Two fences surround a construction site in Dunwoody, but some believe a small boy paces the area marked "no trespassing."
He lives on the third floor of the old Georgia Retardation Center on North Peachtree Road. No one knows his name or his story.
He is a ghost, believers say, who haunts the abandoned mental hospital on the current site of Liane Levetan Park at Brook Run. The boy is one of at least two ghosts who are said to wander the grounds of the center, which closed in 1997.
Now the hospital's five buildings are being demolished to make room for a skate park. That has ghost hunters and construction workers alike worried. What happens to homeless ghosts?
Antonio Dean, who operates a crane at the demolition site, said he hadn't seen or heard anything unusual. But he and other workers have heard the tales of the Brook Run boy and a ghostly woman in a nightgown. The burly construction worker said he is afraid and avoids going inside the buildings.
Dan Milhouse, general manager for Walden Security, which patrols the park, said none of the guards has reported any ghost stories to him.
"There are no such thing as ghosts," he said.
But spooks enthusiasts have traded stories about the Brook Run ghosts for years, posting accounts on at least four ghost hunting Web sites. And they say they have proof.
Angela Marlett, lead investigator of the Marietta-Roswell Ghost Tracking Group, has been to Brook Run more than 60 times with her ghost tracking gear, including electronic voice recorders and laser thermometers.
She has experienced the sudden slamming of doors, heard footsteps and felt drastic temperature drops in rooms with no windows, she said.
"It's indisputable when you have voice recordings and hear someone say something on tape," Marlett said. "It's crazy."
Of her 50 recordings, she has been able to decipher two: "Help," and "I book 'em."
In the years since it was closed, the hospital has become a hovel for loitering teenagers and graffiti artists. Marlett believes ghosts returned to the vacant buildings because the Dunwoody site was their true home, she said.
The Georgia Paranormal Society planned to film a documentary on the Brook Run ghosts, but the group was stopped by park security. The group's president, Beth Dedrick of Thomson, near Augusta, said she wants to do extensive research on Brook Run.
"I'm partial sensitive and can pick up people's feeling after life," Dedrick said. "That would be neat if we could go in there and talk to them."
The homemaker and mother of four spends much of her free time investigating paranormal activity including at closed state hospitals in Massachusetts and California.
Call her cellphone and you'll hear music from Scooby-Doo.
Demolition of the old hospital is expected by the end of the month.
Marlett and Dedrick agree the ghosts will stay at Brook Run after the hospital is gone.
"They will continue to walk that land and become angry spirits," Dedrick said. "They don't disappear."
Brook Run Ghost
