{"id":3420,"slug":"charity-hospital-new-orleans-louisiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Charity Hospital opened in 1736 — New Orleans' hospital for the poor, the institution that treated the city's destitute for nearly three centuries, its wards holding the sick that no one else would take.","The file's documented spine is the hospital's mission: a charity hospital that served the city from the colonial era through Katrina, its wards being the record of the poorest city's care for its poorest."]},{"heading":"The patients","paragraphs":["The lore reports the patients seen — the file's haunting being the hospital's dead: the people who died in the wards reportedly still in the building where the city's sick were kept, the hospital's residents being its most enduring.","The Charity dead are the file's signature — a hospital that treated the poor keeping its patients, the wards reportedly still holding the people who had nowhere else to go."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Charity is the archive's hospital file — a 1736 institution that served the poor for centuries, keeping its patients reportedly still in the wards. The documented mission is the record; the lingering sick are the lore of a hospital that took everyone.","A hospital that served the poor keeps its patients — the file's suggestion being that Charity's wards still hold the people the city sent to its cheapest beds."]}],"name":"Charity Hospital","aliases":[],"type":"SITE","type_label":"Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","MEDICAL"],"groups":["dark-history","hauntings","legends"],"desc":"The 1736 hospital—abandoned since Katrina.","full_desc":"Charity Hospital is a site in New Orleans, Louisiana. The 1736 hospital—abandoned since Katrina. Its accounts name only a collective — the charity dead. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.","address":null,"city":"New Orleans","county":null,"state":"Louisiana","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":30.05342,"lon":-89.934502,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"LA2 batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":3634,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"The patients are reportedly seen. The presences go by the Charity dead in the file. The reports at Charity Hospital are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The name gives the haunting a face, and the sightings give the name a job.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The Charity dead","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":3635,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures in the building. Charity Hospital's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. It's an investigation claim — the kind that convinces the people who were in the room. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped. The report keeps its place in the record.","evidence":"PARANORMAL_INVESTIGATION_CLAIM","evidence_label":"Investigation claim","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The hospital’s history is documented. The documented date is 1736. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The record appears in 'Charity Hospital'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1736","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The patients are reportedly seen. The reports at Charity Hospital are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs. The claim holds its place in the ledger.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The Charity dead","claimed_identity":"The Charity dead","verified":null,"summary":"The patients are reportedly seen. The lore files them collectively as the Charity dead. The site in New Orleans, Louisiana gives the account a documented setting: real place, real history, unresolved reports. The lore has a face now: The Charity dead. The telling survives; the proof stays folklore. The account stays in the file — reported, retold, unresolved.","behavior":"The patients are reportedly seen.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Charity Hospital","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital","desc":"Topics referred to by the same term","extract":"Charity Hospital may refer to:\n\nCharity Hospital (New Orleans)\nCharity Hospital (Savannah, Georgia), listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia\nCity Hospital (Roosevelt Island, New York), formerly known as Charity Hospital\nCategory:Charitable hospitals","img":null,"score":67},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}