Of all the places to find seaweed strewn hallways, (where every inch of the carpet has a fine layer of sand and smatterings of pebbles lightly dusted with barnacles, where you can almost feel the ocean spray against your face with every salty breath you take) a former hospital in a landlocked county several hundred miles from the sea isn't high on the list.
It used to be called Saint Agatha's Hospital and ran from 1778-1915 when WWI forced them to relocate or risk stray bombings from planes aiming for London. That was the cover story anyway, the nurses journals from that time showed that a great deal of the patients claimed that they could hear the sea whenever they were near the windows. The elderly were most vulnerable to this "mass delusion" as they nurses put it, often begging to be relocated to the coast and trying to escape to there if they were openly denied.
Despite the great pains they took to keep the "mass delusion" quiet, word still got out and the local council sent for doctor after psychiatrist after inspector to determine the cause of this. At first they thought it might be a gas leak, contaminated water and even a fungal infection in their bread but nothing concrete was ever claimed as the reason, just general war-based panic showing itself in the form of this oceanic craving.
The few surviving reports from the inspections read like a bad screenplay where every actor succumbed to stage fright and forgot how to do their part properly. Handwriting graduated from perfect italics to something akin to a spider falling in and out of an inkwell, tenses switched five times in one sentence and often the point of the report was lost to the author deciding to take a trip to the sea and using the report to plan out what they would do there.
Ever report claimed that the author felt in dire need of a break and that when they got to the sea they would just dive right in and bask in the cool, calm waves. It was like the war had completely slipped their minds, much unlike the nurses whose journals showed that they mostly put down their oceanic cravings to tiredness and spending too much time at work.
It was around eight months after the hospital finished moving out that the sea began moving in, starting with the tang of salt in the air and slowly working up to its present state. Present day urban explorers have claimed that there are some intensely realistic murals of the coast in some of the patient rooms in the heart of St Agatha's that look like you just step into them. Very few of those people live inland, most choosing to move to seaside towns, caravan parks and even renovated lighthouses.
Whatever is inside of St Agatha's came from the sea and brought the sea with it.
Now it brings us to the sea for reasons we can't fully explain and don't want to think about.
All that matters is the way the waves brush against the shell-strewn sand and how cool the water feels.
It used to be called Saint Agatha's Hospital and ran from 1778-1915 when WWI forced them to relocate or risk stray bombings from planes aiming for London. That was the cover story anyway, the nurses journals from that time showed that a great deal of the patients claimed that they could hear the sea whenever they were near the windows. The elderly were most vulnerable to this "mass delusion" as they nurses put it, often begging to be relocated to the coast and trying to escape to there if they were openly denied.
Despite the great pains they took to keep the "mass delusion" quiet, word still got out and the local council sent for doctor after psychiatrist after inspector to determine the cause of this. At first they thought it might be a gas leak, contaminated water and even a fungal infection in their bread but nothing concrete was ever claimed as the reason, just general war-based panic showing itself in the form of this oceanic craving.
The few surviving reports from the inspections read like a bad screenplay where every actor succumbed to stage fright and forgot how to do their part properly. Handwriting graduated from perfect italics to something akin to a spider falling in and out of an inkwell, tenses switched five times in one sentence and often the point of the report was lost to the author deciding to take a trip to the sea and using the report to plan out what they would do there.
Ever report claimed that the author felt in dire need of a break and that when they got to the sea they would just dive right in and bask in the cool, calm waves. It was like the war had completely slipped their minds, much unlike the nurses whose journals showed that they mostly put down their oceanic cravings to tiredness and spending too much time at work.
It was around eight months after the hospital finished moving out that the sea began moving in, starting with the tang of salt in the air and slowly working up to its present state. Present day urban explorers have claimed that there are some intensely realistic murals of the coast in some of the patient rooms in the heart of St Agatha's that look like you just step into them. Very few of those people live inland, most choosing to move to seaside towns, caravan parks and even renovated lighthouses.
Whatever is inside of St Agatha's came from the sea and brought the sea with it.
Now it brings us to the sea for reasons we can't fully explain and don't want to think about.
All that matters is the way the waves brush against the shell-strewn sand and how cool the water feels.
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