Vensmoen Sanatorium, Saltdal

Nordland · Norway · Sanatorium

Ghost hunters call Vensmoen Norway's most haunted building — reporting knocks on a window, a blow two floors up, and toys sounding in empty corridors.

Vensmoen at Røkland in Saltdal was built following a parliamentary decision in 1912 as the state tuberculosis sanatorium for the whole of Hålogaland, and the first patients arrived in 1916. Over fifty years some 20,000 people passed through the long corridors, isolated from their families for months and years; in 1926 a children's ward opened with room for thirty tubercular children. When tuberculosis was defeated in 1966 the complex became a central institution for the developmentally disabled until 1991. Today it is marketed in ghost-hunting circles as Norway's most haunted place. Investigators have reported knocking on a window, a blow sounding two floors up, and blinking therapy balls and chiming instruments giving off sound in the empty corridors. The local paper Saltenposten is openly sceptical and holds that imagination does the work in an old building with dark passages.

FAQ

Where is Vensmoen Sanatorium, Saltdal located?

Vensmoen Sanatorium, Saltdal is in Nordland, Norway.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: Frankemann / CC BY-SA 4.0 — Wikimedia Commons