Part of the new Belvoir Park development in South Belfast incorporates the old Belvoir Park Hospital (originally the Purdysburn Fever Hospital, then Montgomery House) which opened in 1906 and operated for 100 years. During its time, the hospital was a major treatment centre for cancer patients, and in 1983 it received Northern Ireland’s first CT scanner. But despite the care the patients received from the nursing staff, the hospital hit the headlines after it had closed when intruders were able to access and steal confidential information that had been left at the abandoned hospital.

Despite the technology of the time and the efforts of medical staff, it stands to reason that people did die at the hospital and there are reports in the public domain that the building is haunted.

I came across this story on a public forum.

Part of the Hospital was the children’s fever hospital, and legend had it that Nurses on night duty on the children’s wards would always be warned of the impending death of a child by the first ever Matron of the hospital who was known to be a saintly character and had been dead many years. When a child was approaching death the buzzer above their beds would sound allowing the Nurses to assist the child, call for doctors or the child’s family. As a student there myself I did witness one or two incidents connected with the Matron, often in the office (even during the day) the doctor’s stethoscopes would be seen to move (apparently Matron was counting them). As students we always thought that the staff were taking the hand out of us, until we witnessed it ourselves. Matron also completed a ward round nightly, and the swish of her uniform could be heard brushing along the floor. Funny how none of us ever felt frightened by this. – homebird, 23/05/09

When the hospital closed, security guards claimed to have witnessed shadows moving around inside the building, but when they went to investigate there were no intruders to be found. On a more sinister note, some reports claimed that they began to find “shrines” and even mutilated animal corpses on the property.