All Hallow's Eve

Here we are again, another dark and cold Hallowe'en and I thought I would write about the scariest thing that happened to me this year.That would be the twenty four hours I spent at Bridgepoint Rehab Hospital in Riverdale in June.
Bridgepoint sits beside the Don Jail, a dark energy source if ever there was one. Bridgepoint also was known as the Toronto Fever Hospital and The Toronto Plague Hospital. It's history goes back a long, long way.
Now it's a rehab centre and a palliative care hospital with the kindest staff you could ever hope for. However, its facilities are awful. There was a washroom for every fifty patients and it was in the middle of a very long hall. A trek for the botched and the bungled who had to shuffle down to it. The loo was more often than not unusable as cleaning didn't seem to be a priority. Thank goodness for Depends!
The nursing station had bells ringing in the hall so that we could all share in the din twenty four hours a day. The beds were short with metal bars and chains hanging over them. One had to take care not to crack one's skull sitting up. One's neighbour was a scant twelve inches away and potty to boot. Deaf as a bandicoot and addicted to CBC Newsworld played at top decibel non stop.
The food, dear me, the food. I have yet to find hospital food edible and I've unfortunately had more than my share of it. I was handed a tray of something brown and lumpy for my lunch. Toria looked at it and asked what it was. I suggested it might be shit whereupon we both had hysterics. Oh a laugh always does one good, no matter what the circumstances.
I was persuaded to stay overnight so that the paperwork could be done for my rehab at home.
There was very little sleep -the bells! the bells!- and what there was, was visited by nightmares that were simply awful.That's when I found out about the history of the place. A very sweet nurse named Valerie told me the place was haunted. No kidding!
I had to get a bit shirty with the doctor to get myself sprung but I tell you home never looked so good.
There, my little horror story for Hallowe'en