On August 15th, 2009 River Town Paranormal Society turned the corner to enter the drive to the Old Prairie View Nursing Home. It will be an experience they will never forget. As if someone conjured the site up from an old scarey movie, the building stood in front of us like a vortex into a time when folks
sat on balconies eating ice cream and spinning new stories. Come along with us as we move our evidence of these spirits of a time forgotten but not so
far past to our page. You won't be disappointed.
Prairie View
For many years she stood tall and proud, hosting events for her many occupants. The photo to the left is one of her many honored events. Her 50th Anniversary.
The Grand Ol' Damm
Today she is something of the past. Forgotten and neglected left with empty halls and rooms, only the very distant memories of happier days gone by. She is left alone, too old to face the many vandals and wildlife that invade her vacancy...
Nancy Goehl Interview
On August 15th 2009 River Town Paranormal Society was invited to investigate the old Prairie View Nursing Home in Lewis County, Missouri. The building has been sitting vacant since 1991 when it was finally closed for use as a nursing home. Lewis County has possession of the building and only allows groups to come in if they are with the County Commissioner and the presiding Commissioner is Nancy Goehl. For the past two years Nancy has been leading groups through the old building and has seen it decline in condition but never in odd happenings. To say we were looking forward to getting into this wonderfully old structure was an understatement, we were thrilled. We hadn't investigated a building quite this big yet and it was going to test our skills.
It was a warm August evening and a storm front had just passed to the north of the area. We arrived about an hour early so we could check out the building before the sun set . The building is laid out in a rectangular shape with two main floors and a basement. In the center of the building is the stairway and there are smaller rooms built around the stairway. There are little rooms everywhere in this building, the kind that would be found in an older nursing home. You really have to wonder how anyone could have lived in such small living quarters, but the bigger rooms such as the dining rooms and activity rooms must have given the residents a communal area to visit and spend a great deal of time. To this day there are nameplates of previous residents that still adorn doors, giving us an insight of souls who once wandered these floors. The massive balconies that grace both the front and back of the building were probably a wonderful place to sit and enjoy sunrises or sunsets, now they allow creatures of all sorts a place to rest both day and night. As the sun went down on Prairie View Nursing Home the scenery changed for us. We no longer wondered about what used to wander these floors, but what may still roam these floors. It was going to be a good night.
Once all our night vision cameras were set up with their IR lights and all the digital recorders were set up in places of interest, as told to us by Nancy Goehl, we split into two
groups. Nancy and her friend Rick joined two of our group members on the first floor and the rest of our team who made up group two went into the basement. We thought because the building was made of solid steel, brick and concrete that we would be able to do audio recordings without too much interference. This was completely incorrect. The sound travels through the building like some kind of unseen intercom system. When we were on the second floor you could hear people in the basement and vice versa. This was
surprising to us and made it difficult to listen to hours of recordings trying to decipher whose voice was whose. It did not keep us from picking up a few great evps which we have
shared on page two of this investigation.
Our first personal experience happened in the basement during set up. One of our team members has been at Prairie View before and there is an old shower room in the
basement area that gives her weird feelings. She had two of our team members walk into the room. As the team member walked into the room a icy cold brush was felt on her
hand which was laying at her side, just about thigh high. As group two came back down later to investigate in this room two members thought they had heard a voice. It was
after a direct question had been asked. This has also been recorded as evidence. Voices may carry but this is not the voice of anyone from our group that night. It is a light,
high pitched voice sounding like a young woman's or a childs voice. As the evening waned there were a few more experiences upstairs in one room where a woman's voice has
been heard crying by previous groups. When leaving this room we pick up another evp asking ""who's there?". There is a huge room upstairs that still has an old hospital
bed in it. It was told to us by Nancy Goehl that other groups had experienced the bed moving. We tried to provoke the same response by moving the bed but nothing happened.
Instead a strong smell of urine entered the room.
We did not hear the music playing that others have heard, we heard bangs and knocks but none of the doors slammed shut on us as in other investigations. But then, when
we go out to investigate we do not expect any of this and aren't too alarmed when it does happen. It is in the quiet of an investigation that we search for paranormal activity.
If you come along with us on an investigation you will be bored to death because we do like to just sit and listen. Our evp evidence that we have found has come at times
when we are setting up and talking a lot but has also come when we are being quiet and listening. Prairie View Nursing Home gave us evidence on both counts and we feel
that something is going on in this building that can't be explained away by natural occurrences. We pick up two evps of children's voices. It was almost as if they were playing
with us. The cold brush on the investigators hand would be the height of a child. Obviously children would not have resided at a nursing home but they would have lived
at a poor farm with their parents. Were these the voices of children who lived and died there?
Our investigation of this gracious lady who has been abandoned of all life, is not over. She is a larger than life reminder of a time gone by but the vandals have been ruthless in their determination to destroy the building. Lewis county has taken major steps in discouraging this vandalism by trying to board up the windows and doorways to keep her from being destroyed. People still try to get in and without the permission of the Commissioner, RTPS strongly discourages any of this behavior. We want to go back because there is a cemetery behind the building that we would like to investigate. If the vandalism doesn't stop it may put a stop to any legitimate groups going in to seriously research the presence of the paranormal. We want to see if there are any children buried in the old cemetery and if there are, we can do more research of death records to find out what they may have died from. This gracious brick lady who had watched so much life happen inside her walls at one time seems to be happy to continue to give life to those who may have lost theirs. Perhaps more research and more investigations will give us an insight to who they were.
1927
Corner stone of the building.
An old barn that once was used to house livestock .
Is now home to many creatures of the night.
Prairie View Rest Home
