St. Ignatius Hospital

Ghost Adventures' Zak Bagans woke up with scratches on his neck after investigating this 1893 Colfax hospital. Named spirits include Michael in Room 312, a dark bee-swarm mass that rushes visitors, and F.E. Martin, the hospital's first fatality, crushed between two railroad cars.

Zak Bagans woke up with scratches on his neck after spending a night in St. Ignatius Hospital. He'd dreamed of a woman with red eyes. His crew had already captured what they called a full-bodied figure on camera, and before the episode aired, Bagans tweeted that the evidence was the clearest his team had documented in a long time.

The hospital sits on a hillside overlooking Colfax, a small town in Washington's Palouse wheat country. Construction began on April 17, 1893, after Reverend Jachern, a local Catholic priest, traveled to Portland and persuaded the Sisters of Charity to establish a hospital in the region. Colfax won competitive bidding with an aggressive incentive package: free water, donated land, a $3,000 interest-free loan, and another $5,000 pledged by the Chamber of Commerce. The original brick building opened in 1894, with additions going up in 1917 and 1928. For seven decades, it was the only hospital serving Whitman County.

The hospital's first fatality arrived before the building was even fully operational. F.E. Martin died in 1893 after being crushed between two railroad cars. His ghost, described as a mangled and disfigured figure, has been reported drifting through the hallways since the building closed as a hospital in 1964. It operated as an assisted living facility until 2000, then sat empty on its hillside, slowly acquiring the reputation it has today.

While it was running, St. Ignatius produced real medical milestones. The School of Nursing graduated its first class in 1911. In 1941, Philip Kromm and Archie McClintic became Washington State's first two male nurses, earning their degrees there. A nursing dormitory opened in 1936. These are the kinds of accomplishments that get overshadowed when your building later becomes famous for ghosts that physically attack visitors.

The ghost roster at St. Ignatius runs deeper than most haunted hospitals. A spirit called Michael claims Room 312, his former room when the building was an assisted living facility. He rushes at visitors who enter his space, and swarms of flies appear around him with no natural source. Rosemary, sometimes called Rose, was a resident with dementia. She knocks on walls and shoves people. Father Ryan and a spirit named John are also documented by investigators, though their backstories are less detailed.

The most alarming reports involve a dark mass that resembles a swarm of bees. It moves through the building on its own trajectory, and on multiple occasions has rushed directly at visitors, sending people sprinting for the exits. Physical contact is not rare. Visitors have reported being kicked, pushed, hit, and scratched by forces they can't see. Tour guides have been spotted running out of the building mid-tour. Laughing, crying, and what sounds like full conversations echo from hallways where no one is standing. A mysterious green light drifts between rooms with no electrical source. During one EVP session, a recording captured a voice ordering an investigator to "stop praying."

Ghost Adventures featured St. Ignatius in Season 18, Episode 8, which earned an 8.6 rating on IMDB. Aaron Goodwin captured dark mist moving rapidly in front of the camera. A full-spectrum camera produced a photo that appears to show a white misty figure standing in a doorway. The Screaming Room revisited the footage in a 2024 episode, which brought a new wave of attention to the building.

In 2015, the Colfax Chamber of Commerce began offering public tours. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, those tours earned over $30,000 in revenue. The Washington Trust for Historic Preservation added St. Ignatius to its 2015 Most Endangered Properties list, which helped draw both preservation attention and paranormal tourists. Tours now run every October and by appointment throughout the year, pulling visitors from across the Pacific Northwest.

The hospital never stopped being busy. The patients just changed.