Urban Legend of Glenn Dale Hospital

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Glenn Dale Hospital

Many people claim that they do not believe in ghosts or other uncanny things. Despite those claims, however, a good urban legend still has the power to make anybody stop and ponder the question, “What if?” What if these stories that always seem to have some level of possibility, were actually true? As urban legends transcend through years and generations, they always find a way of still seeming possible in the present time. This is what can be said of the story that was shared with me about the Glenn Dale Hospital.

On an evening in March, I visited my cousin in her dorm room. A sophomore, kinesiology major from Maryland and born to Nigerian parents, her eyes lit up and then narrowed when I asked her whether she had an urban legend to share with me for the sake of an assignment. That is when she shared the story of the haunted Glenn Dale Hospital off of Annapolis Road (MD 450), telling it as follows:

Ok basically what I heard from my friend as we drove by this rundown place called Glenn Dale Hospital, was that it is a haunted hospital that was shut down due to problems with the place like bacterial problems, asbestos, and tuberculosis, or something like that. But then it reopened as a psychiatric patients home. But then it was closed down again because the crazy people began wandering around uncontrolled in the woods or something like that. And according to my friend, she claims that there is this underground railroad that links to different sections of the hospital. And basically they said that the patients who were left there and employees who worked there and caught the disease, died. And now their bodies are still lying there and their spirits are still in there. So that is why it is haunted. Now i...

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...reedom; so much so that it is embedded in our Constitution. However, when a disease such as TB or insanity strikes, a great amount of freedom is lost, as one’s life slowly becomes less under one’s own control and more under the control of physicians and nurses and even the disease. Loosing this autonomy over one’s life leads to the greater fear of what can happen when something else, such as a disease, or someone else, has control of your life.

Works Cited

Glenn Dale Hospital Mission. 5 December 2006. Accessed 29 March 2007.

http://gdhospital.tripod.com/index.html.

Laitmer, Leah. “Quarantined.” Washington Post. 10 December 2006. W20. Accessed 29March 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR2006120601206.html.

Urban Legends. Macabre Maryland. Accessed 29 March 2007. http://cablespeed.com/~rringeisen/mmdurban.html.

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