Established in 1881 The Prince Henry Hospital, originally called The Coast Hospital and changed to commemorate the visit in 1934 of HRH Henry, Duke of Gloucester, has a long and distinguished history.It was purposely built a considerable distance from the city of Sydney due to its founding mission to treat people with contagious disease, sitting as it does on 500 acres of sand dunes and rugged bushland hugging the coast only a short distance from famous Botany Bay.
Patients suffering from typhoid, leprosy, small pox and other communicable diseases suffered and died there in large numbers. Veterans of both world wars recuperated there from wounds and illness, nurses tending them were famous for their dedication. In times past many of its nurses and matrons dedicated their entire lives to the hospital, remembered by todays generation as stern no nonsense taskmasters.
As the years passed and the threat of contagious disease receded with advancements in medicine, the hospital was upgraded and turned into a modern general hospital. In the 1960's the Victorian buildings underwent extensive renovations, millions of dollars were spent on upgrading hospital facilities.
The ghost of a matron called Gracie haunts the hospital, in life she was a neurotic woman who would immediately wash herself after being touched or bumping into someone. She is said to have died in B Block under mysterious circumstances, believed to have fallen down a disused liftwell. Her ghost is regularly seen in B Block, now called the Delaney Ward.
Patients report being tendered to by a mysterious nurse with an old fashioned white vail, she tops up glasses of water - adjusts blankets on cold nights and has placed bed pans under patients and removed them after use. Although the patients don't know she is a ghost, nurses do and are terrified of her, even though Gracie isn't considered an evil presence she projects an aura of authority which nurses instinctively respond to with subordinate fear.
On occasion nurses have felt her presence scrutinizing their work, seemingly disapproving of their coffee breaks. On one occasion two nurses working the night shift left milk boiling on a stove, stepping into the corridor a moment to check everything was alright. Returning to the tea room to find the stove turned off, the pot which seconds before had been boiling milk, emptied in the sink, rinsed and put away dripping wet. Along with cups, sugar and other food stuffs. No other members of staff were on that floor, no one could have entered the room without being seen, let alone been able to clean up in such a brief period of time.
Often when Gracie's ghost is seen the clocks in the area stop functioning, their hands pointing to 2 o'clock. The ghost of an aboriginal boy mischievously haunts the stairs of B Block, tripping nurses and others who use them. Sometimes seen sitting at the foot of the stairs giggling, his cheeky presence causes unease to many using them.
Other ghosts are reported in the hospital beside Gracie, they include an unidentified man who walks the corridors at night. Described a sinister presence, his apparition has never been seen but its shadow has, accompanied by heavy footsteps it drifts across the walls.
In years past intravenous drips and medical equipment have been mysteriously turned off in the hospital, attending nurses believe this spectre is responsible. Patient buzzers used to summon nurses are often pressed late at night in locked, unoccupied wards. Some nurses refuse to work at night, those who do always do rounds in pairs. The hospital has its own cemetery, abandoned and overgrown it contains well over 1000 people, many patients who died in the hospital in the early days are buried there.
Last century in separate swimming and boating accidents nurses drowned in a nearby lagoon, some nurses died during epidemics, while tending devotedly to the sick and dying.
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