GHOST HUNTING

GHOST FILE HK2017-1 – The Unborn Children

Hong Kong Files Part I

GETTING READY

The X-Plan Group and SZ-X begin their collaboration with a full-night investigation across Hong Kong.
On September 9, 2017 TXP meets with SZ-X's leader, Jeff, at the Sheung Tsui metro station, Hong Kong. Jeff leads the way to a van parked on the nearby street; both the vehicle and the driver had been arranged for the occasion. The driver and his adjutant, TXP (2) and SZ-X (3) compose the whole investigation team.
The schedule is to visit at least three places before calling the night out. The first place we head to, under a tropical rain storm, is one of the most controversial buildings in our list of haunted placed: the Hong Kong Central Hospital, located at 1B, Lower Albert Road, Central Hong Kong.

HONG KONG CENTRAL HOSPITAL

Wikipedia has few lines about the Hong Kong Central Hospital (Chinese: 港中醫院):

"It was a non-profit, general private hospital located in the Central area of Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong.
The hospital's services included a large number of specialties which covered a broad area of medicine.
HKCH was a member of the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association. It used to be surveyed bi-annually by the Trent Accreditation Scheme, a UK-based major international healthcare accreditation scheme, but is currently not accredited by any independent accreditation scheme.
The hospital closed on September 1, 2012."

However, a further research into local sources uncovered more details about the Hospital, its history, and its decline. The official reason for its shutting down is a generic "financial dispute over the tenancy."
The South China Morning Post's print issue of September 2012 was the first to give the closure announcement with a sounding title, "Tearful Goodbye as City Hospital Closes Its Doors."
According to the article, HKCH became the first private hospital to shut down in the city after a court order of immediate evacuation of the site was issued.
The hospital management urged the landlord (the Anglican Church) to grant them permission to remain operational until the end of October, but to no avail.
The Central Hospital was particularly known throughout the island as being the city's largest provider for the abortion requests: it offered low-cost services to patients who could not afford expensive medical care in private clinics.



Dr. Cheng Chun-Ho, superintendent at the HKCH, said:

"Even though the hospital is old and small, it had an important role in the private healthcare system...We provide a relatively cheap service to those grass roots-level patients who cannot afford other private institutions and did not want to join the long queues in public hospitals."

Three months before the case went public the Court of First Instance had ruled that the hospital would have to leave the site on Lower Albert Road, after its lease ran out in June of the previous year, and was not renewed for reasons that were never disclosed. Cheng said most medical equipment had been sold, and he has been helped staff to seek jobs elsewhere.
All clinical services were shut down that same day, although according to Cheng, the accounting office would continue to operate at least for a week more.

Chan Chun-Man, 50, a valet and doorman at the hospital for more than a decade, said that the government had not been helpful in solving the dispute over the tenancy, nor in providing another site to keep the hospital in operation.
The land was provided by the Anglican Church in 1966, in an attempt to help doctors fleeing the mainland and continue to practice. The hospital was run by a trust and was well-known for its safe and cheap abortion services. It carried out about 6,000 abortions every year, 60 per cent of the total performed in the city.

Cheng said that the strength of the abortion unit was not down to a conscious decision by the management, but rather by the fact that "the patients chose us for our service.". He said it exposed the inadequacy of abortion services and sex education in the city.
Only women with up to 10 weeks pregnancy were admitted, while it is illegal to terminate pregnancy with more than 24 weeks pregnancy without the permission of two doctors.
The Anglican church denied allegations that the abortion service was the reason which prompted its decision to not renew the lease and shift to a redevelopment plan.
The dispute over the tenancy first broke out in 2009, when the hospital executive board was told the building would have to make way for a HKD800 million plan for a museum and gallery.
To the present day, the building remains abandoned, with no sign of redevelopment whatsoever.

Following its shut down in 2012, people walking by the building started to report hearing strange noises, and experiencing unsettling feelings of "something" lurking behind its dark, abandoned windows.