Spanish Military Hospital

Visitors and staff at the Spanish Military Hospital Museum describe flashes of light and apparitions throughout, most often a one-legged man seen wandering the back room, believed to be tied to the amputations once performed there; tales tell of soldiers whose legs were taken off with crude saws, now on display, without anaesthetic and who died howling in the night, and their ghosts are said to roam the hospital. A paranormal group reported talking with a fifteen-year-old soldier and a heavy bed lifting off the floor, and ghost-tour operators say workers and patients reported an evil spirit in the wards even before remains were unearthed. The Spanish government converted a building on this site into a military hospital in 1791, treating wounded soldiers with the era's rough medicine, rushed amputations, leeching and bloodletting performed in unsanitary conditions, until Florida passed to American control in 1821. The original hospital buildings were lost to fire by 1895; the St. Augustine Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission rebuilt the museum on the same foundations in 1966, using archived Spanish records, and it reopened to the public in 1990.