Original story by: Metric Dockins

"Hospital Staff Hopes Ghost Girls Survive Move"

Oct. 31 1986:

October 31,1986 By Metric Dockins Two little girls: Mention them to anyone who worked for any length of time at the old Biloxi Regional Medical Center on Back Bay, and they immediately know what you're talking about. But they probably won't be eager to tell you what they know about the girls, at least not if you publish their names.

By all accounts, theough unconfirmed, anyone who saw the girls now is in the great beyond--the region where the girls apparently exist. But any number of Biloxi Regional personnel, particularly night nurses say they heard them or witnessed events which they attributed to them. The story goes back to the park/playground next to the old hospital. Some say the two girls were killed on the playground; others say they were patients in the hospital who died there. At any rate, they have been a popular topic of conversation among the hospital's staff for years.

As best as can be determined, the girls were 5 to 7 years old and stood about 3 feet tall. some say they were dressed in nightgowns, while others think their outfits probably were more like party dresses from a particular period. They were happy little girls, according to those who say they heard them laughing. at times, they were impish--playing with the elevators and the thermostats. But they were also helpful.

One longtime nurse, who like her co-workers asked to remain unidentified, said that one night years ago when she was at a nurse's station being trained to take over her new duties, she kept hearing the elevator around the corner going up and down and the doors opening and closing, but no one was getting on or off.

She said the nurse who was instructing her finally said, "Those girls are at it again." That was her introduction to many similar unexplainable events she said she experienced at the hospital over the years.

"But I never felt any fear." she said. Another nurse said she nevner feared them but that once she was gripped by an eerie feeling, which she attributed to the girls' uneseen presence.

She said a colleague came to her one night and told her to step into a nearby room.

"The temperature was at least 15 degrees cooler than the other room where we had been standing." she said, although both rooms were on the same thermostat. "The hair on the back of my neck stood up."

But the same nurse said there wre times when a baby had to be rushed from one floor of the hospital to intensive care "and I would be praying that the elevators were working. Just as I'd round the corner with the child, the elevator doors would swing open."

Some nurses said they had any number of extremly ill patiendts who told them about girls, with some even asking if something couldn't be done to stop them from playing in their rooms.

A long time Biloxi doctor downplays the stories about the girls.

"It's just a nice little myth." he said with a wink of his eye. Now that we're in a new place, we're sure to develop something else.

When hospital employees were packing a few weeks ago to move to the new downtown Biloxi Regional, many staffers are said to have inquired about the girls, wondering if they, too, would make the move to the new hospital.

"Surely they came too," one employee said. "I'd hate to think of them alone over there in that old building."

"Well, only time will tell," another said. According to one nurse, time has told. It seems the new medical center, the doors to the emergency entrance kept opening and closing--on their own, as it were.