St. Ignatius Hospital

A hospital built in 1893 that served the Palouse region until 1964, now a popular paranormal tourism destination with over 15,000 visitors.

St. Ignatius Hospital was the first hospital to serve Washington's Whitman County, built on a hillside overlooking the small Palouse town of Colfax. In 1892, Reverend Jachern, a Roman Catholic priest, traveled to Portland to invite the Sisters of Providence to establish a hospital in the region. Colfax won the bid over Pullman and Palouse City by offering free water, land, a three-thousand-dollar interest-free loan, and five thousand dollars from the Chamber of Commerce. Construction began on April 17, 1893, under the direction of Mother Joseph Pariseau, the pioneering nun and architect who designed dozens of hospitals, schools, and orphanages across the Pacific Northwest. Three Sisters of Providence arrived in May 1893 and began treating patients in a temporary wooden building on the site while the brick hospital rose behind them. The original two-story structure was completed in 1894 and became the region's sole medical facility, handling every birth, death, and emergency in Whitman County for decades. St. Ignatius would prove to be the last major building Mother Joseph designed before her death in 1902.

The hospital grew steadily over the following decades. The St. Ignatius School of Nursing graduated its first class in 1911, and in 1941, two of its graduates, Philip Kromm and Archie McClintic, became Washington State's first male registered nurses. Additions were built in 1917 and 1928, expanding the facility to roughly fifty thousand square feet across five floors, plus a basement with a morgue and direct elevator access. The right wing housed patients expected to recover, while the left wing was reserved for the terminally ill. A separate dormitory for nursing students opened in 1936. But the hospital relied entirely on donations and patient payments with no government assistance, and as the population declined and modernization costs mounted, the Sisters closed St. Ignatius in August 1964 after seventy years of operation. The building was sold in 1968 and converted into St. Ignatius Manor, an assisted living facility for developmentally disabled adults, which operated until the early 2000s before the building was permanently abandoned.

The hospital's first recorded death set the tone for what would follow. In June 1893, before the brick building was even finished, F.E. Martin, a railroad worker, was crushed to death between two rail cars and brought to the hospital where he died of his injuries. Martin's ghost is considered the oldest presence in the building, and some visitors describe encountering a large, mangled figure in the halls. According to some accounts, his spirit manifests as a large, angry black mass that rushes at visitors like a swarm of bees, causing people to flee the area.

At least four other distinct entities have been identified through years of tours and investigations. The most feared is Michael, who spent much of his life in a wheelchair in Room 312. Described as an angry and aggressive man in life, his temperament reportedly did not improve in death. His room is an anomaly among the others, being the only one where flies persistently collect regardless of season or cleaning. Visitors to Room 312 report being shoved, growled at, and chased out. Sister Johanna, a nun who died at the hospital in 1929, presents a gentler presence. According to local legend, she remained behind to comfort dying patients, and those who reported seeing her apparition were said to die soon after their encounter. Rose, a former resident from the facility's assisted living era, is another angry spirit whose voice has been captured in numerous EVP recordings, often accompanied by wall-knocking and physical shoving. Father Ryan, a priest, and an entity named Theresa have also been documented through spirit box sessions, with Theresa notably identifying herself and then directing investigators to leave, telling them to go to Administration 1.

The paranormal activity at St. Ignatius goes well beyond the occasional cold spot. Valoree Gregory, the Colfax Chamber of Commerce director who began running tours in 2015, reported hearing full conversations in empty hallways, watching a dark shadow figure move down a corridor with no doorways, and receiving a hard kick to the back of her foot when alone with another guide who was standing far down the hall. On the third floor, a children's room in the former nurse's station is home to what psychics from Coeur d'Alene and Spokane independently identified as a little girl. Gregory reported that dolls she removed from the room would reappear. A mysterious green light has been documented moving independently through the hospital. During one youth group tour, the sound of running footsteps stampeding up the staircase was heard by the entire group, with no visible source found despite immediate investigation. The activity eventually grew so intense that the Chamber temporarily suspended tours after multiple guests were physically attacked and guides were seen running out of the building in terror.

The hospital's reputation attracted national television attention. Ghost Adventures filmed Season 18, Episode 8 at St. Ignatius, airing in June 2019, with Zak Bagans and crew capturing a white misty apparition on full-spectrum camera. Paranormal Lockdown also investigated in 2017, with an investigator being struck hard on the back during filming. The hospital has been covered by Good Morning America, the Today Show, ABC News, PBS, and People magazine, and has drawn visits from YouTube personalities including Garrett Watts. By the time tours resumed under new ownership, over forty-two thousand people had visited the old hospital, using equipment including K2 meters, spirit boxes, REM pods, and SLS cameras to document their experiences.

In 2021, Austin and Laura Storm, a local couple who had first discovered the building in 2014, purchased St. Ignatius to save it from collapse after nearly two decades of abandonment and water damage. They stabilized the roof, jacked up floors to rebuild rotted structural beams, and partnered with the Whitman County Historical Society for preservation funding. The hospital remains on the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation's Most Endangered Places list, where it has appeared annually since 2015. The Storms continue to offer both historical daytime tours and paranormal investigations ranging from two-hour sessions to six-hour overnight lockdowns, while working toward a long-term vision of artist spaces and hospitality.