What happened
The tuberculosis sanatorium, more than 2,300 metres up, north of Cartago towards the Irazú volcano, was the initiative of Carlos Durán Cartín, a physician and former president of Costa Rica whose daughter had the disease. Construction was approved in 1915 and the sanatorium opened in 1918. It had about 300 beds, with separate wings for men, women and children, and from 1925 the patients were cared for by the Sisters of Charity of St Anne. As effective drugs arrived and cases declined, the sanatorium faded; by the 1960s and early 1970s it no longer served patients. The abandoned buildings soon gathered legends. Former patients spoke of a ghostly nun who tended the bedridden at night, and visitors to the ruins tell of two nuns walking the corridors on cold, dark nights, of a little girl, of shadows by the stairs and footsteps on the top floor. The legend inspired the Costa Rican horror film El Sanatorio (2010). In 2014 the sanatorium was declared a historic and architectural heritage site, and the grounds are now open as a park.
Witnesses
Former patients, local residents and visitors to the ruins; reports in the Costa Rican press in 2008–2010.
Explanations and hypotheses
The sanatorium's history is well documented in Costa Rican sources and newspapers. The ghost stories are local folklore that grew out of the abandonment of buildings where many patients suffered and died over decades, and out of the memory of the nuns who worked there. Ruins on a cold, often misty slope, draughts and echoing empty wards make such experiences likely; none of the accounts has independent confirmation.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.