the main entrance, standing against the wall and reaching out before he was pulled through the wall.

But I haven’t seen that again, even though I searched.”

Millender said a lack of finances was among the reasons the hospital that didn’t have a shortage of patients mysteriously closed.

It took Veronica Bouwer 13 years to overcome her first paranormal experience after visiting the hospital in 2009.

“I had something follow me home,” she said. “It is not only me but also my family and pets – from voices, footsteps and the sensation of something resting on my legs while I sleep, to the [flashing] of our lights.

As time went on, being uneducated on how to rid of it, it only became stronger.” Bouwer said it took her more than a year to chase the spirit away.

ALSO READ: ‘Haunted’ Kempton Park hospital included on list of six ‘new’ Gauteng facilities

– marizkac@citizen.co.za