Cries in the Pediatric Ward: Spruce Pine’s Old Davis Hospital

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 16, 2026 · How we verify

For decades the Old Davis Hospital sat empty on a rise in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, a brick shell that went from being one of the most modern medical buildings in the mountains to one of the most frequently trespassed. The building came down in 2021. The stories attached to it did not.

A 1920s Hospital That Ran All Night

Davis Hospital was established in the 1920s, and by the standards of a small mountain town it was genuinely advanced. It operated around the clock, which was not a given for a rural facility of that era, and it was among the first in the region to install air conditioning. Staff there introduced glucose IV therapy and used radiographoscope technology for X-ray examinations.

The hospital’s role in the community reached past the wards. It ran blood-donor services and operated a nursing school, which fed trained staff into local healthcare for years. This is the part of the story that gets flattened when a building becomes a ghost story: before it was a trespassing destination, Davis Hospital was where a whole county was born, treated and, in many cases, died.

Closed, Replaced, and Left Standing

The hospital operated until the mid-twentieth century, when a modern replacement facility opened and the original building was no longer needed. After that, the old structure simply stood there, vacant. That combination, an emptied hospital with a morgue still in it and no clear future, is the reliable recipe for a haunted reputation, and the Old Davis Hospital acquired one quickly. Over the following decades it became a fixture on regional lists of paranormal sites and a target for amateur ghost hunters, urban explorers and curious teenagers.

The building was demolished in 2021. Anyone traveling to Spruce Pine expecting to walk its corridors will find an empty site instead.

What People Said They Heard in the Pediatric Ward

None of what follows is verified. These are reported experiences, collected from visitors, explorers and neighbors over the years the building stood abandoned, and they should be read as folklore rather than documentation.

The most persistent account centered on the pediatric ward, where visitors claimed to hear the cries of infants in rooms that had been empty for decades. People who described the ward tended to describe a feeling as much as a sound: a sense of presence in the halls, an unwillingness to stay longer than necessary.

The morgue drew its own set of claims. Visitors reported that it stayed noticeably colder than the rest of the building even in high summer, and that it was the most active spot for disembodied voices and unexplained noises. Cold spots in a windowless, below-grade, tile-lined room are not hard to explain by ordinary means, which is worth keeping in mind, but the morgue’s reputation among people who went inside was consistent.

Elsewhere in the building, the reports followed familiar lines: doors and windows that appeared to open and close on their own, phantom footsteps in corridors, and banging noises against the old medical counters. Residents living nearby said they heard loud bangs and slamming doors coming from the vacant hospital, which did as much as anything to keep the legend circulating locally.

Reported Phenomena at a Glance

• Cries of infants reported in the former pediatric ward
• A morgue described as colder than the rest of the building year-round
• Disembodied voices and unexplained sounds, concentrated in the morgue
• Doors and windows said to open and close unaided
• Phantom footsteps in the corridors
• Banging against the old medical counters
• Loud bangs and slamming doors heard by neighbors outside the building

There Is Nothing Left to Tour in Spruce Pine

Be clear about this before making the drive: the Old Davis Hospital no longer exists. The 6th Street property in Spruce Pine where it stood is still a point of interest for people who followed the site’s reputation, but the building was removed in 2021 and there is no interior to explore, no tour, and no attraction. The lot is private ground in a residential area of a small town, and treating it as a paranormal destination now means loitering on someone’s property with nothing to show for it.

What survives is the testimony. The Old Davis Hospital is one of those places whose legend outlasted its bricks, kept going by the people who went inside while they still could and by the neighbors who spent years listening to an empty building make noise.

See Old Davis Hospital for Yourself

Sources

• Rep. Don Davis (D-North Carolina, 1st)
• Davis wins Democratic primary for 1st Congressional District
• State Senator, former Snow Hill mayor running for Congress, Butterfield seat
• Kalshi suspends N.C. GOP candidate for U.S. House
• Unearthed yearbook photos raise questions over bio of NC-01's Davis
• Wikipedia: Don Davis (North Carolina politician)

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