THE STORY
Reported Haunting
Herdklotz Park occupies the former site of Greenville County's tuberculosis hospital, later known as Hopewell Sanatorium. Visitors report screams, footsteps, banging sounds, bells, shadow figures, apparitions and orbs around the park. A particularly macabre legend claims that rainwater collecting over portions of the old hospital foundation can sometimes appear blood-red.
Before it became Herdklotz Park, this Greenville property was occupied by a tuberculosis hospital commonly remembered as the Greenville County Tuberculosis Hospital or Hopewell Sanatorium. The facility opened around 1930 and treated patients suffering from tuberculosis during an era when isolation and fresh air were among the principal treatments available. The property later served other institutional purposes before the abandoned hospital was largely destroyed by fire in 2002. Herdklotz Park opened on the site in 2007, although remnants of the former hospital, including part of a root cellar or basement area and portions of the foundation, have reportedly survived. Since the park opened, visitors and paranormal investigators have reported footsteps, screams, distant banging, unexplained voices, ringing bells, shadowy figures, apparitions and floating orbs, particularly around dusk and near the playground and gazebo. One local legend claims that rainwater pooling on concrete associated with the old hospital occasionally takes on a reddish appearance said to resemble the blood of former tuberculosis patients. These paranormal claims remain folklore, but the history of the former hospital beneath the modern recreational park is well documented.